Reinstate the draft?

It doesn’t seem like Rep. Charles Rangel has put much thought into his call to reinstate the draft.

I think his logic that a draft would have kept us out of the war with Iraq because our leaders’ kids could be drafted to fight in it is flawed, unless he is planning a major overhaul from how it worked in the Vietnam War era.

Since Bush and Cheney and so many other chicken hawks managed to keep themselves out of the draft and out of Vietnam, what makes him think it would be any different today.

Sure African Americans are over-represented in our armed forces as a percentage of our population, but they were during the Vietnam War also; so how is a draft today going to change that? It seems like congressional action would be a better way to change that.

The reason we are waging a war against Iraq is because Congress told the President it was OK. Rangel may not have voted for it, but enough of his Democratic colleagues did to pass it. Why didn’t so many Democrats realize they were being played for suckers? That’s the real question here.

The Bush administration, some conservative “think tanks,” the media and Congress are why we invaded Iraq. Rangel doesn’t need to look so far away to find a guilty party in this; the guilty party is right in his back yard, and really by implication, it is he.

And really I should add that this is just a distraction from what the Democratic Congress should be focusing on, and probably the bigger picture of racial equality should be part of that.