2004-07-28 - 11:33 a.m.

cheers, cheers to new yorkers!! i heard that a hummer can't tank two blocks without getting flipped off. i've been covering the ground here, but i love the political consistency of that coast. right the fuck on. i think any driver who drives to work in a vehicle made to withstand small missle attacks should send their *own* child to war to guzzy out enough oil to pay for their jaunts.

also here's something interesting from my aunt on the draft. what are the age limits on the draft??

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Dear Family,

We had dinner with our friend Mitch the other night. Mitch was in

college when we met him -- just about Spark's age now. (He mowed our

lawn for extra money. Funny thing was, MItch was in the ROTC so he mowed

in full battle gear, and not mowed, but jog-mowed, in 100 degree heat.)

Mitch is in the Marines and is a lieutenant major -- he went into the

service to fly and has spent the last 18 years as a helicopter pilot.

He has recently been reassigned and was travelling from Maryland to San

Diego, and from there will be deployed to Iraq.

I asked Mitch about the rumors I have been hearing about the draft.

Mitch replied that he honestly did not know how the country would be

able to fulfill its present committments without the draft. He said that

the re-enlistment rate was so very low, especially among the National

Guard units. Most of the Guard never thought they would see combat and

a few of their units have been deployed to Iraq twice in the last 18

months. He speculated that these part time soldiers had seen enough of

the Middle East not to be interested in another tour of duty there.

Mitch said the military did not expect the amount of insurgency it has

encountered in Iraq, so the war there has been much more labor intensive

than projected. Remember, too that Iraq is just one hot spot .. we have

men and women in many locations around the world. If the conflicts

continue, and it seems likely they will, at least for the medium term,

there will be a shortage of soldiers. The Bush administration in recent

weeks has said that it doesn't see that the country will need the draft,

but will rely instead on increasing the financial and economic

incentives for enlistment and retained soldiers. However, my feeling is that

the law of dimishing returns probably applies fairly easily to this

situation. I can see a low saturation point for the realities of war given

the media coverage and national climate. Mitch also said he thought

the draft would apply equally to men and women, and that the educational

deferrments which largely kept the upper and upper middle classes out

of Vietnam would not fly politically these days.

I then emailed a friend who is a lawyer in the Coast Guard. She has

heard pretty much the same thing as Mitch. She suggested that if the

draft was reinstated and if it appeared likely that an individual would

be drafted, that they join the Coast Guard. This branch of the

services is under the Homeland Security banner, and except for reservists,

does not get deployed.

I am sure the escalation of war concerns us all, as a family, as a

community, and as a nation. But like politics, all war is local. It

doesn't truly become real to most of us until it touches us -- until we

read about a particular soldier's ordeal, or watch on the nightly news as

the mother of a young man killed in duty clutches her son's picture. I

have been on my own private battlefield these last two years and so the

battlefield far far away didn't invade my field of vision like it

should have. I look at my children, and my children's friends, and can't

imagine a world without them. I know every loving parent feels the same

way. The war became very local for me this weekend.

I know as a family we encompass a a very broad spectrum of political

and social views. Maybe some of us saw the war as a necessary evil at

its start, or thought it would be a fairly contained, short lived

conflict. That doesn't seem to be the case now. Whatever your views, I

think it may behoove us all to look very closely at the issue now. The

wholesale warehousing and deployment of our young men and women is not

the path our government should be even lightly treading upon.

Anyone have any insights into this issue? Read any articeles lately

concerning each candidate's express policy on the draft? Let me know

before I send in Spark and Cailan's Coast Guard application.

Love to all,

b