Rangel: A Compulsory Military Draft is All That's Left

PRESS RELEASE

Rangel: A Compulsory Military Draft is All That's Left
July 7, 2010 3:34 PM

Congressman Charles Rangel released the following statement Wednesday on his position on our current military spending in Afghanistan and Iraq and his plans to re-introduce a bill to institute a national service draft that includes compulsory military service.

In Congress, we will soon be voting to provide additional funding to support wars in the Middle East that seem to have no end. Going on eight years, the war in Afghanistan is the nation’s longest military conflict, shifting from Iraq to Afghanistan where it all started after Nine-eleven.
I strongly support President Obama’s policies, particularly his historic initiative to expand health care coverage to millions of Americans, an effort which I helped design and move to passage in Congress. The President’s economic stimulus not only saved the country from a total collapse into a depression, it created and saved millions of jobs and started the beginnings of a recovery. Nearly $300 million has been funneled by the program into my Congressional district alone.

The oil spill in the Gulf, which the President has handled as well as anyone could, has highlighted our need for a new energy policy, as pointed out earlier by President Obama. It also points up the nation’s vulnerability with respect to alternative petroleum sources, including those in the Middle East.

I cannot challenge the President’s handling of the war in Iraq, where he was left with few options after inheriting the conflict from the previous administration. I support his intentions to withdraw, but I’d like to see it happen sooner. In my view, no additional tax dollars should be appropriated for hunkering down in Iraq and Afghanistan, where taxpayers have already spent over $1 trillion. From here on, all expenditures should be for one purpose: to safely bring our brave and exhausted troops home.

In the two Middle East conflicts, more than 5,400 of our young men and women have been killed, over 4,400 in Iraq, and 1,000 in Afghanistan, where monthly casualties are climbing fast. Troop shortages have caused multiple deployments, up to six tours. Incidences of head injuries, PTSD and suicides have increased dramatically.

Again in this war, troops recruited from the lower income groups, from the large urban communities and economically depressed small towns, are carrying the heaviest burden of service. Financial incentives to enlist have reached as much as $40,000 which, combined with the economic recession, has made for record recruiting results.

While the longest in our history, the Iraq and Afghan wars are far from the bloodiest. In Vietnam, 58,000 of our sons and daughters were slaughtered in in a months less time. Maybe that’s why the television cameras long ago left the battlefields of Afghanistan and Americans stopped caring about the war. Not bloody enough.

For those 5,400 families who’ve lost loved ones, this war is as painful as any of the others that came before it. And I believe every family would feel that way if one of its sons or daughters were at risk—or subject to be in harm’s way.

Whether in Afghanistan, or any future conflict, the test is whether Congress— in supporting a war policy—is willing to require all eligible residents of this great country to make a contribution—to put their own children at risk.

In other words, in order to fulfill one’s moral responsibility to this democracy, anyone who supports this, or any war, should also support a compulsory military draft.

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