O’Reilly’s new strategy includes a ‘limited draft’

August 11, 2006

Well, it’s good to see Bill O’Reilly thinking outside the box.

The United States needs a new strategy to deal with this ominous threat. Slugging it out in Iraq may be necessary, but there might be another way. President Bush needs to level with the American people and begin putting this country on a war footing. That means a limited draft and a major commitment to defense. The President needs to shake things up and get people’s attention. (emphasis added)

At least on that last point, I’m very much inclined to agree. If the administration implemented a “limited draft,” I’m quite certain it would “get people’s attention.” I’m also fairly certain Republicans would lose several dozen seats in Congress, but I’ve heard that freedom isn’t free.

I suspect O’Reilly’s going to be alone on this one — talk of a draft isn’t just rejected out of hand by administration officials; it’s also a sensitive subject in conservative circles.

Still, it is a subject that pops up from time to time.

Consider, for example, this feature article from Rolling Stone.

[W]ith the Army and Marines perilously overextended by the war in Iraq, that volunteer foundation is starting to crack. The “weekend warriors” of the Army Reserve and the National Guard now make up almost half the fighting force on the front lines, and young officers in the Reserve are retiring in droves. […]

In the end, it may simply come down to a matter of math. In January, Bush told America’s soldiers that “much more will be asked of you” in his second term, even as he openly threatened Iran with military action. Another war, critics warn, would push the all-volunteer force to its breaking point. “This damn thing is just an explosion that’s about to happen,” says Rangel. Bush officials “can say all they want that they don’t want the draft, but there’s not going to be that many more buttons to push.”

The article ran in January 2005. The pressure on the Armed Forces is far more serious now.

In my heart of hearts, I find it hard to imagine the circumstances that would lead the administration to even consider bringing back what O’Reilly called a “limited draft,” but for someone of his notoriety to broach the subject on Fox News after a terrorist plot was thwarted has to raise a few eyebrows.

on the first day of wwii, 6 million american men from all walks of life enlisted. on day one of bush’s gwot, the only man anyone can think of who enlisted is pat tillman, and our forces shot him in the back. that’s when the war was lost. when the republican’s base of bumpersticker soldiers and keyboard samurai decided they had other priorities than actually fighting the war they cared so much about.

as too limited, i think that means limited to registered democrats in blue states.

  • Two things.

    First, Boy George II’s supporters want to profit from defense spending, not blow it on more soldiers and marines. They want to sell America Super Advanced Jet Aircraft That No Human Alive Can Fly, then sell America Super Advanced Pilots 😉

    Second, when you think about a draft, always remember this, in the first four years of the Bushite regime, the potential American Workforce (ages 18 to 67) grew by an estimated 2.3 million American-born males. The actual number of American-born males who were added to the real workforce was…

    … wait for it…

    … ZERO! For every nephew of yours that got a job, an uncle lost one. All the job growth over the first four years was American-born females (700,000) and legal and illegal immigrants.

    Soooo,

    there is a huge untapped potential out there. I say draft everyone of them that doesn’t have a real job. That will get them out into the fields picking crops and drive the illegals back home. End snark

  • I bet by “limited” he means “anyone in the lower and lower-middle classes, and/or who doesn’t have a parent serving in Congress.”

    I could be wrong …

  • For once you and I and Bill O’Reilly agree. I say put the country on war footting. Start a draft. Sell US War Bonds (beats debt to China). We need to impose an immedate “War Tax” to fund our defense. We need to ration gasoline. We need to limit leisure travel and divert the resources to the war. If we are serious about fighting a global war on terror and on winning in Iraq then average Americans and American BUSINESSES need to feel like we are at war.

    Everybody sinch that belt down a little tighter, buy some bonds, and get your kids a haircut to save the Army the cost of replacing their $500 Haliburton Clippers.

    USA! USA! USA!

  • By limited, perhaps we can draft the people that didn’t go last time. I hear Cheney’s pretty good with a scattergun…

  • I don’t think it’s going to happen. How much of your money would the Bush administration spend on mercenaries’ salaries to keep it from happening? I tend to think the answer is “whatever it takes.”

    About 500 ‘private security contractors’ have been killed in the war so far; there are supposedly around 120,000 of them in service. Apparently about 650,000 draftees were sent to Vietnam, for what that’s worth. These numbers make it sound like the draft can be, er, privatized.

  • I work in a university that has an active Young Conservative chapter. I’d like nothing better than for some of those loud-mouthed little fuckwads to go get their legs blown off and then come back and tell everyone how much they love their Georgie.

  • MNProgressive is essentially right.

    A true war effort takes sacrifice, and that means rationing, conscription, and funding.

    Americans use more and more petroleum everyday; except for officers, only the disadvantaged join the military; and the rich are paying less and less in taxes to support the government of this country.

    The Bush war effort is a sham befitting a crumpling empire.

  • First, Unholy Moses, I was thinking the same thing. Limited, meaning, more lower class people, certainly not families with children who will go to college or be a future part of the white collar workforce.

    Second, I always have said that the only difference between this piece of crap war and Vietnam was the draft. The only reason we don’t have more people protesting is the majority of our young citizens don’t feel the pressure of the possibility of serving.

    Ironic, conservatives are the first to call liberals treasonous for wanting to cut and run, and yet we are in agreement that if we are at war, then there should be a sense of sacrifice in our country.

  • (T-bone’s “cut and run” comment inspires a new slogan for the Democrats. They should dare war fans to “cut and go.”)

    The word “limited” is of great importance. For some time I’ve wondered how the Bushies could conjure a draft without being lynched. I think it’s entirely possible they would, and like everything else sneaky, not call it a “draft.” (SEE: No Child Left Behind, Clean Water Act, etc.)

    I trust them to come up with a clever, deceptive name for it. And some high-minded purpose for it. It would only affect young men with certain occupations and skills (unemployed and able to walk). One of these “mandated volunteers” would certainly attend the next SOTU address.

    Personally, I just don’t reject the idea because it’s nuts. Bush is nuts.

  • I think it would actually help the country to have compulsory universal national service, as many civilized countries already do. There should, of course, be numerous non-military alternatives — there’s much more to life than training to kill people, or at least there should be — but it would get young men and women away from the parochialism which limits so many Americans today. Hell, it might even get some people to think about something other than the pap delivered by corporate TeeVee or meaningless exercises on GameBoys and other devices which channel human energy into nothing beyond killing time. Talk to someone who’s been in the Peace Corps or Vista, or even just lived abroad; you’ll agree with me: ompulsory universal national service.

  • No draft. Liberals need to get past the notion that enforced servitude to the state is some kind of freedom.

  • Go Bill. I can’t believe I’m agreeing with O’Reilly. Except “limited”. No exemptions for college or being just too well off and well connected to go. Do it nth name, male and female, and be done with it. Watch the war support plummet.

    As for “Young Conservatives”, there are two honorable positions for young people in this country: in uniform because they so believe in this war, or protesting it so that nobody else has to go. Anything else makes you a hypocritcal, cowardly chickenhawk. And an asshole, of course.

  • Drafting for Iraq?
    Mostly everyone will feel gay about it…

    One can fairly see the morass the repugs are in:

    To make the draft work we can’t let people ditch just because of their sexuality. But if we let gays in… they can argue that they’ve risked their lives for a country that won’t let them live respectable married lives.

    Poor poor repugs…
    Trapped in their own bottomless well of fertile stupidty.

    They can’t fight anymore wars without turning the nation pink.

  • “Draft?” For what? The civil war in Iraq? The “war on terror?” How do you use an army to wage a war against an emotion? It was police work and intelligence that disrupted the UK cell yesterday. If we really do need so many more military force members, why not just change the status of all those mercenaries we’re paying Halliburton those huge salaries?!

  • A universal draft – no deferments, no exceptions – would be wonderful: it would serve as a social leveler, give this country a bond of common experience regardless of economic or social class, and – most importantly – make it very difficult to start another war like the one in Iraq when the burden of fighting it is borne equally by all levels of society. Would the Republicans have won as big as they did in 2004 if we were drafting people to fight in Iraq? I don’t think so.

  • O’Lielly should have Charlie Rangel on to talk about the one issue they agree on!
    http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/07/rangel.draft/

    Three thoughts:

    1) O’Lielly is calling Bush a liar. He says “Bush needs to level with the American people”. Frameshop: Even Bill O’Reilly thinks George Bush is a dishonest person.

    2) We should do our best to remind the pursuadable (over and over again) that Mr O’Lielly supports the Republicans and wants to reinstitute the draft.

    The idea is to link the two concepts together linguistically, and the viewer will do the rest (as they should). Everyone realizes that if we stick with the Republican “stay in the ditch and keep digging” policy, there will have to be a draft. Technically, no Republican has ever called for a draft (AFAIK) but the statement I made is quite true.

    This is how Bush connected Iraq to 9/11, it’s only fitting that this method should be used against his party of criminals. Let them deny that they want to institute a draft. Since their credibility is in negative terrotory, the more they try the less people will believe them.

    3) We need to confront every Republican with this issue, because O’Lielly has brought it up. It’s fresh news, and they need to be cornered into saying one way or the other what their plan is. If they don’t support a draft, and the troops need reinforcements, are they supporting the troops? How so?

    Thanks, Bill. Let me buy you a falafel sometime.

  • I’m going to always wonder about the intentionality of Tillman’s fracticide. As for the U.S. Military, they have not really been adept at producing truth from their inquiries.

    Remember the Marine Reservist pilots cutting down a cable car in Italy. They were flying too low, against instructions on their clearly marked map, they had a video camera with them, and it was their last chance to fly the route before being shipped back stateside. Yet somehow the Marine Corps couldn’t figure out they were joy-riding at U.S. expense and at the cost of dozens of Italians’ lives.

  • Ending the draft would have been more effective at ending the Vietnam War than the lottery system was. For one thing think of the thousands of kids who were snatched out of their lives between the time the lottery went into effect and this hyped-othetical social pressure supposedly ended the war.

    Remember the protests of 1968? Then Nixon won and the war went on. Then in 1972 social protest reached a culmination with an actual anti-war presidential candidate who was roundly beaten by Nixon. In my opinion, if Watergate had not happened Nixon would have kept the war going as long as he wanted to-the public be damned.

    I wish we progressives could take credit for ending the war, but we can’t. And neither can the draft.

  • A conventional-force construct will never succeed against a decentralized organization that employs the Kommando tactics from the old Boer Wars in South Africa. It makes about as much sense as to use a brigade of tanks to flush out the needle that hides within the haystack.

    The recent exercise in London serves as yet another glowing example of this administration’s wholesale ineptitude at fighting on a nontraditional level, if by nothing else than the observation that the very methodology Kerry was criticized for only two years ago (by Herr Bush, no less) is the exact same methodology that the British—and the Pakistanis, no less—employed to successfully bring this potential calamity to a rather premature—and gladfully unsuccessful—conclusion.

    Now, as to the issue of the Caliphate—the Islamic militantism of the previous era had no particular knowledge of anything west of Spain—probably because nothing to the west of Spain had been discovered yet. However, the establishment of militant regimes that suggest the re-emergence of a xenophobic Caliphate mentality (the Taliban being one, and some of the more violent militia-types in eastern Africa being included in the matrix) might well require the deployment of conventional force. This need could conceivably exceed the potentialities of our current volunteer-force potential, and it may well become necessary to reintroduce those factors which last appeared during the Second World War. Rationing, conservation measures, War Bonds, the Draft—why, I might even consider tearing up the whole damned yard, and planting myself one beautiful Victory garden.

    In essense, it may well be a good idea to place the entire nation—and the People—on a “war” footing. And to begin with, let’s start by rolling back all the corporate tax cuts. A nation at war needs unquestionably-dependable infrastructure to support the war effort.

    Let’s continue by fully funding NCLB. A democracy at war needs an educated population. Not “propagandized,” or “cowered” or “intimidated”—but “educated.”

    Next step—bring back the $25 Bond. It was the perfect way for millions of kids to donate to The Cause. Nickels here; dimes there—it all added up—and the end payout was probably the best thing ever to teach kids the value of patience.

    Fuel rationing might actually revitalize rail transport in this country—and a couple of locomotives can move more people, and more freight, with less fuel, than any jumbo-heavy airplane ever could. I’m probably not the only one willing to spend 3 days getting from coast to coast, in exchange for the scenery….

    Placing the country on an actual war footing would also necessitate that the war profiteers face criminal penalties for their thievery. Dishonest politicians and scurrilous lobbyists would find themselves behind bars. Felonious corporate executives might have to trade their golden parachutes for chain-gang overalls, and their expensive leather Italian loafers for cheap plastic sandals.

    Oh—and the draft? I seem to remember that students worked a lot harder to get good grades, when the alternative was an invitation to visit the induction center—instead of an internship on K Street….

  • It’s painful to read all of these perfectly intelligent and on the mark observations and know that the very reasons they make so much sense are the very reasons the draft will be resisted by those who most hide behind national security as their raison d’etre.

    A shared sense of sacrifice for the national good? WTF! A distraction from shopping and mindless spending? Heresy! A backing away from energy consumption and waste for the pure purpose of corporate profit? They’d rather gag on a spoon.

    The wealthy and not so well off would find common ground pretty quickly with each having a child in a foreign country dodging bullets for the “homeland”. The Hispanic-American or Muslim-American’s peace and freedom being defended by an Asian-American or Anglo-Amerian or African American or any combination thereof would bring a sense of belonging and ownership and comradeship which would cause heartburn to those who benefit from a bitterly divided country. A real no holds barred draft would bring a halt to these elections being won by a questionable 51%. And most of all it would call into question the whole war for war’s sake mentality being preached by asshole wimps that would be aghast at having to fight anything that might physically hurt them. It’s bullshit that people are dying so these f’er’s can play out their war fantasies with America’s money and other peoples friends and family members.

    Implement a draft. Bring it on. Not to further the rush to wars but to clearly examine what’s being lost in fighting them.

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