{"id":145,"date":"2016-06-01T15:45:30","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T15:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/?p=145"},"modified":"2016-06-01T16:18:24","modified_gmt":"2016-06-01T16:18:24","slug":"why-i-support-the-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/why-i-support-the-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Support the Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"F08T42TFBQ33X0E.MEDIUM\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the 1970\u2019s I was adamantly against the draft. We were in a war that I found morally abhorrent. My father, a retired army sergeant, was my counterpoint\u00a0and I had all the arrogance of passionate idealism. I am still passionate and idealistic \u00a0but tempered by experience and information. I also remember the grief of my father as his ideals about who we were as a nation was shattered by that war.<\/p>\n

Here is how and why I changed. Since the draft has been abolished our armed services no longer tap into the talents of the most educated \u2013 those with a grasp of political history or philosophy or anthropological understandings of differences in cultures. Second, and perhaps most important, is that those who make the decisions about going to war are no longer are forced to consider the fate and\/or welfare of their own children. They have no pony in the race <\/em>and their decisions don\u2019t appear to be about people but about testosterone driven numbers and power.<\/p>\n

We know that people of wealth and power are able and often do disassociate from the concerns of the middle and lower classes. Somehow those<\/em> children are ready pawns any time the political ego calls for \u201cboots on the ground\u201d. I cannot help but believe that the conversations, debates and decisions would look much different if all children were required to register for the draft.<\/p>\n

We really do need leaders with military service. Eisenhower stepped off the battlefield into the Presidency. His experience as the leader of our\u00a0Armed Forces led him to be one of our strongest, most eloquent, advocates for peace:<\/p>\n

“Every Gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothes. \u00a0This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. \u00a0This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Dwight D. Eisenhower<\/strong>, from a speech before the American Society of \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953<\/em><\/p>\n

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In the 1970\u2019s I was adamantly against the draft. We were in a war that I found morally abhorrent. My father, a retired army sergeant, was my counterpoint\u00a0and I had all the arrogance of passionate idealism. I am still passionate and idealistic \u00a0but tempered by experience and information. I also remember the grief of my … Continue reading Why I Support the Draft<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149,"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}