(5/9/2005) The Bush administration has been using a backdoor military draft for it's war in Iraq. Bush's "backdoor draft" works by calling part-time Reservist and Guards to full-time combat duty, by automatically extending service period requirements with stop loss orders and repeat deployments, and by growing the lower classes in America. 

Let me explain that last one. The volunteer military works because it recruits kids from lower income neighborhoods and schools. These poor kids see the military as a way for them to get an education, see the world, and move up the economic ladder. They don't join the service to kill poor people in another country, or to die for their country's leaders, but to get ahead. They often see military service as their only way to move out of the slums and into the middle or upper classes.

One of Bush's strategies for avoiding an actual draft is to increase the number of families living poverty, which he has successfully done with the addition of over 7 million people in four years, so that there will be more poor kids wanting to join the military to escape poverty. That is why he refuses to raise the minimum wage, he refuses to extend unemployment benefits, he gives tax cuts that only benefit the very rich, he encourages U.S. companies to outsource their employees to other countries, he supports allowing more immigrants into the U.S., and he supports cuts in welfare and cuts in almost all other social programs that help the poor. He is creating and using growing levels of poverty as a tool in his backdoor draft plan, and it's working.

However, despite Bush's efforts to hide the war's dead and wounded from the media the American people are starting to understand the price of Bush's war in Iraq, and the reasons for going to war in Iraq do not justify the cost. In other word, the American people are doing a cost benefit analysis in their heads and they are saying "no" to the war in Iraq, "no" to military service, and "no" their children's desire to join the military. They no longer think it is worth it, and their right.

The war in Iraq has already killed over 1,580 American soldiers, and it has wounded over 20,000 soldiers. The war in Vietnam killed over 55,000 American soldiers, injured over 200,000, and destroyed thousands of lives with side-effects of the war including agent orange, combat stress, and other chemical and mental causes. Both of these wars were started based on a lie, were managed incompetently, and were fought immorally. The war in Vietnam went on for 10 years. Lets hope the war in Iraq is not just a repeat of our past failures.