Date: 16 January 2007 From: Dick Cheney To: George W. Bush cc: Karl Rove, Bob Gates, John McCain, Joe Lieberman
OK, guys, let's think this one through.
We'll be funneling 21,000 U.S. troops into the Baghdad surge. No doubt we will need tens of thousands more after awhile and then more after that. Where can we possibly get them without provoking a total political firestorm?
We can't constantly keep going to the well of serving trooops in Iraq and extending their tours of duty; nor can we keep recalling National Guardsmen and Reserves from the States for another couple of years in-country. These troops and their families are getting pissed off and starting to rebel.
Add to that problem that Gates wants nearly 100,000 new soldiers and Marines so that America will have a large enough military force to handle future threats and wars, especially in the Middle East region. Does he propose we dragoon young men in shopping malls and ship them off to Iraq and Afghanistan? Similarly, buying up Latin American young men in their countries and promising them U.S. citizenship can only fill a small fraction of our need; besides, that tactic of hiring what the pinkos call "mercenaries" is a bit obvious and makes us look desperate.
Re-starting the military draft should happen only as a last resort, and over my dead body. No way we should ever want a draft. Re-starting that program would rile up the great middle class and lead to ugly protest actions; see Vietnam. Better to keep the force we now have -- with a huge percentage of poor whites and lower-middle-class young men and women of color -- and 100,000 "contracted" soldiers.
WHERE TO OBTAIN THE NECESSARY BODIES
Given that situation of a hard-up military trying to restock its tappable resources, I've come up with a handy-dandy solution. Here's my modest proposal: hire the handicapped, the elderly, orphans, welfare recipients, convicted prisoners, illegal immigrants, etc. (More below on these groups.)
Advantages: low pay; we make "heroes" of those usually not thought of that way; many of them will die early, so the various entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, for example -- can have their budgets reduced significantly.
Disadvantages: the whining liberals will accuse us of being "unfeeling" or "not compassionate." So Rove and his P.R. team will have to tackle that problem and come up with effective counter-spin. See below for a few ideas for how this might be accomplished.
HERE ARE THE TARGETED GROUPS
1. The physically and mentally handicapped. These people, who often feel unwanted and discriminated against, might well go for this in big numbers, as will their put-upon family members. These defective recruits would be given clerking-type jobs in Iraq -- say in the police stations that will be operated by Iraqi and U.S. forces -- to free up actual soldiers and police units.
If those stations are attacked while the soldiers are out rounding up bad guys, the terrorists, shown to have killed and wounded the retarded and wheelchair-bound innocents, would take the brunt of the ugly publicity.
A new presidential Patriotic Sacrifice Medal, perhaps in the form of a lamb, could be created to honor these brave recruits. See also: financial savings, as noted above.
2. Orphans. The orphanages are full of unwanted, neglected, low self-esteem kids and teenagers. They have nobody really watching over them -- no parents, no blood relatives who care -- so little protest could be anticipated by assigning them wartime duty. Since they weigh less (and thus would be less likely to trigger the explosions), they could be perfect candidates for locating and disarming the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted on the various streets and roads in Baghdad and environs.
Again, a new presidential medal could be devised to honor our brave young soldiers: the "Bomb-Squad Rangers," or something like that, who "died with honor and exceptional courage," that sort of thing. See also: financial savings, as noted above.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
