Besides having deep respect for my father and his choices in life, we have something in common, we both had the opportunity to choose how to serve our country.  This choice, which has been a mainstay of American life since shortly after the Vietnam war, has never been under greater threat than it is right now. 

Nearly every person in the military today is there because they chose to serve. Regardless of how one feels about the process of military recruitment, the targeting of poor and minority communities, or even recruiting persons who are not yet citizens of this country in order to serve, the alternative to this is far worse. 

There has been talk in the military of reintroducing the draft.  It is argued that we cannot afford to keep going the way we are. President Bush is keeping one hundred forty thousand troops in Iraq in addition to the thousands already serving in Afghanistan and the hundreds of thousands serving in over one hundred and twenty countries around the world.  Yet, our military forces are taxed to exhaustion.  

A backdoor draft of sort already exists with our national guard reserve. There has even been speculation that the very reason that our national reserve forces are being taxed to their limits is to reintroduce the draft as a socially acceptable resolution to the current crisis in Iraq.

Our military forces are broken.  They are being taxed to their limits, but the solution is not the reintroduction of a draft.  Because the war in Iraq was based on lies and manipulation, there is nothing honorable about recruiting unwitting young men and women in order to support the lies and misdeeds of the current administration.

The solution to the crisis in Iraq is to bring the troops home now.  Our national guard has served the country well.  They have answered the call to serve, despite the betrayals of the current administration, and it is time to bring them home.  Then it is time to let our military heal from the current round of conflict. 

We need to scale down the size of our military.  We cannot afford the extreme financial burden that this military is costing us, both in current expenditures and obligations we have on past expenditures - such as debt from previous military expenses which is as yet unpaid, and the financial obligations that we have to the health and welfare of our nation's veterans.

We need a peacetime administration that is focused on using alternatives to violence and warfare in order to solve international conflicts.  We need elected representatives who are committed to the path of peace and who are more concerned about the economic crisis at home.

We don't need another draft. What we need is a new outlook on our government. We need a government that is dedicated to the idea that serving the people is the highest priority. A draft will only reinforce the idea that Americans are cannon fodder for greedy warmongers who can't make good foreign policy decisions and then need to sacrifice American lives in order to cover for their terrible decisions.

Instead of investing more money in war, let's invest in peace. Let's take the money that we would spend on guns and spend that money on health care. Let's take the money that we would spend on military bases halfway around the world and spend that money on our own domestic infrastructure. Let's take the money that we would spend on bombs and spend that money on social security. Finally, let's take the money that we would spend on training our young men and women to be soldiers and instead spend that money on training them to be teachers, doctors and engineers.

We can lift this nation out of poverty. We can find alternatives to warfare and violence. We can solve our international problems without invading foreign countries and occupying them. We can have peace and security at home without resorting to a draft. 

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