Murtha voted to reinstate the draft last year, one of only 2 who voted for it. You want to keep spinning, that's fine...but weren't you one of the hysterics who warned the draft was coming back?
Dem lawmakers split on military draft
By Mary Lynn F. Jones
Democratic lawmakers were divided yesterday over whether the United States should reinstate the draft even as an adviser to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) suggested increasing active-duty troops by 40,000.
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a former presidential hopeful who has now endorsed Kerry, warned that the volunteer-force concept is at “grave risk” and that the draft should be the last resort.
He said, “We better be thinking about the draft or have it as a fallback. We’ve got to be honest with the commitment that we’re faced with. We’ve got about two years to fix these [shortage] problems before the bill comes due.”
Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), ranking member of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, on a panel discussion at Suffolk University, added: “The only way to increase the size of the armed services fairly is with a draft.”
But Rep. Jim Turner (D-Texas), ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, said the draft is not yet necessary. Turner, also a member of the Armed Services Committee, added, “We need to be prepared to have one,” especially if there is another major conflict in the world.
House Armed Services Committee ranking member Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) also suggested increasing the number of active-duty troops by 40,000. Susan Rice, an adviser to Kerry on national-security issues, cited the same number at a press conference yesterday.
The possibility of reinstating the draft gained attention when Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) proposed the Universal National Service Act in January 2003. The bill has 14 co-sponsors but has not passed out of the Armed Services Committee.
Rangel has said that minorities make up a disproportionately large number of troops.
Skelton pointed to other disparities in the military, such as that a higher percentage of troops who have died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan hail from rural areas than from cities.
“It’s the working-class people who are fighting this war,” added Murtha, who said he visits troops each week at Walter Reed Army Hospital and Bethesda Naval Hospital.
Reinstating the draft would raise societal issues such as whether women should be required to join the military, said Gen. Claudia Kennedy, the highest-ranking woman to serve in the military. Women have grown from 1 percent to 16 percent of troops in the past 35 years, she said. Rangel’s bill would include women in the draft.
But lawmakers also said the Bush administration — or a Kerry administration next year — should focus on diplomacy.
“They can’t do what they’re doing depending on a volunteer force,” said Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee and a co-sponsor of Rangel’s bill. “But it’s secondary to the fundamental question of, Why are you having to talk about it in the first place?”
Clark called the administration’s strategy in the war on terror “totally misguided.”
“It’s an upside-down, backward strategy,” he said. “We need to approach terrorism with allies on an international basis starting with a legal definition of what terrorism is.” The last resort, he added, should be to use the armed forces.
“We don’t have anything between diplomacy and the military,” Clark said. “The military has become a go-to agency.”
The problem of funding the war in Iraq and other military operations was also raised. The Iraq war will cost $200 billion this year, Murtha said.
Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.), who serves on the Armed Services Committee and moderated the panel, said the United States is funding about 90 percent of the war effort. He said Kerry would work to improve relations with other countries and get them involved.
“We have to restore credibility with the international community,” Murtha said.
The panel came on the same day that 12 retired generals endorsed Kerry for president, citing Bush’s mismanagement of the war in Iraq as the reason. Clark, who was at the press conference with Rice, said there that “every decision he makes will be informed by his own experience. … He heard the bullets, and he saw the faces.”
Patrick O’Connor contributed to this report.
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