CSotD: Investing more than we can afford to lose
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Hate to use the same cartoonist too many times too close together, but the "red line" cartoons on Syria are starting to weird me out, and this Danziger cartoon hit the mark like no other.
When did so many ink-slingers from both sides of the aisle become so easy-going about the lives of other people's kids?
Mike Smith came close to one of my thoughts with this panel: Didn't we already blunder into one war based on unconfirmed reports of WMDs? And, by the way, one of the things that came out of the Benghazi debacle was that (shhh!), we were doing something in Syria.
Dunno how the GOP's loose-lips outing of our Middle Eastern intelligence operations may have altered that, of course.
The problem with the cartoon, however, is that it's not just the Republicans calling for action, though, granted, they are leading the shouts in Congress itself, which puts some teeth into Smith's commentary.
But cartoonists from both sides of the aisle seem eager to play the role of chicken-hawk, piling on Obama for not leaping into the fray at the first rumor of chemical weapons.
I guess the old man has to provide a history lesson along with the political rant, because we're getting to the point in history where it's no longer fair to ask, "Yeah? What did you do in Vietnam?" of those eager to start another war.
After all, many of them weren't old enough to have faced the issue.
Then again, the Department of Defense is open 24/7 and they are hiring, not just in wartime but whenever your overwhelming desire to help spread the American Dream to all nations becomes irresistable. I mean, if you think serving is a good idea now, wasn't it a good idea when you were 19?
My son the Gulf veteran is 40. The window for having gosh-darn-it-all missed your big chance is pretty damn narrow.
For my part, I'm willing to admit I was wrong during Vietnam. My objection to the draft was based on two ideas:
1. It wasn't fair to draft 19-year-olds when the voting age was 21. I was right about that, but we fixed the glitch.
2. I felt that it wasn't right to draft people to fight a war of convenience as opposed to a war of survival. My stated opinion was that, if they could do it with volunteers, that was okay, but nobody should be forced to fight and die for somebody else's brilliant notion.
I wasn't the only person who felt that way and the draft ended and we were wrong, wrong, wrong.
The draft was unfair, particularly since college students were able to get deferments, which meant a lot of middleclass parents didn't have to worry about their kids, many of whom were able to take those four years and then, if things got risky and the family doctor wouldn't certify them as lepers or congenital idiots, get a little help jumping the line to become summer soldiers and weekend warriors (no names, please).
And women should have been subject to the draft: Even if you don't believe in women in combat, there are all sorts of other roles to be filled.
But I guess we didn't realize the degree to which the societal pressures that brought the draft to an end had, up until then, been acting as a sea anchor on the government's eagerness to go running off to war.
Then we cut it loose and got to see how quickly we could drift into perilous water.
Perilous for other people's kids.
A few years ago, I was home for a reunion and got to talking with a buddy who had been at Khe Sanh and some other not-so-much-fun places and had a bit of a rocky landing when he got home. He's okay, though the third in our drive-to-school-each-morning trio did a whole "Born on the Fourth of July" re-entry, complete with motorcycle gangs and addiction.
He was shaking his head over this deploy-redeploy-redeploy thing we've got going on in the Middle East. One of the things that kept him and his buddies sane in Vietnam, he said, was that you knew when you were going to be through.
This endless loop, this game of cat-and-mouse, is not fair, it's not right and we're not prepared in the slightest to deal with what we are doing to the young men and women who are being exploited because they wanted to serve their country.
And you know damn well that the same people who are so eager to send them back for another turn in the barrel are going to be slashing whatever inadequate funds we scrape together to try to help them fit back into the world when they are finally out.
I didn't say that. He said that. As they say, "Tell it to the Marines."
We also used to say, "War's good business: Invest your son."
But here's the follow up: Never invest more than you can afford to lose.
We need to bring back the draft, with no deferments, because, as long as other people's kids have to do the "putting up," it's hard to get some people to do the "shutting up."
And now, speaking of people I turn to more often than I'd like to (which I blame on a shortage of people saying things like this):
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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