I’ll dismiss it and I don’t even need to wave my hand. Try again next time.

Rangel wasn’t making that argument. He was talking about how the poor and the lower middle class of any race were making up a disproportionate amount of the front line troops.

Regardless, a draft wouldn’t bring ‘equality’ anyways. Upper middle class and rich kids would get student deferments in far higher numbers than the poorer ones.

Who’s feigning ignorance now ? Have you been hiding under a rock ?

I’ll re-post the four points I posted earlier:

“-Oil (which equals money)
-Contract money (War service and war hardware both)
-Vanity
-Fear/war keeps people distracted while other, more self-serving legislation gets pushed through”

Oil - Bush Family, Blair (super-tight with BP’s John Browne)
Contract money - Cheney, Defense Contractor lobby
Vanity - Many, including Bush Jr. (to show Bush Sr. how to “win”)
Fear-driven Politics - Rove, many high-ranker GOP’ers

Dismiss these with a wave of your hand if you will, but it’s awfully convenient the key decision-makers made enormous profits personally off the war.

Also, “feeding on the corpses” is rather against the best interests of all except our enemies since “feeding” implies no corpses, no gain. The last thing Bush and his administration wanted were large casualties. So, again, what I’m saying is quite different than “feeding on the corpses”.

I went back and reread your posts and it appears that you were making a hypothetical statement about folks using the military for ‘personal gain.’ The problem is that you are intermingling hypotheticals with opinions about what the Bush administration (and members of Congress who voted for the war) did. I need to know if we are having an argument about the actual Iraq war or hypotheticals.

So, to clarify, do you believe that members of Congress or the administration supported the war for personal gain? If so, then they are indeed “feeding on the corpses of soldiers.”

Do you believe that members of Congress or the administration acted unethically in supporting the war?

Back to the draft, I think WW2 is a poor comparison. Every other conflict the US has fought in was a ‘war of choice’ to at least some degree while both Japan and Germany declared war on us first. But even in the “Good War” we had to use the draft to get 10,000,000 soldiers. There was significant resistance to the draft in the Civil War and WW1.

A relatively small professional army is fine as long as there is civilian control.

That the US now has a core cadre of battle-hardened veterans with experience fighting in the very same environment which will most likely be the theater of war for our next few conflicts, well, so much the better.

“I thought it was a well-known maxim that no plan survives first contact with the enemy — this means that no matter how much you game it, the actual game will be different.”

This is quite true, yes. However, I don’t believe that justifies having no plan at all if things turn sour.

Specifically, I fault the Bush administration for not respecting the history that Iraq was artificially created by the British, held together only by the iron fist of a ruthless dictator, and had inter-faction hatred waiting to explode once that control was removed. Thus, the Bush administration and war planners did duly ignore the writing on the wall that by supporting one faction, they’d make enemies of the 2 others, and by supporting all factions, they’d make equal enemies of all.

Did they think that many of our soldiers would die ? No.

However, like Roh who keeps repeating “it must not happen”, Bush and his administration kept and keep repeating “it must not happen” with respect to a chaotic, divided, and violent Iraq.

We never should have gone into Iraq in the first place, and having a conscription-based armed forces would likely have forced more forethought.

“personal gain” is actually quite different than “feeding on the corpses”, especially in this context. I did not imply something as cold and callous as that brings to mind. As I said before:

“I also believe that Bush and his administration did not properly plan for the intra-Iraq, inter-factional fighting and thus did not envision the level of casualties seen today.”

…which is quite different than “feeding off the corpses”, which implies pre-meditated sacrifice of our soldiers.

While the Bush administration should have listened to voices of wisdom (including and especially Bush 41 people) and studied the history of the region a little bit better, they didn’t. I’m faulting them for willful ignorance and incompetence, not murder. Quite different.

Again, do not associate my arguments with those that are similar, but different than mine. I’m on the “left” of the political spectrum, aye, but I don’t knee-jerk support everything anyone from the left says. You’re not implying that, I know, I just want to make that clear.

As for volunteer vs. draft, I don’t remember reading about people protesting WWII, burning draft cards, and getting gunned down by the National Guard, like what happened in the Vietnam-war era.

And, like you said, the scope of the conflicts was quite different. WWII required the mobilization of much of the man/woman-power of the U.S. (mostly in support, but certainly in direct combat as well) whereas Vietnam required far less.

Rangle is not calling any bluff because there is no bluff to be called. He is just blowing hot air.

Also, you seem bright enough and educated enough to understand that your “personal gain” reference is analogous to Carr’s “feeding on the corpses,” so I cannot help but suspect you are being disingenuous in feigning ignorance about what he is talking about.

BTW 1: Draft numbers for WW2 and Vietnam Wars:
World War Two era (1940-1946): 10,110,114
Vietnam War era (1964-1973): 1,766,910
Granted, WW2 was a much larger conflict.

BTW 2: Not directly related, but in case this debate gets around to race, here are the US military deaths in Iraq by race (of all causes) compared with 2004 census data (does not include ‘other’ races):

RACE - Iraq deaths - US population
White - 74% - 67.4%
Black - 10% - 12.8%
Hisp. -11.3% - 14.1%
Asian - 1.3% - 4.2%
The casualty numbers are not far out of line with the general population except that Asians are proportionally underrepresented. By Rangle’s twisted logic, this should be taken as proof that Asians are the power elite of America.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html
http://www.icasualties.org/oif/ETHNICITY.aspx
http://members.aol.com/warlibrary/draft2.htm

-Oil (which equals money)
-Contract money (War service and war hardware both)
-Vanity
-Fear/war keeps people distracted while other, more self-serving legislation gets pushed through