Donald Sensing's excellent demolition of the draft is a must read but it makes me think, why now? Charlie Rangel has been advocating this for years but I don't think his advocacy ever prompted such an excellent response. Then, it hit me, the detailed response was unnecessary because Charlie Rangel is fundamentally recognized as an unserious person a priori while Chuck Hegel is not and his similar proposal must be treated more seriously. This is little reflection on the race of the two proposers and much more on their party affiliation.
The Democrats still have their Vietnam induced affliction as being unserious about national defense. This is not universally true, Thomas Barnett is a Democrat and probably the best national security grand strategist of our time, but it shocked me to find out his party affiliation. Activists inside the Democrat party do work hard to make it so, driving out "Scoop Jackson Democrats" and turning them into the dreaded neoconservatives that they continue to vilify and attack. When they were Democrats, they didn't receive much better treatment.
This is a fundamental problem, not only for Democrats, but for all patriotic US citizens. We need two healthy parties when it comes to national defense and security. We don't have them today. The left has an obligation to fix that.
Posted by TMLutas at April 22, 2004 08:22 AM