Feeling a draft

Apparently things are going so well in Iraq the US State Department is having to turn away applicants in record numbers, as hundreds of young staffers surge to be associated with the ongoing success in Baghdad.

"A lot of our personnel, particularly the younger staffers, see an Iraq posting a a prestigious resume-enhancer," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. "We don't have one-tenth of the positions it would take to fill all the requests. Honestly, being able to pick-and-choose the best-of-the-best is a nice problem to have."

Oops ... my bad ... that's not our reality .... that's some other reality the Republicans created.

In our reality, which is, unfortunately, the only reality we all share, matters are slightly different .... as in up to 300 diplomats were recently informed they were being considered to fill one of 40 to 50 vacancies in Iraq, and refusal on their part would be grounds for dismissal.

Now, outright refusal to do something your boss tells you to do, assuming it's legal and relevant to your job, is usually a perfectly reasonable basis for getting fired. On the other hand, most of us who took "civilian" jobs don't expect to get sent to war zones involuntarily either.

I've said before I am not, in principle, opposed to a draft - one constant throughout this war has been the administration's absolute refusal to spread the impact of it across the nation as a whole. Instead of raising taxes to help pay for the war the President pushed through massive tax cuts, primarily for the wealthy (yeah, that makes sense - we know we're going to have to layout billions of dollars we didn't originally budget for, lets pay for it by decreasing our incoming revenue). As the strain on our army has become increasingly apparent, the administration has responded not by re-instituting a national draft, but rather by increasing the length of time units stay on rotation overseas.

This might have made sense four years ago, when we were going to be greeted by rose-throwing natives and the total cost of the war was going to be $50 billion. Four years down the road, however, as the only thing the natives are throwing at us are grenades, and the cost approaches $1 trillion, it makes no sense whatsoever.

If you're going to institute a draft for the state department, lets be fair about this and open it up to everyone - including the children of wealthy Republicans, sitting Senators and Representatives even.

Let's see how long we stay in Iraq then.