William Kristol confronted on CSPAN by Army Wife

jonny

says...

dang - I wanted to hear what Kristol was going to say about the draft.

swampgirl

says...

me too...

marinara

says...

Kristol is pretty sharp. They broke the Neo-conservative mold when they made him.

when was this video first aired? Would like to know the temporal context.

Wanna say, NICE POST. Good find.

bamdrew

says...

he dodges the draft-comment after this. you didn't miss anything jonny.

tmcdermid says...

I agree with the lady's comments by and large, the war has probably been going on too long but it seems ridiculous to me that soldiers (or their families) complain when there's a war. They're soldiers for f**k sake didnt they know what they were getting into when they took the job?

bamdrew

says...

Of course they didn't know what they were getting in to!

U.S. soldiers have found and removed Saddam, confronted the mysterious problem of biological or chemical WMD's, helped bring about a peaceful election of representatives, and helped Iraqis develop a preliminary constitution.

That is above and beyond the goals for what this war in Iraq was founded to achieve.

There are obviously major problems in Iraq; a deep political divide driven almost entirely by a parallel social divide, continued breakdown of basic guarantees of civil society (water,power,health care,public safety,public sanitation), and increasing resentment of an occupying power which appears to them to be there to stay. Training police and security and aiding in reconstruction efforts of the broken public services seem to me to be the best use of our troops and our 12 billion a month in Iraq.

moonsammy

says...

They're soldiers for f**k sake didnt they know what they were getting into when they took the job?

Why should they have known that they were getting into this? Name another American military excursion similar to what we're doing in Iraq. Vietnam? No, there was a draft for that. Korea? Draft. WWI, WWII, draft draft. The military entanglements we've entered without the draft have been either smaller in scale or far more brief than the present quagmire.

Given that this is a volunteer army, many (most?) of the soldiers in Iraq right now are people who either A) needed the money (due to a lack of other jobs, or for future schooling) or B) truly believe in the value of service to country (nothing wrong with that IMHO). Members of the military disproportionately come from lower-income areas / families and rarely from the richest or most politically powerful. The people who encouraged, and continue to support, this useless war have little at stake personally, little or no "flesh in the game."

Our soldiers had no reason to expect a protracted occupation in an unstable country without adequate resources. Those in the Reserves and National Guard certainly had no reason to anticipate extended, recurring deployments outside of the US. The financial, emotional, and health strains placed on our most loyal citizens are immense in any war. When the war is of dubious merit and may end up being a near-complete waste of resources (money and lives) the stress frequently comes coupled with anger and/or indignation for those most closely affected.

I for one agree with the caller in this clip. If our continued occupation of Iraq is so terribly important that stressing our military and our economy in this way is justified, then service shouldn't be entirely voluntary. If our country truly needs to do this, then we should all be expected to do our fair share to assist. Either re-institute the draft or end the mission. I'd prefer to see the latter given that I'm of selective service age and in relatively good health. Really though, I can't imagine the war would last much longer once those in power actually had to risk seeing a loved one endanger their life fighting it.