To Facebook or not to Facebook...

I had to post to Facebook, because there was no place else for me to rant about this, but:
I was watching a rerun of LAS VEGAS (yes, I was that bored) which dealt with a Marine who was being forced to go back for a third tour in combat, and was freaking out over it--ultimately committing suicide...

The headlines are full of stories about the Sergeant who killed 17 Afgans, including 3 children, recently...it turns out he was being sent back for a FOURTH TOUR in that shithole...  Now, I am a Nam-era vet...in my day you did one tour and you didn't get sent back unless you volunteered, period.  But, then again, we had the draft in those days...  As flawed as it was, it was a system whereby ALL citizens of a certain age were placed in a pool of available and ready recruits...cannon fodder for the boys in the Pentagon...but at least it was reasonably fair and provided a TRUE CROSS-SECTION of the population of our country.  I served with Latinos, Blacks (yes, this is before they were called African-Americans), poor white trash from the bayous and swamps, and rich kids from Long Island.  We all placed our asses on the line and took an equal share of whatever shit Westmoreland and his cronies threw at us, and we came out either dead or better men for it.

The point is this country can't function without a pool of citizen-soldiers, and you don't get that
without a draft.

Now we have a mercenary army, composed mainly of the poorer classes in the ranks and (mostly)
rich kids in the officer corps--or, if not rich, at least privileged enough to have gotten college degrees prior to enlistment...

So now our troops, or at least those lucky enough to survive their first tour with body and--hopefully--mind intact, are being thrown back in the cesspool for another, and another, and ANOTHER tour of combat!!  This is unconscionable!!  If we insist on having a "global military presence" we have to be able to sustain our pool of combat-eligible soldiers, and that has to come from a draft.  If the children of privilege belonging to the "1%" aren't exposed to the same risks and responsibilities as those of the 99% (actually, it's more like the lowest 25%), then the whole system stinks and is out of whack.

God save these poor kids today.  And God damn the politicians who are afraid to even mention the
word "draft" in their national political campaigns.

The start of the rantings...

This is the first day of the rest of my life, and the first day of this blog.  Facebook isn't really the place for this volume of verbage, and it has too many restrictions on content.  So, I will post that sort of stuff here, and hopefully some dialogue will come from it.  At all events, hello Reader.  Feel free to comment here or email me, but be kind, please...  Ah, screw it... Be kind, be brutal, whatever; I can handle it...