"Enough is enough."
No truer words were ever spoken -- as one who lived through the draft years of Vietnam and has more than one high school friend on the Wall in Washington plus a brother who served two tours in Southeast Asia, I feel completely entitled to scream it from the rooftops.
"Enough is enough."
Bush's 'war czar' Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute talked to NPR's Michelle Norris yesterday and floated the notion of a draft as one option the military looks at in response to the current long deployments in place.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, says he is concerned about the toll the war in Iraq and extended deployments are taking on U.S. forces.
The man who is widely known as the "war czar" also says that from a military standpoint, a return to a draft should be part of the discussion.
NPR
While acknowledging that this will be a political, not military decision, Gen. Lute also recognized that the current all-volunteer armed forces are under stress with the repeated and long deployments.
Not everyone believes that Gen. Lute's comment is just a passing one. The idea of a draft would have to be raised first as a trial balloon in just this way, to see what level of push-back or support is out there. Letting it sit there without comment could be seen as a tacit acceptance.
John Edwards responded to the notion of the draft being on the table quickly:
Enough is enough. Let there be no doubt that the Bush Administration's new talk of a draft is a profound measure of how much this President has failed our brave men and women in the military, and the American people. This is exactly the wrong way to go. Our all-volunteer force has helped make America what it is today.
I join with John Edwards in this message to all members of Congress:
NO! No more young men and women sent to their deaths for a war of convenience! No more endless war! No more "surge"! NO DRAFT!