The Hyprocrisy of the Iraq War By PAUL CAMPOS

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http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_6949.shtml

 

The Hyprocrisy of the Iraq War

By PAUL CAMPOS

Jun 29, 2005, 03:41

 

Supporters of the Iraq war like to claim that Iraq is merely the

current front line in a battle for national survival against a vast

and shadowy enemy. They call this opponent " Islamo-fascism " or " global

terrorism " or " the enemies of freedom. " (How Saddam Hussein's brutal

but ruthlessly non-ideological regime ended up on this enemies' list

remains unclear).

 

For example, Commentary's Norman Podhoretz assures us we are fighting

the first battles of World War IV, which he estimates could last 50

years, while the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer conjures up

visions of atomic bombs going off simultaneously in ten American

cities if we should fail to maintain our nerve in places like Iraq.

 

Meanwhile, David Brooks of the New York Times complains that Americans

were willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of troops to defeat

Hitler, but are grumbling about losing a much smaller number of

soldiers (so far) in the battle against Islamo-fascism.

 

Naturally the Bush administration encourages such claims while it

tries to stem the public's rapid loss of enthusiasm for a war that our

increasingly overstretched troops are being forced to fight without

any clear goal or exit strategy.

 

Here's the most striking aspect of this supposed battle for national

survival: for the past several months, the armed forces have failed to

meet their recruiting quotas, often by large percentages (the Army

missed by 42 percent in April). In response, the military has had to

resort to such measures as keeping soldiers in Iraq for months after

they were scheduled to be brought home, while calling up members of

the reserves who hadn't seen active duty for years, and assumed they

never would again (in some cases, grandfathers and grandmothers are

being pulled out of civilian life to help fight Norman Podhoretz's

World War).

 

Now if anything ought to qualify as a true national crisis, one would

think this would. Here we are fighting for our very survival as a

nation, and we don't even have enough soldiers to fight what we are

told is only a preliminary battle in a vast war. Even many of the Iraq

campaign's most enthusiastic supporters now admit that the main flaw

in the operation was the failure to put enough " boots on the ground "

to keep the country from degenerating into precisely the kind of

guerrilla war our troops are now fighting.

 

The obvious solution to this crisis is to reinstitute the draft. Yet

this is so politically impossible that members of the Bush

administration are more likely to come out in support of drowning

newborn babies than to have the word " draft " pass their lips.

 

But a far more modest step than bringing back the draft is available,

and the complete unwillingness of supporters of the war to take it

says a great deal.

 

Where are the calls for voluntary enlistment? Try to find a single

speech in which any member of the Bush administration, or any other

prominent politician who supports the war, calls on America's young

people (or its middle-aged - there's no reason to be picky when you're

fighting for national survival) to come to the aid of our badly

undermanned armed forces.

 

You won't find one - and the reasons aren't hard to guess. First,

asking others to make sacrifices that you yourself refused to make,

and that you aren't willing for your own children to make, requires a

level of hypocrisy that even most politicians can't quite stomach.

 

Second, the politicians who started it probably don't believe the war

in Iraq is crucial to America's survival. Or if they do, the way

they're fighting it qualifies as something close to treason.

 

(Paul Campos is a law professor at the University of Colorado and can

be reached at Paul.Campos(at)Colorado.edu.)

 

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