Draft coming, students told
By SUSAN ELAN
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: November 5, 2004)
Reinstatement of the draft is imminent, war correspondent and author
Christopher Hedges told a crowd of more than 120 students and residents
yesterday at Manhattanville College.
"We are losing the war in Iraq very badly, but the Bush administration will
not walk away from the debacle without trying to reoccupy huge swaths of the
territory they have lost," Hedges said. While working for The New York
Times, he covered fighting in Central America, the Balkans and the Middle
East, including Iraq during the first Gulf War.
To regain territory lost in Iraq, it will take double or triple the current
140,000 troops, Hedges said during the last lecture in a series called "The
Costs of War."
The reservists and National Guard members who make up half of the U.S.
forces are stretched to the breaking point and need relief, he said, and the
draft is the only way to assemble the numbers needed. Reintroduction of the
draft will be made in the name of the war on terrorism soon after an attack
in the United States or abroad, he predicted.
"The war in Iraq will no longer be an abstraction," he said. "It will become
deeply personal. In the next few weeks look for shifts in administration
policy leading in the direction of an escalation of the war."
Hedges encountered no detractors at Manhattanville, unlike his experience at
Rockford (Ill.) College in May 2003, when he was booed off the stage while
giving a commencement speech shortly after President Bush's battleship
announcement that the U.S. mission in Iraq had been "accomplished."
On the contrary, many in the audience last night said they had braved rainy
weather to hear Hedges indict the seductiveness of war and the dangers of
mindless jingoism as an antidote to their depression over the results of the
presidential election.
"It's been a hard week and there are much harder times ahead. That's why it
is so important for us all to be together tonight," said Connie Hogarth, who
has a peace and justice center on the Manhattanville campus named after her.
"After we finish grieving, we have to get back to working for peace and
justice, and an end to this war and its killing."
Hedges' audience remained rapt as he wove poetry, mythology, history and
Freudian psychology with anecdotes about colleagues lost on distant
battlefields and his own brushes with death. He criticized military heroic
ideals that thrive during war and the way war distorts the human
imagination. In the fervor of war the individual sacrifices thought for a
false sense of belonging to something larger, he said.
"At the end of the Vietnam War, we became a better country in our defeat,"
Hedges said. "We asked questions about ourselves that we had not asked
before. We were humbled, maybe even humiliated. We were forced to step
outside of ourselves and look at us as others saw us. And it wasn't a pretty
sight."
Those who confuse his anti-war stance with an anti-soldier position are
mistaken, Hedges said. "War in the end is always about betrayal. Betrayal of
the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians and idealists by cynics."
http://www.nyjournalnews.com/newsroom/110504/b10w05wartalk.html
Draft coming, students told
-
Type: discussion
Comments
The more I think of it oit Bush and the crazy conservative
miltary folks and the people who felt we lost vietnam because
our hand were tied behind our backs. I have never been sick
of being an American but I am now so.
I mean I wonder if people will go or just dissappear. If people
just didn't go en masse there would be no way to round them all
up, but I am sure the current administartion would try to make
an example of a couple of thousand. I wonder what it would take
it bring the blue states into full insurrection.
I prefer a less violent path somehow by some means but boy
am I sick and rattled by all of this. I have been hiding and
building my playlists for radio programs
Have Fun,
Sends Steve
>
>
> Draft coming, students told
>
> By SUSAN ELAN
> THE JOURNAL NEWS
> (Original publication: November 5, 2004)
>
>
> Reinstatement of the draft is imminent, war correspondent and author
> Christopher Hedges told a crowd of more than 120 students and residents
> yesterday at Manhattanville College.
>
> "We are losing the war in Iraq very badly, but the Bush administration
> will
> not walk away from the debacle without trying to reoccupy huge swaths of
> the
> territory they have lost," Hedges said. While working for The New York
> Times, he covered fighting in Central America, the Balkans and the Middle
> East, including Iraq during the first Gulf War.
>
> To regain territory lost in Iraq, it will take double or triple the
> current
> 140,000 troops, Hedges said during the last lecture in a series called
> "The
> Costs of War."
>
> The reservists and National Guard members who make up half of the U.S.
> forces are stretched to the breaking point and need relief, he said, and
> the
> draft is the only way to assemble the numbers needed. Reintroduction of
> the
> draft will be made in the name of the war on terrorism soon after an
> attack
> in the United States or abroad, he predicted.
>
> "The war in Iraq will no longer be an abstraction," he said. "It will
> become
> deeply personal. In the next few weeks look for shifts in administration
> policy leading in the direction of an escalation of the war."
>
> Hedges encountered no detractors at Manhattanville, unlike his experience
> at
> Rockford (Ill.) College in May 2003, when he was booed off the stage while
> giving a commencement speech shortly after President Bush's battleship
> announcement that the U.S. mission in Iraq had been "accomplished."
>
> On the contrary, many in the audience last night said they had braved
> rainy
> weather to hear Hedges indict the seductiveness of war and the dangers of
> mindless jingoism as an antidote to their depression over the results of
> the
> presidential election.
>
> "It's been a hard week and there are much harder times ahead. That's why
> it
> is so important for us all to be together tonight," said Connie Hogarth,
> who
> has a peace and justice center on the Manhattanville campus named after
> her.
> "After we finish grieving, we have to get back to working for peace and
> justice, and an end to this war and its killing."
>
> Hedges' audience remained rapt as he wove poetry, mythology, history and
> Freudian psychology with anecdotes about colleagues lost on distant
> battlefields and his own brushes with death. He criticized military heroic
> ideals that thrive during war and the way war distorts the human
> imagination. In the fervor of war the individual sacrifices thought for a
> false sense of belonging to something larger, he said.
>
> "At the end of the Vietnam War, we became a better country in our defeat,"
> Hedges said. "We asked questions about ourselves that we had not asked
> before. We were humbled, maybe even humiliated. We were forced to step
> outside of ourselves and look at us as others saw us. And it wasn't a
> pretty
> sight."
>
> Those who confuse his anti-war stance with an anti-soldier position are
> mistaken, Hedges said. "War in the end is always about betrayal. Betrayal
> of
> the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians and idealists by cynics."
>
> http://www.nyjournalnews.com/newsroom/110504/b10w05wartalk.html
>
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