Iraq War: The General vs. the war

Wesley Clark, hopefully soon to be Donald Rumsfeld's replacement as Secretary of Defense, is actively supporting the anti-Iraq War Band of Sisters tour.

There is a new anti-draft site up and running, too, called www.EnjoytheDraft.com.  (I don't mean to imply that Clark is also sponsoring that particular one; as far as I know, he isn't.)  It has some catchy graphics, with a irreverent tone aimed especially at young adults.  Although a new draft is unlikely to be restricted to just 18-24-yr.-olds.  For specialized personnel like doctors, nurses and software engineers, the draft could reach more than a few fortysomethings.

That site also maintains links to news articles about the impending draft.  For instance, there's David Hackworth at Military.com 10/04/04, Hackworth: Uncle Sam Will Soon Want Your Kids.

Most of our warriors - who are mainly from blue-collar families from Small Town, USA - have few political connections and few conduits though which they can effectively sound off. So when they get screwed over by a desperate Pentagon's makeshift policies - such as the "Stop Loss" program that's holding over large numbers of our servicemen and -women well beyond their contractually agreed-upon terms of enlistment, or the widespread calling up of out-of-shape, ill-trained citizen soldiers from the Individual Ready Reserve - these "volunteers" salute, suck it up and lay their lives on the line.

But like elephants, they won't forget that they are "backdoor draftees," as Kerry and John McCain call them. Which means that when their hitches are up, they won't be rushing to re-enlist. And they're also warning their younger brothers, sisters and pals to stay away from recruiting stations.

Reinforcing Hackworth's point is this new item, Army's Recruiters Miss Target For Enlistees in Latest Month Wall Street Journal 10/20/04.

For the second straight year, U.S. Army recruiters fell short of their goal for signing up enlistees in the first month of a new recruiting cycle.

For the first 30-day period in its new recruiting year, the Army was 30% shy of its goal of signing up 7,274 recruits. The Army had a particularly hard time recruiting for the Army Reserve, on which the Pentagon has relied heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Enlistments for the reserves were 45% below the target.

Given Bush's grandiose foreign policy of preventive wars of liberation, these numbers spell d-r-a-f-t.  As in v-e-r-y s-o-o-n.

The Journal article gets into the methodology of how the Army measures its success against recruiting goals. And buried in there is a very interesting point.  They explain:

While new enlistees count toward the monthly recruiting goals, they aren't typically included in the final tally of new soldiers until they report for duty. Because of that difference, the Army often starts the new fiscal year with large numbers of recruits who can be expected to report for duty in the coming year, thus helping fulfill the yearly goal. Monthly targets depend in part on how large that "bank" of pending soldiers is; generally, the more soldiers due to report for duty, the lower the monthly goals for signing up new ones.

Something was a little different this year, though (my emphasis):

But this year, the Army entered fiscal 2005 with an unusually low number of recruits in the bank, about 16,000, or 21% of its overall goal for the year. By contrast, a year ago, it began fiscal 2004 with 33,000 prospective soldiers -- meaning 45% of its recruiting goal already had been met. That also means its monthly goals in fiscal 2005 are higher than they were a year ago.

The reason for the gap: To make its numbers in fiscal 2004, the Army pushed many new enlistees into reporting for duty within a month. While that helped it make its 2004 goal, it depleted the bank for this year.

Now, the Army has shot its own credibilty to bits in Iraq almost as badly as the civilian administration has.  The damage is long-term, and largely self-inflicted.  But this particular move was not necessarily a result of deliberate deception or partisan political manipulation.  We've got a back-door draft going on right now with the extended call-ups of reserves and the stop-loss orders extending their length of service.

But the Army is stretched to its limits to maintain the current troops levels in Iraq.  Putting the troop levels into the field necessary to win a protracted counterinsurgency war there is out of the question right now.  So they really need to get people in as fast as they can. 

But it also had the effect, no doubt a welcome one for an administration desperately denying (for another nine days or so, at least) that a draft is imminent, of minimizing the extent to which  the Army was falling short of its previous year's recruitment goals.

Country Joe MacDonald maintains an extensive Web page, with multiple versions by various people of his "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag," his antiwar song from the 1960s (originally).  There are several versions from the current Iraq War, like this one by Randall Bart:

Come on all you Americans.
Bush is President again.
He found a guy who's really bad.
The name's Saddam. He's in Baghdad.
So show some ID, take off your shoes.
What have you got to lose?

And it's one, two, three,
What are we searching for?
George said it, it must be true.
I believe in W.
And it's five, six, seven,
Tell me who I should hate.
There's no need to wonder why,
'Cause Presidents never lie.

The USA's the worldwide cop,
And evildoers must be stopped.
Saddam's got nukes and poison gas.
Let's go kick him in the ass.
Conquer the land, sell off the oil.
To the victor goes the spoil.

And it's one, two, three,
What are we searching for?
George said it, it must be true.
I believe in W.
And it's five, six, seven,
Tell me who I should hate.
There's no need to wonder why,
'Cause Presidents never lie.

Now there's rebuilding to be done.
Halliburton is the one.
Cheney says they have the skills.
We're the ones who pay the bills.
So give up your rights. Write me a check.
We'll make the whole world a wreck.

And it's one, two, three,
What are we paying for?
Dick said it, it must be spent.
He's our Vice President.
And it's five, six, seven,
Tell me who I should hate.
There's no need to wonder why.
Vice Presidents never lie.

And while you're at Country Jose's site, check out Pete Seeger's cover version of the original.  The Web site notes:

In 1970, Pete Seeger recorded a version of "Fixin' to Die Rag" for a 45 release. We know that at least a few advance DJ copies were produced, like the one pictured here. But something went wrong. The details are unclear, but Pete did mention once that the distributors refused to handle it. It was never released, and shortly afterward Pete left Columbia, his longtime label.