[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 61 (Wednesday, May 5, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E763-E764]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           CALLING FOR SHARED SACRIFICE IN THE WAR ON TERROR

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Wednesday, May 5, 2004

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call upon our nation to 
share the sacrifice imposed upon us by our war on terrorism. I have 
introduced a bill to reinstitute the draft for young Americans between 
the ages of 18 and 26 and national civilian service for all those not 
needed in the military.
  Since I have submitted this bill in January 2003, my conviction that 
we need a draft has risen on an almost daily basis. In March 2003 the 
administration decided to take the nation to war against Iraq for 
doubtful reasons. I do not think that members of this administration 
and Congress would have been so willing to launch a war if they had 
known that their own children might have to fight it.
  Fact is, that we are currently a nation in which the poor fight our 
wars while the affluent stay at home. The majority of our brave 
servicemen and women come either from poor rural areas or poverty-
shaken inner-city neighborhoods. About thirty-five percent of our 
soldiers are minorities. These young people enlist in the military 
mainly for financial and educational opportunities.
  I believe that the burdens of war should not be shouldered solely by 
the poor segments of our society, but must be fairly shared by all 
racial and economic groups. I am pleased to see that during the last 
couple of months the support for a reintroduction of the draft has 
risen substantially among the American people. As our casualties in 
Iraq increase daily and exhausted soldiers are kept in Iraq under stop 
loss orders, the debate about shared sacrifice is gaining ground.
  I submit to the Congressional Record an article by journalist and 
Vietnam War Veteran William Broyles Jr. which was published in the New 
York Times on May 4, 2004. Mr. Broyles' article is one of the strongest 
pieces favoring the draft that I have read so far and it fully reflects 
my own opinion on this subject.

                 [From the New York Times, May 4, 2004]

                      A War for Us, Fought by Them

                        (By William Broyles Jr.)

       WILSON, Wyo.--The longest love affair of my life began with 
     a shotgun marriage. It was the height of the Vietnam War and 
     my student deferment had run out. Desperate not to endanger 
     myself or to interrupt my personal plans, I wanted to avoid 
     military service altogether. I didn't have the 
     resourcefulness of Bill Clinton, so I couldn't figure out how 
     to dodge the draft. I tried to escape into the National 
     Guard, where I would be guaranteed not to be sent to war, but 
     I lacked the connections of George W. Bush, so I couldn't 
     slip ahead of the long waiting list. My attitude was the same 
     as Dick Cheney's: I was special, I had ``other priorities.'' 
     Let other people do it.
       When my draft notice came in 1968, I was relieved in a way. 
     Although I had deep doubts about the war, I had become 
     troubled about how I had angled to avoid military service. My 
     classmates from high school were in the war; my classmates 
     from college were not--exactly the dynamic that exists today. 
     But instead of reporting for service in the Army, on a whim I 
     joined the Marine Corps, the last place on earth I thought I 
     belonged.
       My sacrifice turned out to be minimal. I survived a year as 
     an infantry lieutenant in Vietnam. I was not wounded; nor did 
     I struggle for years with post-traumatic stress disorder. A 
     long bout of survivor guilt was the price I paid. Others 
     suffered far more, particularly those who had to serve after 
     the war had lost all sense of purpose for the men fighting 
     it. I like to think that in spite of my being so unwilling at 
     first, I did some small service to my country and to that 
     enduring love of mine, the United States Marine Corps.
       To my profound surprise, the Marines did a far greater 
     service to me. In 3 years I learned more about standards, 
     commitment and yes, life, than I did in 6 years of 
     university. I also learned that I had had no idea of my own 
     limits: when I was exhausted after humping up and down jungle 
     mountains in 100-degree heat with a 75-pound pack, terrified 
     out of my mind, wanting only to quit, convinced I couldn't 
     take another step, I found that in fact I could keep going 
     for miles. And my life was put in the hands of young men I 
     would otherwise never have met, by and large high-school 
     dropouts, who turned out to be among the finest people I have 
     ever known.
       I am now the father of a young man who has far more 
     character than I ever had. I joined the Marines because I had 
     to; he signed up after college because he felt he ought to. 
     He volunteered for an elite unit and has served in both 
     Afghanistan and Iraq. When I see images of Americans in the 
     war zones, I think of my son and his friends, many of whom I 
     have come to know and deeply respect. When I opened this 
     newspaper yesterday and read the front-page headline, ``9 
     G.I.'s Killed,'' I didn't think in abstractions. I thought 
     very personally.
       The problem is, I don't see the images of or read about any 
     of the young men and women who, as Dick Cheney and I did, 
     have ``other priorities.'' There are no immediate family 
     members of any of the prime civilian planners of this war 
     serving in it--beginning with President Bush and extending 
     deep into the Defense Department. Only one of the 535 
     members of Congress, Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota, 
     has a child in the war--and only half a dozen others have 
     sons and daughters in the military.
       The memorial service yesterday for Pat Tillman, the 
     football star killed in Afghanistan, further points out this 
     contrast. He remains the only professional athlete of any 
     sport who left his privileged life during this war and turned 
     in his play uniform for a real one. With few exceptions, the 
     only men and women in military service are the profoundly 
     patriotic or the economically needy.
       It was not always so. In other wars, the men and women in 
     charge made sure their family members led the way. Since 9/
     11, the war on terrorism has often been compared to the 
     generational challenge of Pearl Harbor; but Franklin D. 
     Roosevelt's sons all enlisted soon after that attack. Both of 
     Lyndon B. Johnson's sons-in-law served in Vietnam.
       This is less a matter of politics than privilege. The 
     Democratic elites have not responded more nobly than have the 
     Republican; it's just that the Democrats' hypocrisy is less 
     acute. Our president's own family illustrates the loss of the 
     sense of responsibility that once went with privilege. In 
     three generations the Bushes have gone from war hero in World 
     War II, to war evader in Vietnam, to none of the extended 
     family showing up in Iraq and Afghanistan.
       Pat Tillman didn't want to be singled out for having done 
     what other patriotic Americans his age should have done. The 
     problem is, they aren't doing it. In spite of the president's 
     insistence that our very civilization is at stake, the 
     privileged aren't flocking to the flag. The war is being 
     fought by Other

[[Page E764]]

     People's Children. The war is impersonal for the very people 
     to whom it should be most personal.
       If the children of the nation's elites were facing enemy 
     fire without body armor, riding through gantlets of bombs in 
     unarmored Humvees, fighting desperately in an increasingly 
     hostile environment because of arrogant and incompetent 
     civilian leadership, then those problems might well find 
     faster solutions.
       The men and women on active duty today--and their 
     companions in the National Guard and the reserves--have seen 
     their willingness, and that of their families, to make 
     sacrifices for their country stretched thin and finally 
     abused. Thousands of soldiers promised a 1-year tour of duty 
     have seen that promise turned into a lie. When Eric Shinseki, 
     then the Army chief of staff, told the president that winning 
     the war and peace in Iraq would take hundreds of thousands 
     more troops, Mr. Bush ended his career. As a result of this 
     and other ill-advised decisions, the war is in danger of 
     being lost, and my beloved military is being run into the 
     ground.
       This abuse of the voluntary military cannot continue. How 
     to ensure adequate troop levels, with a diversity of 
     backgrounds? How to require the privileged to shoulder their 
     fair share? In other words, how to get today's equivalents of 
     Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney--and me--into the 
     military, where their talents could strengthen and revive our 
     fighting forces?
       The only solution is to bring back the draft. Not since the 
     19th century has America fought a war that lasted longer than 
     a week with an all-volunteer army; we can't do it now. It is 
     simply not built for a protracted major conflict. The 
     arguments against the draft--that a voluntary army is of 
     higher quality, that the elites will still find a way to 
     evade service--are bogus. In World War II we used a draft 
     army to fight the Germans and Japanese--two of the most 
     powerful military machines in history--and we won. The 
     problems in the military toward the end of Vietnam were not 
     caused by the draft; they were the result of young Americans 
     being sent to fight and die in a war that had become a 
     disaster.
       One of the few good legacies of Vietnam is that after years 
     of abuses we finally learned how to run the draft fairly. A 
     strictly impartial lottery, with no deferments, can ensure 
     that the draft intake matches military needs. Chance, not 
     connections or clever manipulation, would determine who 
     serves.
       If this war is truly worth fighting, then the burdens of 
     doing so should fall on all Americans. If you support this 
     war, but assume that Pat Tillman and Other People's Children 
     should fight it, then you are worse than a hypocrite. If it's 
     not worth your family fighting it, then it's not worth it, 
     period. The draft is the truest test of public support for 
     the administration's handling of the war, which is perhaps 
     why the administration is so dead set against bringing it 
     back.

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