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© St. Petersburg Times, published December 9, 2001
Re: Why we need a draft, Dec. 2.
To consider reinstating a U.S. military draft is ludicrous, dangerous and forgetful of what failed a generation ago. During the Vietnam War, the military draft was a divisive issue, and vehement opposition to it certainly hastened an end to the war.
A military draft accomplishes two things: a grossly underpaid work force and sanctioned candidates to commit murder or be murdered.
A flaw in the Charles Moskos-Paul Glastris article is assuming that draftees would be able to choose their duty. As with any resource pool, the goats of the military would ultimately determine where each sheep would go. Military service brings forfeiture of one's dignity, rights and choice.
Moskos and Glastris claim this wouldn't be your father's draft. They start off saying that 21st-century draftees would be better paid. They later say, though, that draftees would not have to be offered the relatively high wages and benefits that it takes to lure voluntary recruits.
So, Moskos and Glastris would call for underpaid draftees taking head shots as they block U.S. roads and further trample the Fourth Amendment. Would they be told ultimately to confiscate guns owned by U.S. citizens?
We had this mentality 30 years ago, and a draft solved nothing then. A new draft will solve nothing now. Better to increase private and municipal security. It would be more expensive, but living in a capitalist society incurs costs. Let the costs be only financial, not moral.
-- David Turcotte, St. Petersburg
Re: Why we need a draft.
I totally agree with this article, by Charles Moskos and Paul Glastris. However, I think they could have pointed out some additional important reasons for the dire need to reinstitute the draft.
We are now well into the second generation of people who have never had to pay any price, no matter how small, to live in the freedom of this country. For the most part, these same generations have grown up feeling that they somehow deserve all the freedoms we enjoy and should have no obligation to make sure those freedoms continue.
The authors point out that as opposed to previous generations from the 1940s, '50s and '60s, young Americans now have developed a "deep psychological resistance" against the state compelling anyone to do anything. I submit at least part of this resistance probably comes from the lack of discipline the previous two generations have instilled in their children.
That lack of discipline in many young Americans cannot be dismissed. For many in my generation, discipline was a way of life from earliest childhood and did not consist of "time outs." Additionally, the self-discipline learned in the armed forces of our country served the majority of Americans well. Somewhere along the line as we built our own families over the following two generations this was lost.
What a terribly misguided job we of those generations who fought for our country did when we returned to our civilian lives. Obviously well intentioned, we raised a couple of generations of "hurray for me and the hell with the country" citizens.
Moskos and Glastris point out the draft could be successfully used for both genders, and draftees could choose how they serve: in the military, homeland security or in a civilian national service program, and I agree. As was also pointed out, we are at war, and this country desperately needs the human reourses to fight it.
As a grandfather of 14, I am strongly in favor of all my grandchildren having the obligation to serve their country. I truly believe, in addition to providing a needed service to their country, the self-discipline they would acquire would serve them well in life.
-- J. M. McCarthy, Weeki Wachee
Re: Bill McBride is getting into the campaign swing, Dec. 2.
Philip Gailey's column about candidate for governor Bill McBride was right on target. All of the telling statistics that demonstrate our state is in crisis were there, save one. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Florida ranks 18th in per capita personal income. We are a relatively wealthy state that as recently as three years ago enjoyed a tremendous surplus.
But that was all squandered by a governor who is more interested in slashing taxes than adequately supporting children, public schools, the elderly and the poor. The most pressing crisis in our state is one of leadership. The economic woes confronting us were not caused by the events of Sept. 11, but rather by poor leadership at the top.
I look forward to hearing the specific plans of candidate Bill McBride and his strategy for filling the leadership deficit that we currently have.
-- Rob McMahon, president, Pinellas, Classroom Teachers Association, Largo
Robyn Blumner has once again hit the nail on the head (Campaign for Afghan women seems insincere, Nov. 25). While Laura Bush spoke eloquently on the importance of empowering women in the creation of a new Afghanistan, her words served to underscore the manner in which the Bush administration has turned its back on women around the globe and here at home.
It is certainly true that "the fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women." But what about the rights and dignity being sacrificed elsewhere in the world due to a political dispute here at home? With the global gag rule, the administration has chosen to turn its back on the women of the world, on human rights and on the principles of democracy in order to impose its narrow beliefs on the rest of the world.
The Family Planning Association of Nepal will have to close one of its largest clinics, providing health services to thousands of women each year, because FPAN is working with its own government to change abortion laws that result in death and imprisonment.
In Peru, one of that country's leading advocates for women's health cannot talk to her own government about the practice of what is killing many of her country's women in the prime of their lives: unsafe abortion. If she did, she would lose the money she gets from the United States to provide health care services to these same women.
We certainly support the president's efforts to ensure that women be included in the negotiations for a new government in Afghanistan -- this will be key to rebuilding a nation that has suffered so much in the past two decades. But if he is sincere, the president must apply this important concept of freedom to women everywhere and repeal the global gag rule.
-- Barbara A. Zdravecky, president and chief executive officer, Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida Inc., Sarasota
Re: Where the sea used to be, Dec. 2:
The evaporation of the Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union is a crime against the environment, but it is also a testament to the durability of a power elite convinced of its own invincibility -- until the world around its economic development schemes fell apart. In Russia, those officials are long gone and the ordinary people who could not escape are left with a wasteland. It is a familiar story.
Sadly, massive infrastructure and engineering projects remain a popular tool of politicians in the developing world despite long-term environmental and economic devastation that could be predicted by the way the Soviets justified draining a vast freshwater sea in order to build cotton production.
Before we thank our stars we do not live there, the Aral Sea catastrophe leads us to question our own, man-made water supply crises: the dried lake beds in Pasco and Hillsborough, dying Lake Okeechobee, the polluted aquifers in Miami-Dade. The bill is coming due on our own exploitation of our freshwater to accommodate cities, sprawl and big agriculture.
The enormous political force fueled by an internal logic of continuous building and development, continuous campaign contributions, continuous sprawl, depends on defering today's costs.
The Soviet planners who created the Aral Sea catastrophe were plumb stupid. Are the politicians we elect any different or only different by a matter of degrees?
-- Alan Farago, Coral Gables
Re: School case requires candor, Dec. 2.
I applaud your editorial on Hillsborough County Schools' latest fiasco. The community deserves to hear operations director Doug Erwin reveal his efforts to report possible criminal behavior within his department to his superiors.
When our elected School Board members and administrators deny one of their most reputable and successful employees the opportunity to speak at a public meeting, the suspicion of wrongdoing belongs on them.
With a third investigation of wrongdoing within the system, they might also be reminded that hiring investigators and attorneys to determine possible criminal intent is not what teachers, parents, and students had in mind for educational spending.
The Times should be commended for pressing the district for records in this case, and the community should not take "no" for an answer.
-- H.F. Bryan, Tampa