Once again, it appears that John McCain is refusing to rule out the idea of re-instituting the military draft:
Here’s the transcript:
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Senator McCain I truly hope you get the opportunity to chase Bin Laden right to the gates of hell and push him in as you stated on your forum. I do have a question though. Disable veterans, especially in this state have horrible conditions, their medical is substandard. They drive four hours one way to Albuquerque for a simple doctors appointment which is often canceled. Our VA hospital is dirty it is understaffed, it is running on maximum overload. The prescription medicines are ten years behind standard medical care we have seven hundred claims stacked up at the VA office in Albuquerque some of them are ten and seven years old waiting to be processed in the mean time these people are homeless. My son is an officer in the Air Force, and I am a vet and I was raised in a military family. I think it is a sad state of affairs when we have illegal aliens having a Medicaid card that can access specialist top physicians, the best of medical and our vets can’t even get to a doctor. These are the people that we tied yellow ribbons for and Bush patted on the back. If we don’t reenact the draft I don’t think we will have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.
JOHN MCCAIN: Ma’am let me say that I don’t disagree with anything you said and thank you and I am grateful for your support of all of our veterans.
Now, you could say that McCain was responding to a long-rambling, almost incoherent stream of consciousness that never really took the form of a question so it’s unclear what he was saying he didn’t disagree with.
Except for the fact that McCain has a history of not ruling out reimposing slavery the draft:
In June, McCain said it would take an “all-out World War III” to make the draft necessary — which seems to mean he’d consider it. In July 2006, when asked to react to Newt Gingrich’s claim that “You’d have to say to yourself this is in fact World War III,” McCain said, “I do [agree] to some extent.”
Asked about the draft last September, McCain said, “I might consider it, I don’t think it’s necessary, but I might consider it if you could design a draft where everybody equally could serve.”
The draft is insidious because it is based on the idea that an individuals life belongs not to themselves, but to the state to do as it pleases, when it pleases. Imposing the draft during a true war when the literal survival of the nation is clearly at stake is bad enough, imposing it during a time when no such credible threat exists is quite honestly outrageous.
And yet another reason why I can’t conceive of how one can believe in human freedom and support John McCain.
