Washington Times columnist and former editor Tony Blankley is calling for bringing back the military draft.
He says a draft would have prevented so many American deaths in Iraq, and would allow us to escalate in Afghanistan and possibly invade Pakistan.
Blankley is saying that the problem with US foreign policy is that Americans don’t support it. They must be forced into supporting it, via slavery and coercive taxation.
In the course of approving news links this morning, I read this article from the Jerusalem Post that claims that Hamas has taken to seizing and selling truckloads of international aid “to the highest bidders.” I looked for a few minutes for a mention of this in other publications, but the only material I found were stories that mentioned the one in the Post.
Of course it’s not completely implausible that Hamas would do such a thing in order to raise funds to fight the invading Israeli Army, but newspapers like the Jerusalem Post do not inspire confidence that this story is true, especially since Hamas is normally an organization that spends money on charitable works in Palestine. This is likely just another bit of fodder to disseminate to the worldwide hasbara machine.
Until we see corroboration by any other news organization, this item will not be presented as news. I guess that’s what Israel gets for banning press coverage.
You never know who you might run into at the local mall–perhaps even an Army recruiter. At the Franklin Mills shopping mall in Philadelphia the U.S. Army Experience Center has 60 computers with military videogames to ensnare young people. Prospective soldiers can also pretend to fire from a real Humvee or participate in a helicopter raid.
This is certainly contributing to the modern Army’s culture of death that this former Army Ranger just wrote me about:
Dear Dr. Vance,
Today I followed a large pickup bearing an Arizona “Purple Heart”  plate and driven by a youngish type, perhaps in his 30s, a sad  commentary in itself. But worse, it sported a bumper sticker reading,  “Special Forces. If God didn’t want us to kill people, he wouldn’t  have made us so good at it.”
From a culture I’m well familiar with (having completed Ranger  training 37 years ago), such a sentiment would once have been shared  only among practitioners—Rangers, Special Forces, Delta Force—and not Â
thought fit for even non-elite infantrymen. Now we’re seeing it openly and casually expressed, as if commenting on the economy. Even a  generation ago soldiers expressed regret about their experiences; now  they want to tell you how proud they are to have killed and, presumably, that they would not hesitate to do it again.
Join the Army, meet interesting people, kill them.
Remember Joe the Plumber? Me either but America (or a subset thereof) was apparently obsessed with this fellow for a week or two there. Unwilling to relinquish the limelight he appears to have lost months ago, Joe donned his reporters cap and went to Israel to cover the war on the Gaza Strip (or a subset thereof).
Upon arriving he chided his “fellow” reporters for being unpatriotic and opined on how fast the average Sderot resident has to take a shower, because, y’know… the rockets. Of course over a third of the Gaza Strip doesn’t even have running water, so I bet their showers are real short. If only we knew a plumber who wasn’t doing anything important, maybe he could fix that.
Joe followed up his war coverage by declaring that people shouldn’t be allowed to cover wars. “I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting.” Joe says he liked the coverage during WW1 and WW2, though his recollection is likely skewed by the fact that he wasn’t alive for either.
Both houses of Congress lined up in near-unanimous support of Israel’s war on Gaza. Yesterday, the Senate passed their version of the resolution without a single dissenting vote.
Today’s vote in the House produced only 5 “No” votes: Ron Paul (R-TX), Dennis Kuchinich (D-OH), Maxine Waters (D-CA), Nick Rahall (D-WV), and Gwen Moore (D-WI). 22 voted “present” and 16 didn’t vote. See how your Congressmember voted.
The resolution is totally one-sided, blaming only the Palestinians.
Ron Paul’s statement opposing the US House resolution supporting Israel’s war in Gaza:
