Lileks

I haven't linked to James in a while for no other reason than I have little time. Todays is a slightly screedy piece that has this little nugget:

The draft is coming back! The draft is coming back! You know, there’s Zombie Hippie Boomer component of the nation that simple can’t dump the tropes of the 60s, and the only way they can live is to eat the brains – the sweet, sweet braaaains – of the young. The draft is coming back! Tin Soldiers and Nixon coming! Run away! I hear Canada is, well, Canada this time of year. The ZHBs want it to be 1969 in perpetuity, I fear. Well: I was 20 in 1978, and I was sick of the 60s. And they’d just ended a few years before. (The sixties hung over into the early seventies, until about ’72; the true sucktacity of that decade didn’t manifest itself until ’73, and died in 1981 about the moment the American hostages left Iranian airspace. It was a short decade, but it had the dead horrid gravity of a black hole.) 1969 was 35 years ago. To prop that dead rotten hulk up and wire its jaw so it appears to speak – well, it’s like telling me, in 1978, that I ought to base my worldview on the ideas of 1943. No: the ideas held by the anti-establishment types in 1943, which would be old bitter Wobblies still pissed that WW2 wasn’t about destroying industrial capitalism.

Anyway. I digress. The draft isn’t coming back. But it would make for an interesting exchange at the debates, eh?Senator Kerry, you’ve said that President Bush intends to reinstate the draft. On what evidence do you base this assertion?“This president has consistently underestimated the nature of the threat, and the nature of the forces we need to deal with, and confront, in this new century, and in doing so has placed us in a position where we find ourselves overextended. And alone. And we’re the target. I have a plan to bring our allies to the table, to forge new alliances as well as strengthen old ones, in such a way that fills out our options and gives us the flexibility to meet the changing needs of today with a military that will not be asked to shoulder the burdens of the world, when the world itself has a stake in these obligations. That’s what I meant when I suggested that there might be a draft in a second term of this president. He has boxed us in to a situation where our only solution to our go-it-alone policy might well be forced conscription of our young people, and I’m against it.”Thank you. President Bush?"There won’t be a draft."(Pause) (Pause.) (Pause) (Bush grin) (Scattered laughter)"I don’t know what else there is to say. There won’t be a draft. We’re going to move some forces around, uh, change our strategies. My opponent wants more German participation, and that’s fine with me. You know, they have a draft. Nine months, have to serve. I’d rather American men and women choose to join, choose to serve. Peace Corps, National Guard, our Armed Forces, however. But it’s up to them. Choices. We have the greatest armed services on the planet, and see, it’s because they want to serve. Love of country. And that’s a tradition I want to maintain. If my opponent has some inside information about plans to bring back the draft, I’d be happy to take a look, as long as he didn’t get it from some fellow in Texas who says he found the plans in a wastebasket."

Nice. Why some big city daily doesn't give him a job is beyond me.