In his effort to create yet another anti-Bush (anti-Republican) article, Clarence Page takes what could have been an interesting article on an amusing idea (bringing back the draft) into another cheap partisan effort (“Feeling a draft coming on; Maybe we should bring back the draft so that we’ll start paying attention to the hawks who are having too easy of a time getting what they want,” Commentary, Jan. 1). I agree that it is often too easy for government officials to send troops to war especially when they get their children off the hook. But both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of this. The problem I have with Page’s column is that he implies that only George Bush is for sending troops to Iraq and if it wasn’t for Colin Powell, we would have gone to war already.
What about guys like Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.)? He voted for sending troops this time and has said that weshould have gone after Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf War. What about all the other Democrats who voted for the use of force in Iraq last autumn?
I think it humorous that Page mentions all the recent wars such as Beirut, Panama, the Persian Gulf War and Afghanistan, but nowhere does he mention Bosnia/Kosovo, Sudan, Somalia, Haiti or Iraq, where Bill Clinton had no problem sending U.S. troops.
The column ends with another jab at the Bush administration with the tired old claim that previous ties to the oil industry are keeping the Bush administration from reducing our dependency on foreign oil other than drilling in Alaska. Please, Page, tell me what the Clinton administration ever did to resolve this problem. SUV popularity started during the Clinton administration. Not every issue has to be partisan!
