If the draft returns, soldiers must face the flag and kill

On Jan. 7, 2003, quietly in the halls of Washington D.C., a new bill (H.R. 163) was introduced into Senate Committee. The full title of the bill read, "A bill to provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes." With even Republican senators now admitting that "we are losing in Iraq" (John McCain) and with the Bush Administration now planning more invasions (Iran) one can rest assured that tens of thousands of young American conscripts will be needed to fill the shrinking ranks of the U.S. military. The U.S. Army is already signaling that it is having difficulties finding new recruits.

Although the bill itself has yet to be passed in the Senate it does declare that every citizen and person residing in the United States "between the ages of 18 and 26" will be obligated to perform a period of national service. This causes a serious moral dilemma for those young Americans who see the occupation of Iraq as an Imperialist war for oil.

Behind the facade given to us by our elected officials and political parties the attainment of oil and natural gas resources will be the primary motivating factor behind wars in the 21st century. Dick Cheney, who helped plot the invasion of Iraq long before Sept. 11, said in 1999 "by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day." This was during his time as CEO of Halliburton, one of the largest providers of products and services to the oil and gas industry in the world, with whom he still retains 433,000 shares and a yearly retirement salary of nearly $200,000.

With the United States currently consuming 20 million barrels of oil a day, an increasing demand of hydrocarbons will be impossible to meet unless we take military control over the energy rich resource deposits in other nations. It would seem that alternative energy and reduced consumption is no option to American Imperial hegemony. While the occupation of Iraq drives the U.S. government deeper into debt and future bankruptcy, Halliburton reported in March of 2004 $85 million in profits from Iraq after one year of occupation.

This new era of petroleum-occupation will mean massive U.S. troop deployments for counter insurgency campaigns in Iraq with another corporate-driven war looming on the horizon with Iran. During 11 years (1962-1973) in Vietnam, our last overt counter-insurgency war, 58,000 Americans died. Increasing rates of casualties mounted in Vietnam as the war progressed and local populations turned aggressively against foreign troops. Two million Vietnamese died during the war. Since March of 2003, 1,053 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq, according to CNN.com.

Failing to win the hearts and minds, the U.S. installed Iraqi government continues to lack public support while the insurgency grows. It is doubtful that college Republicans across our nation, who feverishly supported this war for empire, are going to step up in mass and join the ranks of the U.S. Army.

For that reason we must prepare ourselves for the inevitable: draft dodging and the slowing down of the U.S. war machine. In the second installment of this two part series on the national draft, I will be discussing ways of avoiding the draft, declaring yourself a conscientious objector and its relevance to our campus; past, present, and future.

Jeb Sprague is a graduate student in history and a member of the CSULB Campus Progressive Collective.