Charles Rangel calls for a return to mandatory military service. Now, I don’t dismiss out of hand the possibility that this may be necessary at some point, although it doesn’t seem at the moment that a lack of manpower is our primary national security problem. But Rangel doesn’t even pretend to be talking about national security needs:
The Korean War veteran has accused the Bush administration and some fellow lawmakers of being too willing to go to war with Iraq. . . . “When you talk about a war, you’re talking about ground troops, you’re talking about enlisted people, and they don’t come from the kids and members of Congress,” he said. “I think, if we went home and found out that there were families concerned about their kids going off to war, there would be more cautiousness and a more willingness to work with the international community than to say, ‘Our way or the highway.'”
This captures perfectly why people don’t trust the Democrats, as a party, to deal seriously with wartime issues. Rangel wants to make a political point, and in many ways a racial point (he ‘explained’ his vote against war with Iraq as being based on the fact that there were too many African-Americans in the military) – and to do it at the expense of having a serious policy on national security. Disgraceful. And, of course, a racially charged argument like this is a hand grenade thrown into the foxholes of the various Democratic political contenders, most of whom will likely show the courage of their convictions by trying to ignore it.