Remember the War Czar? The Press doesn’t. For a Reason.

( – promoted by pfiore8)

I think one of the bigget glaring omissions about the GAO report is that the War Czar will not be presenting it. Remember that guy, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute? I mean, come on, he was just made War Zar in June. President Bush decided a single figure was needed to oversee all military campaigns abroad, which I know, use to be called Commander in Chief. But shouldn’t the dude he just created to oversee the Iraq Occupation be the one to present the GAO report on Iraq?

Of course not, that is why it is being ghost written for General Petraeus, not the freaking War Czar. Oh so how quickly we have forgotten. But the War Czar was meant to be forgotten because he had one sole purpose, which is why no one else wanted the job.

He was created, as was his title, to be a trial balloon for the draft.

It all started with his NPR interview:

‘War Czar’ Concerned over Stress of War on Troops
http://www.npr.org/t…

August 10, 2007 ·  Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, says he is concerned about the toll the war in Iraq and extended deployments are taking on U.S. forces.

The man who is widely known as the “war czar” also says that from a military standpoint, a return to a draft should be part of the discussion.

Here he is puffing it up this month:
Army Chief calls for return of draft to ease fatigue
http://www.nzherald….

The US “war tsar” has called for the nation’s political leaders to consider bringing back the draft to help a military exhausted by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a radio interview, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute said the option had always been open to boost the all-volunteer army by drafting in young men as happened in the Vietnam war.

“It makes sense to consider it.”

Again, here is another piece, which again comes from an oversea media outlet. For some reason, no news source in America wants to touch this story.

‘Return to conscription should be considered’
http://www.telegraph…

A draft would revive bad memories of the 1960s and early 1970s when tens of thousands of young men were drafted to fight and die in Vietnam. Few policies proved as divisive.

But the floating of the idea by a general in such a key political position will add dramatic impetus to a debate over the expansion of the US armed forces. It has primarily been anti-war Democrats who have argued for the restoration of the draft.

Some argue that the draft should be reinstituted as a way of preventing future wars by ensuring that the pain of conflict would be spread across all sectors of society. Anti-war agitators such as Michael Moore have highlighted that very few relatives of members of Congress or other politicians have served in uniform.

Lt Gen Lute said that repeated overseas deployments affected not only the troops but their families, who often had a key influence whether a service member decides to stay in the services.

“There’s both a personal dimension of this, where this kind of stress plays out across dinner tables and in living room conversations within these families,” he said in an interview with National Public Radio “And ultimately, the health of the all- volunteer force is going to rest on those sorts of personal family decisions.”

An opponent of the current “surge” in Iraq, Lt Gen Lute is viewed with intense suspicion by conservative Republicans, who will be incensed by his unexpected comments, in his first interview since he was confirmed by the Senate.

Yeah, I bet the conservative Republicans were incensed, not getting the memo the dude is only here to float the idea about a return to the draft.

No one talks about it here, except for the Baltimore Sun,  from their freaking Paris office:

Both parties in denial on need for draft
By William Pfaff

http://www.baltimore…

PARIS – The question of reviving military conscription in the United States made a fleeting reappearance in the American national debate recently, with thus far curiously little reaction.

Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, named in June as President Bush’s “war czar,” gave his first interview Aug. 10, to National Public Radio, subsequently re-broadcast on international television. But his remarks on the draft seem to have vanished into the void of news Washington does not want to hear.

So far as the public debate to this point is concerned, General Lute’s remarks would seem to have been treated as misspoken or even unspoken – as if politicians and the press feared making any comment. Rep. Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York, called some time ago for reinstating the draft (as a way to end the war), but he remains a man alone.

The general’s comment seems lethally impolitic in today’s Washington, but it was the truth, and possibly it was a deliberate inauguration of a discussion that has to take place soon. Everyone knows that the Army and Marine Corps are tightly stretched, with some units on at least their fourth combat rotation to Iraq or Afghanistan – a pace unknown in Vietnam, where GIs did a year and that was that. Today, soldiers (and their families) are cracking under the strain, as General Lute indicated.

——

The plan hasn’t worked. If public opinion does not support a war, not only do people vote against the politicians in office, but the all-volunteer Army loses its volunteers.

The Army now understands this, or it wouldn’t talk about the draft. The politicians don’t admit it. The Democrats who say they are against the war, but also say that the United States must stay on in the Middle East with a bigger Army, and the Republicans who share the administration’s flagging belief in victory in Iraq, have yet to grasp that their electoral platforms can’t be carried out without military conscription.

How can they promise to enlarge the Army to perpetuate the Middle East mission without resort to the draft?

It is a discussion whose time has come, because any candidate that even pretends we can even keep a presence in Afghanistan without addressing the breaking-point of the all-volunteer Armed Forces is just blowing smoke up our collective asses. From either party.

I think it is also interesting how the War Czar’s talk of a draft is only covered in international press, and never mentioned here, even as the GAO report is coming due.

I think it is also interesting that Lt. Gen. Lute would accept the title of War Czar, knowing his job would be to promote the draft as an option to bluster the ranks of the military. No wonder no one else wanted it. Wonder if he will tell Congress about the draft when he testifies later this month?

Where else are we gonna get boys to die attacking Persia?

Only the War Czar knows, or has the misfortune of telling the American people.