It's getting a bit drafty...Don't you think?

Uncle Sam on the prowl

By Katherine Stapp

NEW YORK - A couple of months ago, Kim Rosario found an improbable email message in her mail inbox.

The mother of a United States soldier, Rosario travels the country publicly denouncing Washington's policies in Iraq, and is a featured speaker at an upcoming rally in New York's Central Park to mark the second anniversary of the March 19, 2003, invasion.

"It was from the military, asking if I've ever considered a career in the navy," Rosario recalled. "I said I might if you send my son back from Iraq!"

Unintended irony aside, she believes the offer is a sign of the Pentagon's growing desperation to counter dwindling recruitment numbers - especially in the lower-income communities once viewed as fertile ground.

Reflecting the skepticism felt by many people of color toward the Iraq invasion, a study commissioned for the US Army last August concluded that "more African-Americans identify having to fight for a cause they don't support as a barrier to military service".

The true strength of an all volunteer military is making itself evident. Enlistment numbers are dropping, particularly in those areas which the military recruited heavily from before the invasion of Iraq...economically disadvantaged areas in cities and counties all across America. But with the pool of new recruits drying up, a back-door draft has been instituted through the use of stop-loss orders, extended deployments, calling up inactive reserves, and drawing ever more heavily on National Guard units which are having their own problems with recruitment and retention.

An all voluteer military will, over time, be unable to sustain manpower requirements for actions which are not supported by potential recruits. And, campaign promises to the contrary aside, the Bush administration will have to resort to a draft to provide the personel for its military adventurism abroad. And this will be the begining of the end of neocon control of the Republican party and this Administration, which can't come soon enough.