MEANDERING IGNORANCE & THE DRAFT

During Dick Cheney's interview with ABC's Martha Raddatz on the war in Iraq last week Raddatz pointed out: "Two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting, and they're looking at the value gained versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives."

Ever so thoughtful, Dick Cheney responded: "So?"

While this is yet another example of what happens when arrogance and indifference merge in the minds of the painfully mediocre, it's Cheney's response to another Raddatz question that walks away with my Meandering Ignorance award.

RADDATZ: "What sacrifice have most Americans made?"

CHENEY: Well, I think they've been asked to support the effort and the enterprise. But it's not the kind of thing, for example, where you would have wanted to institute a draft. We've got an all-volunteer force; it's one of our great assets, one of our great national assets. I suppose you could have created a sense of sacrifice if you'd gone back to the draft, but that would have, in my opinion, done serious damage to the state of our military. We built a volunteer force because that was a decision we made 30 years ago, and it's been a very good -- a good decision.

Where do I start? How about with this: "We built a volunteer force because that was a decision we made 30 years ago ..." does not explain why we went to an all volunteer military. It's kind of like George Bush saying "I lied about the reasons for going into Iraq because I didn't tell the truth ..."

Cheney's response is truly as ignorant an answer as you can get when it comes to explaining the "sacrifices" America is making in a war that Cheney has compared to World War II. And, for the record, the reason we went to an all volunteer military is because the economist studying whether we should get rid of the draft willfully ignored Congress.

Specifically, Congress wanted to know how much more the country would have to pay in recruitment costs, public relations, higher wages, better benefits, privatization, etc. if we went to an all volunteer military. The economist went out of his way to use his own methods, and argued that people not working in the private sector because they were drafted into the military meant lost national income. His methods weren't questioned (and no one took the time to ask if he was injecting his own political views) so the Gates Commission adopted the proposal. We dropped the draft in 1973. The economist? Milton Friedman.

- Mark