Jim_75Sahara wrote:

I say if you want to bomb, bomb, bomb IRAN, then vote for McCain. But I will resent your vote since I have children that will become draft-fodder for our 3RD WAR in the region. I will not send my kids off to make the world safe for the GOP's corporate buddies. Those A-HOLES aren't sending their kids to get blown up for Haliburton, are they???? Why should my kids be any less safe from insane religious nutbars than the elite ruling class?

The USA has not had a military draft since 1974, so today's cannon-fodder is volunteer-fodder, not draft-fodder. The danger of a professional standing army is that it can be misused more so than conscripts, who might object to misuse. One very good reason that WWII didn't drag on forever is that the civilian-soldiers had one goal -- get the damn war over and go home.

Your worries in your quote are for something that doesn't exist.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0409a.asp

"Consider, for example, the immortal words of James Madison, who is commonly referred to as “the father of the Constitution”:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.... [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and ... degeneracy of manners and of morals.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

The second way to use a standing army to impose tyranny was the direct one — the use of troops to establish order and obedience among the citizenry. Ordinarily, if a government has no huge standing army at its disposal, many people will choose to violate immoral laws that always come with a tyrannical regime; that is, they engage in what is commonly known as “civil disobedience” — the disobedience to immoral laws. But as the Chinese people discovered at Tiananmen Square, when the government has a standing army to enforce its will, civil disobedience becomes much more problematic.

Consider again the words of Madison:

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

The idea is that governments use their armies to produce the enemies, then scare the people with cries that the barbarians are at the gates, and then claim that war is necessary to put down the barbarians. With all this, needless to say, comes increased governmental power over the people.

Sound familiar? "