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Gaffer Variety:
More Notes For Hillary 008:
By Willie Gaffer:
October 3, 2005:
There is one new important and pressing problem I have not discussed and that is the disasters of Katrina and Rita and their devastation to our Southland. This is more of an issue of cleaning up a mess than of solving a problem. We know what to do. It only remains to do it. We can hope that the current administration will begin that effort forthwith. Given that and the necessary investment of money, we can clean up and rebuild the devastated cities and countryside. The important thing now is to avoid the temptation of making a political issue of the recovery. To attempt that would give you a black eye and strengthen your opponents. Just let it be! Cooperate when it is proper to do so.
This does not mean we should not examine what went wrong and propose solutions to avoid repeats. We have similar disasters waiting to happen all over America. We have a very particular problem in the earthquake prone West Coast cities. There is at least a partial solution to these situations and that lies in being prepared. To manage that we must realize that a politically run outfit like FEMA will never be prepared. Politicians cannot deal with problems of this nature. The problems require a rapid disciplined military organizational approach. There must be clear unchallenged and unchanging lines of command and spans of control. That is what will always be missing in organizations like FEMA.
We can expect the Bush administration to patch up FEMA with a few new bureaucrats and a minor reorganization and pretend they have fixed it. That will not do. You must make clear in your campaign that FEMA as it is currently structured can never be effective in an emergency. You must also have a proposal that will address and remove the shortcomings of FEMA. One way to address the problem is with a new organization which is structured as a disciplined military type service with permanent staffing. In my Philosophy series I actually outlined such an organization and called it the United States Emergency Response Service (USERS).
In addition, I outlined five other similarly structured service organizations. These would be services in addition to out traditional military service, I have already mentioned the United States Emergency Response Service (USERS). The other four are the International Support and Response Service (ISRS), the Military Support Service (MSS), the International Police and Training Service (IPTS), and the United States Domestic Service (USDS). I have detailed these in my philosophy series and need not repeat that here. The essays are all available in the Wesoomi Archives.
The big question is, how do we staff these outfits. The answer to that also involves a much bigger issue which I will call the Universal Draft. Basically, this is a plan whereby all Americans would be required to serve their country for a minimum of two years and a maximum of four years depending on the form of service. In our history we have had many occasions wherein we found it necessary to staff our military through conscription, This has always been patently unfair in that it singles out a particular segment of our population and excuses all others. A universal draft, which answered the military needs and the needs of the other services would be much more equitable. No one would be excused. Again, I have already detailed this in my philosophy series.
When we consider the magnitude of the issues these organizations will have to face we will realize they will require enormous human resources. A staffing of 1 million persons per service would not be unrealistic. In a nation approaching a population of 300 million it would not be unreasonable to have 8 million people in our services. That allows 3 million military and 1 million each for the other 5 services. Fools will say we cannot afford this kind of person-power investment. Bull! What we cannot afford is to continue leaving the solutions to these problems to chance. We cannot afford another Katrina type disaster. We cannot afford another Iraq disaster. We must be prepared.
We can expect this plan will be a hard sell at first, but I think that will quickly pass. I believe people will become eager to serve their country and really make America the country of noble people we presently pretend to be. They will be eager to make America strong again. It has become obvious to me that young people are desperately seeking a way to put meaning back into their lives. How else can we explain all of the threshing and crazy behavior? People who have direction and meaning in their lives do not behave that way. I believe our young people will be happy to find that meaning and direction in service. We can support that good attitude by pointing out that service is an honor in addition to being a duty. We take care of our world and community just as we take care of our family, because we want to. It is nothing more than enlightened self interest.
While we are looking at alternative to FEMA we should also look at the so called Homeland Security joke. We're spending millions of dollars and we are just as vulnerable now as we were on 9-11. There are literally thousands of points of vulnerability in America. These include our porous borders, our exposed power grid, our dams and water supplies and our chemical works to name just a few. We must be willing to face the difficult truth that we can never make these points secure from attack.
There is only one viable approach to homeland security and defense. Every military man from Caesar to Patton has know this and acted on it. The best possible defense is an attack. To make America safe, we must attack and destroy our enemies. We do not do this by frisking helpless old ladies in airports. We do it by going after our enemies in their homelands. Again, that does not mean going off half coked and starting unnecessary wars. It means having adequate military staffing and going after our enemies where they train and stage. That was in Afghanistan, but we never had enough force there to deal with them. Now it is also in Iraq, and again we are sorely understaffed. It is time to be honest with our citizens and face the music. Until our enemies are defeated, we need a large standing army and a powerful support system for them.
To get that, you must begin to tell the truth to the American
people. It is time for all of us to stand up and be counted. Are
we true Americans or are we a bunch of whining sissies. If we
are Americans, we will stand up and do our duty to our nation
and mankind. If we are not, we deserve to go the way of the Roman
and British empires. We should and will go down the tubes to the
trash heap of history.
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