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Gaffer Variety:
The Universal Draft V051:
By Willie Gaffer:
July 31, 2006:
The Katrina induced tragedy in our Southern states has again brought to mind my concept of a national draft and the need for a United States Emergency Response Service (USERS). For the details of this Universal Draft plan please read essays Part 102 through 107 in the Gaffer's Philosophy Archives. If we had such a service the situation that developed would have been greatly mitigated. Our highly trained skilled people would have responded immediately with all of the equipment needed to aid and support the people. The people would not have been starving, sick, and dying while officials wandered around wondering what to do. Even the breached dikes would have been attended to without delay. The water would have receded and the city would have been accessible.
Ever the master of understatement, King George said, the response to this current disaster was inadequate. Bizarre! FEMA has had two chances to be effective in crises and they have failed miserably both times. They bungled in the 9-11 debacle and they bungled again in this current crisis. That is because they are not prepared and never will be. FEMA is a political organization an what is needed is a military organization. Unlike the bungling FEMA our full trained Emergency Response Service would have deployed immediately under the command of a single leader upon the president's order. They would be able to do that because they would be organized in the same way any military service is organized. They would be prepared for disaster and trained to deal with it.
The emergency response leadership could also coordinate the activities of all volunteers. That includes Red Cross, Salvation Army, and any other groups, religious or otherwise. We must have a central coordinating command and that is what is lacking now. The head coordinator of these five proposed outfits should be a cabinet level position, but the remaining structure should be organized just as are our military services.
The stupid media is lauding the Red Cross and saying how wonderful they are and how much that organization is needed. That is all true of course. What is also true and goes unnoticed by the media is the Red cross would not be needed if the government were doing what it is supposed to do.
FEMA's excuse on Katrina is they were preparing for a terrorist attack rather than a national disaster. That is patented crap. A terrorist attack is just another form of national disaster. Either we are prepared for a disaster or we are not. In the case of FEMA, we are not! The department of homeland security is a debacle. One man in charge of a hodgepodge of non-coordinated, non-communicating groups is a comedy of Chicken Little characters.
It should be clear that we can no longer afford to be taken off guard. We have always been off guard and totally unprepared. It happened in WWI, WWII, and 9-11. We were also completely unprepared for the effect of Katrina even though we knew it was not a matter of if, but only a matter of when. Now the hurricane season is upon us a gain and New Orleans is still not recovered from last year. We are still unprepared. We were also unprepared for this artificial Iraq situation which was deliberately created by our president. That is a thing we must consider seriously. If we have the awesome array of trained people I have defined in my Universal Draft plan we will have to stop electing dangerous people to that office. The great danger is a madman might use that power for personal purposes.
We had 9-11, the energy crisis, and now thousands of refugees from our Southern states. What's next? Who knows? So long as we have a reactive rather than a proactive government, we will continue to have the emergencies that grow into debacles. We should have been ready for a disaster like Katrina ten years ago. It was not a matter of if, it was only a matter of when. As was pointed out on the Stephanopolous show, the same is true of a pending California earthquake. It will happen. We just don't know exactly when and we are not prepared for it. We should have solved the energy crisis 25 years ago. These potential national disasters are lurking all over our country and our government is consistently ignoring them.
Creating the services I propose would make us ready and it would not be that much of a hardship on our economy or our citizens. We currently have 300 million citizens in America. It seems obvious from that base we should be able to staff and fund an adequate response system. My own estimates indicate we would need between five and ten million people in service at all times. That's between 1.5 and 3.5 percent of our population. My plan calls for every citizen to be obliged to serve between two and four years in the service of America. Considering a life span of some 60 to 70 years, that is not a great deal to ask for the privileges of American citizenship.
I think, given reasonable time and incentives, our young people
would see service as an honorable privilege. It would take some
time because most of our young people are used to getting off
easy. They are pandered to by political hacks who keep telling
them about their rights. No one has told them about their duties
since JFK. He told them about their duties and it resulted in
a plentitude of volunteers for the Peace Corps. Doesn't that tell
us something? Most people feel a natural urge to do good and be
of service. We need only give them an honorable chance.
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