Newsweek Joins Operation Yellow Elephant!

Marine CPL Mark Finelli served in Iraq from July 2005 to February 2006. Here's why he's endorsed a Draft:

Why We Need a Draft: A Marine's Lament

He was in the firefights of Fallujah. He saw gaps in America's arsenal that he believes can only be filled when America's elite puts its sons on the battlefield. A plea for selective service.

[Private contractors have Mine Resistant Ambush Protective vehicles, or MRAPs. Marines and other real American servicemembers don't. They have trucks. It's that simple.] . . . Because until the wealthy have that vested interest, until it’s the sons of senators and the wealthy upper classes sitting in those trucks—it takes more than the McCain boy or the son of Sen. Jim Webb—the best gear won’t get paid for on an infantryman’s timetable. Eighteen months after the Marines first asked for the MRAP, it’s finally being delivered. Though not nearly at the rate that’s needed. By the end of the year, only 1,500 will have been delivered, less than half the 3,900 the Pentagon had initially promised.

[ . . . ] The real failure of this war, the mistake that has led to all the malaise of Operation Iraqi Freedom, was the failure to not reinstitute the draft on Sept. 12, 2001 . . . President Bush was determined to keep the lives of nonuniformed America—the wealthiest Americans, like himself—uninterrupted by the war. Consequently, we have a severe talent deficiency in the military, which the draft would remedy immediately. While America’s bravest are in the military, America’s brightest are not.

[ . . . . ]

I don’t favor a Vietnam-style draft, where men like the current vice president could get five deferments. I am talking about a World War II draft, with the brothers and sons of future and former presidents answering the call (and, unfortunately, dying, as a Roosevelt and a Kennedy once did) on the front line. That is when the war effort is maximized. Quite simply, the military cannot be a faceless horde to those pulling the purse strings of our great economy.

OYE Comment:

Operation Yellow Elephant thanks CPL Finelli for leaving a high-paying Wall Street job to Be A Man! Enlist! What is even more stunning is the fact that none of our civilian national leaders has even called upon real Americans to serve. [Seriously.]

If President Bush cannot encourage even Shawn Fago to Man Up!, how can he possibly lead our nation to re-institute a no-deferments, no-excuses, National Service to Defend America? [Step One: Get rid of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell.]