In response to my earlier essay about the possibility of reinstating the draft, Neil of “Neil’s Journal” pointed out a few important facts, most recently telling me that it “seems you were way off on this one.” I like Neil and his journal, and I’m not trying to pick on him. Instead, I think that there are a few additional points that should be considered in light of this new information.

Neil mentioned that it was the Republicans who stirred up the controversy about a draft as a fear tactic. But the E-mails that flooded the internet fueling speculation that President Bush wanted to reinstate the draft to supply more troops for the War in Iraq certainly were not written by card-carrying Republicans! Rather, they were produced by Kerry supporters who wanted to suggest that Bush’s war, which was based entirely on lies, would cost voters their children’s lives by causing a new draft. The E-mails didn’t mention that Democratic congressmen introduced the bills to create a new draft. They clearly hoped to stir up fear among voters that Bush and his party would be the one to reinstate the draft by neglecting to include the important fact of who sponsored the legislation. That is the politics of fear, pure and simple.

When we were getting the calls and E-mails in our newsroom from worried parents, virtually all of them had one thing in common: the question was phrased around the following assumption: “I heard Bush is trying to reinstate the draft! Is that true?” No one asked if Democrats were trying to reinstate the draft. Why do we suppose that this would be the case, if the E-mails were completely factual in their presentation of the possibility of a draft?

Once those E-mails begin flying and Republicans begin hearing from their constituents, is it a “tacky political ploy” to point out that it was the Democrats who sponsored the bills that called for a draft? Or is it clarifying a point that was conveniently left out of the propaganda designed to scare voters into selecting Kerry? You’ll have to decide that for yourself.

Finally, there’s this important statement Neil sent. Sen. Fritz Hollings, (a man I greatly respect and voted for as long as I lived in South Carolina), one of the politicians who sponsored a bill to reinstate the draft, made the following comment after the companion bill was killed in the House: “We introduced a draft bill in January 2003, when our nation’s defense needed more troops — and we still do. We were misled into Iraq, and now the Commander in Chief tells the troops they can’t win. You don’t draft young Americans for a mistake, particularly when they can’t win. Under these circumstances, I would vote against my own bill.”

Did Hollings withdraw the bill? Or is it still active? Surprisingly, it’s still there, though his office insists that it’s dead.

But think about it for a minute: let’s suppose that you’re a Democratic congressman who doesn’t approve of the current war and doesn’t trust the motives of the current president. Would you allow a bill that would reinstate the draft to linger, waiting for support among Republican congressmen who you don’t trust, either? Would you allow a bill with your name on it to exist, even if you yourself wouldn’t vote for it? Even if your initial motive to introduce the proposal was on “principled grounds,” if your position changes, shouldn’t your active legislation reflect that?

If there’s nothing wrong with a politician having a change of heart (indeed, if that’s something that constituents will find laudable), why would such a politician leave the proposal he no longer believes in out there?

To be fair, his office claims that it’s a dead bill because no one will bring it up: “They have too many other things to do before the end of the session,” according to a spokesperson. But that itself is an assumption. If we are to believe that “evil” Republicans are only out to prolong an “unjustifiable war,” as the original fear-mongering E-mails suggested, how are we then to rule out the possibility that these same “evil” Republicans wouldn’t be above suddenly and unexpectedly drumming up support on a bill before the session ends? Why not remove it from consideration, and with it, the talk of a draft if a draft — at this time — is the wrong thing to do?

Neil ends one of his comments with the hope that on November 2nd, “America willreject the politics of fear, and elect John Kerry.” If Kerry’s side of the issue, through either lies of omission or the fueling of assumptions, are trying to make it look like Bush (not Democratic congressmen) are proposing a draft, I would suggest that the Democratic party isn’t above using the politics of fear, either.

It comes down to this: if pointing out only part of the story is a fair tactic, while naming names is a “tacky political ploy,” then we cannot ever allow ourselves to be surprised that so few people trust our politicians and that so many are shocked after hearing the “other side” of the story!