Press release from www.badnarik.org
The following is a press release from Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik. More information on Badnarik can be obtained at www.badnarik.org, and more on the Libertarian Party can be found at www.lp.org
What America can learn from Bush's Guard duty scandal
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NEWS FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY
2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100
Washington DC 20037
World Wide Web: http://www.LP.org
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For release: September 15, 2004
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For additional information:
George Getz, Communications Director
(202) 333-0008 ext. 222
GeorgeGetz@HQ.LP.ORG
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WASHINGTON -- Here's the lesson that Americans should learn as a result of the controversy over George Bush's service in the National Guard, Libertarians say: When governments wage futile, unnecessary wars -- such as Vietnam and Iraq -- young Americans will try to avoid them.
"The scandal isn't that so many Americans tried to avoid going to Vietnam; it's that their government tried to send them there in the first place," said Michael Dixon, Libertarian Party national chair. "The fact that Bush is sending troops to Iraq proves he hasn't learned that lesson."
While Democrats and Republicans spar over Bush's service in the Guard, the Libertarian Party says Bush's service as president is a far more important issue.
"We may never know whether Bush entered the National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam," Dixon said. "But we do know that thousands of men his age did so, or sought college deferments, or even fled to Canada, to avoid getting killed or maimed.
"And who can blame them? More than 58,000 Americans who fought in this mindless military misadventure never came back.
"The tragedy isn't that Bush, the Guardsman, may have avoided Vietnam. The tragedy is that Bush, the president, has sent more than 1,000 Americans to their deaths in Iraq."
Dixon pointed to several similarities between Vietnam and Iraq: Neither was a defensive war; both were justified based on false claims; and both became increasingly unpopular with the American people as the truth became known.
"Contrast Vietnam and Iraq with World War II," he said. "After the attack on Pearl Harbor, American teen-agers weren't lying to get out of the war; they were lying about their ages to get in.
"In Vietnam, politicians instituted the draft because too few Americans were volunteering to senselessly sacrifice their lives. In Iraq, Bush has already instituted a 'backdoor draft' by extending deployments, and there's little doubt that a formal draft would be just as widely evaded as it was in Vietnam."
The point is that the American people know which wars are essential to national security and which are not, regardless of what the president says, Libertarians say.
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