A Washington Times columnist has claimed that a universal military
draft is a key necessity if America is to survive throughout
and beyond the 21st century.
Tony
Blankley, also a former Reagan speechwriter, a
former Newt Gingrich press secretary, and currently a Fellow
at right wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, makes
the call in his new book American Grit.
Blankley says that the US needs a "new nationalism
that puts America's survival first."
In his opinion this equates to subjecting all
eighteen year olds to two years of required military service.
"If we don't do a lot of things smart and
tough, we could get overwhelmed by the rise of China, the rise
of India, the rise of radical Islam." Blankley told the
hosts of Fox & Friends on Monday.
"We've failed to exploit our energy. We're
not paying enough attention to what our kids are learning --
Bill Ayers is actually a senior person in guiding the curriculum
design of America." he said.
"I don't like it, I love the volunteer army
... but we don't have enough troops," Blankley stated.
"When George Bush wanted to have the surge,
he was told by the senior generals we didn't have the extra
20,000 troops to finish the war. ... Now Obama wants to go to
Afghanistan ... but he says we don't have the troops unless
we pull them out of Iraq. What happens if Pakistan goes jihadi?
We don't have the troops to go in there and stop them from taking
over the nuclear weapons."
"If we had had enough troops in Iraq, we wouldn't have
lost 4,000 great young men and women," Blankley claimed.
"We needed to flood the field ... with 300,000 troops occupying
every village and every building and they would never have been
able to rise up."
Watch the video:
(Article continues below)
Blankley has previously rejected that notion
that he is a neoconservative, claiming that he is a traditional
conservative in the mold of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
However, his militaristic views clearly dovetail
with classic neoconservative doctrine espoused by bodies such
as the Project For A New American Century, the think tank that
was home to Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz
among others, prior to their placements within the Bush Administration.
Using rhetoric almost identical to the neocon
label "Islamofascist", Blankley has previously compared
modern Islamists to Nazis, claiming that they are attempting
to take over Europe. Blankley has also argued that racial and
ethnic profiling are regrettable but acceptable government practices
in times of war.
Blankley's previous book, The West's Last
Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?, even cites
Samuel P. Huntington, author of Clash Of Civilizations,
regarded by many to be one of the archetypal neocon texts.
