It IS time to choose. From day one, the lighter, faster, dead­lier Pen­ta­gon model as envi­sioned by Don­ald Rums­feld has been an abysmal dis­as­ter for the Iraqi peo­ple and for our men and women on the ground. Again and again we have lost sol­diers and Marines because they were under­manned includ­ing the son of my dear friend Car­los Arredondo. Though it pains me given I have three more draft age sons I believe the only way to bring this nation to its feet in protest is to insti­tute a draft.

In today’s Wash­ing­ton Post twelve US Army cap­tains speak elo­quently on why the pic­ture painted by active duty gen­er­als is flawed and inaccurate.

The inabil­ity to gov­ern is exac­er­bated at all lev­els by wide­spread cor­rup­tion. Trans­parency Inter­na­tional ranks Iraq as one of the most cor­rupt coun­tries in the world. And, indeed, many of us wit­nessed the exploita­tion of U.S. tax dol­lars by Iraqi offi­cials and mil­i­tary offi­cers. Sab­o­tage and graft have had a par­tic­u­larly dele­te­ri­ous impact on Iraq’s oil indus­try, which still fails to pro­duce the rev­enue that Pen­ta­gon war plan­ners hoped would pay for Iraq’s recon­struc­tion. Yet hold­ing peo­ple account­able has proved dif­fi­cult. The first com­mis­sioner of a panel charged with pre­vent­ing and inves­ti­gat­ing cor­rup­tion resigned last month, cit­ing pres­sure from the gov­ern­ment and threats on his life.

Against this back­drop, the U.S. mil­i­tary has been try­ing in vain to hold the coun­try together. Even with “the surge,” we sim­ply do not have enough sol­diers and marines to meet the pro­fessed goals of clear­ing areas from insur­gent con­trol, hold­ing them securely and build­ing sus­tain­able insti­tu­tions. Though tem­po­rary rein­forc­ing oper­a­tions in places like Fal­lu­jah, An Najaf, Tal Afar, and now Bagh­dad may brief well on Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tions, in prac­tice they just push insur­gents to another spot on the map and often strengthen the insur­gents’ cause by harass­ing locals to a point of swayed alle­giances. Mil­lions of Iraqis cor­rectly rec­og­nize these actions for what they are and vote with their feet — mov­ing within Iraq or leav­ing the coun­try entirely. Still, our colonels and gen­er­als keep hold­ing on to flawed concepts.

Finally, in a com­bined and coura­geous effort to save their fel­low sol­diers and spare their coun­try more need­less blood­shed they call out our admin­is­tra­tion and demand action

There is one way we might be able to suc­ceed in Iraq. To con­tinue an oper­a­tion of this inten­sity and dura­tion, we would have to aban­don our vol­un­teer mil­i­tary for com­pul­sory ser­vice. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq imme­di­ately. A scaled with­drawal will not pre­vent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and trea­sure on a los­ing proposition.

Amer­ica, it has been five years. It’s time to make a choice.

Please demand that Con­gress defund this war

UPDATE: Gra­ham Nash and David Crosby agree — as deplorable as it would be to have a draft, a draft will ignite the youth to stand up against this adm­nis­tra­tion — watch it.