We can’t let a few keep bearing burden alone

Albert G. Marquis, Las Vegas

Tuesday, June 3, 2008 | 2:03 a.m.

In 2007 a record 115 Army soldiers committed suicide. The Army counted 935 suicide attempts. This 20-year high for suicide rates is a cry for help from those who have so bravely served our country in a war without end that should never have been.

How selfish it has been for 98 percent of Americans to blithely go about their lives — watching “American Idol,” shopping with their “stimulus” checks, and occasionally following the presidential primaries — while the remaining 2 percent is asked to repeatedly suffer while family members risk their lives in Iraq.

We don’t ask this of them once, but over and over and over. In the meantime, the rest of us make no sacrifice whatsoever. We aren’t even paying for the war. We just borrow money from China and other sources, which our children and grandchildren will have to one day figure out how to pay back.

The citizens of this great nation rose up and stopped a similar war without end in Vietnam. But we did not do that until friends and relatives were drafted and sent off to risk their own lives.

Right now our soldiers and their families need relief. Our armed forces, stretched to the breaking point, need their ranks bolstered.

I have grandchildren who are entering their teenage years, and it scares the hell out of me to contemplate a draft, which could take them to a place like Iraq. But the grief I would suffer if something happened to one of them is no more than the grief 4,000 families have already suffered because of Iraq.

If that is what it takes to make the people of this nation bring an end to this madness, let’s do it. Reinstate the draft.