Maybe the time has come for the president to give George Lucas a call. It seems the United States has tried just about everything to increase its military manpower, short of commissioning Industrial Light & Magic to create some more troops using CGI.

An article on www.indybay.org, titled “US Soldiers Forced Into Service By The Military: The Unofficial Draft,” lists several actions our military has taken in hopes of plumping up its forces. The article does not mention the military’s more amusing offers to help recruits get a career in the music industry or pay for their breast implants, but it does note the recent advent of the stop-loss order, Individual Ready Reserve, and the latest claims by currently serving U.S. soldiers that they are being coerced to re-enlist.

According to the Global Security website, we currently have over 100,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq. The Friends Committee on National Legislation states:

“In November 2003, a Congressional Budget Office analysis indicated that ‘the active Army would be unable to sustain an occupation force of the present size [150,000] beyond about March 2004, if it chose not to keep individual units deployed to Iraq for longer than one year without relief — an assumption consistent with the Department of Defense’s (DOD) current planning.’”

The FCNL website indicates the discrepancy between the claims government officials are making about the feasibility of continuing the American occupation of Iraq with a minimal number of troops and the reality that American troops who are preparing to come home will be increasingly difficult to replace.

How, and from where, are the extra soldiers going to come?

The race to poison the ear of Denmark is drawing to a close. A front page article in last Friday’s Los Angeles Times called attention to the “witchcraft of wit” our presidential candidates decided to use during their first debate Thursday night.

“Candidates Call Facts as They See Them,” boomed the caption. “Rivals take turns putting their spin on the data related to war on terror and national security.”

“Some facts were oversimplified, others were exaggerated and still others dropped from sight entirely,” staff writer Paul Richter reported. Topics whose facades were shaded Thursday night ranged from the war in Iraq to homeland security and the development of nuclear weapons in North Korea.

In an age when great orators have either been booed off stage or become extinct, and at a time when truth is not a priority, what do these debates mean to the American public?

The judgments cited in a related article in the same paper by reporters Lianne Hart and Zeke Minaya make the American public sound like film directors or casting agents.  “With Kerry, I don’t feel any sincerity or conviction,” commented Sharon Toney, an interior decorator. Another Republican, Jack Swickard, remarked, “My biggest fear was that Bush would make a gaffe, and he didn’t.”

What is the magic ingredient that will provoke Americans to go out of their way to vote?

If the television show American Idol succeeds in drawing in twenty million votes a week, doing so without eloquence or truth, maybe the spice of the televised debates will do the same for the presidential election this November.

“To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.”

— Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s response to a question posed about the relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Mr. Rumsfeld was speaking today at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.  

In contrast, Mr. Rumsfeld declared in November of 2002 that “there is no question but that there have been interactions between the Iraqi government, Iraqi officials and Al Qaeda operatives.”

It looks like the boy who cried “flip-flop!” might be getting his comeuppance.  

Mimi Hanaoka

According to Naoto Amaki, the former Japanese ambassador to Lebanon, the WWII Japanese kamikaze bombers — pilots who were sent on suicide missions, particularly during the final year of combat, against the Allied forces — have served as an inadvertent inspiration to Islamist suicide bombers. In a recent LA Times article, Amaki recounted the conversation that he had in 2001 with Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah. Amaki quotes Nasrallah as stating: “We learned how to do suicide missions from the kamikazes … the Shiites all commend the Japanese samurai spirit.”

The question should be whether it is appropriate to compare Islamist suicide bombers with the Japanese kamikaze pilots, and if we are to adopt a historical perspective, the answer is no. The historical context for the Japanese nationalism that encouraged the kamikaze pilots is certainly not analogous to Hezbollah’s Shiite Islamist context. The Japanese kamikaze pilots — their planes weighted down with bombs or additional gasoline tanks — were told to crash into their targets primarily during the hellish last year of WWII. The collective national fatigue was reaching a state of panic, and the death toll was mounting and would, by the end of the war, reach approximately 1.97 million, although such a statistic is open to debate. As Hideo Den, an 81-year-old who attempted but survived a kamikaze suicide mission, explained, “It was desperation that made us do it.”

The single disturbing and poignant point of intersection between the kamikaze pilots and their Islamist counterparts is, apparently, love. Speaking about the kamikaze operations, Shigeyoshi Hamazono, a kamikaze pilot who survived his three attempted kamikaze missions, recently stated: “I still don’t think it was a mistake. I’m proud that I flew as a kamikaze. And I’m glad I came back. We did what we did out of a love for our parents, for the nation … Just like suicide bombers … We did it out of love for something.”

Mimi Hanaoka

Editor’s Note: The following is a response to Laura Louison’s PULSE post “Democracy in action?”

There are plenty of hurdles for many overseas U.S. voters. But I think there’s a way over this one.

You can use the Federal Write-In Ballot if you asked for an absentee ballot before October 2 and the absentee ballot doesn’t arrive in time. You can get a Federal Write-In Ballot from a U.S. consulate or embassy.

Be sure to check your state’s requirements regarding signatures, witnesses, postmarks, etc. These requirements are available online at www.OverseasVote2004.com and at www.fvap.gov.

Many states are overwhelmed with voter registrations and have been delayed in getting the absentee ballots out. Lawsuits about who’s on the ballot have also delayed mailings in some states.

Some consulates and embassies are not well-informed about the requirements and may give misleading and discouraging information. www.fvap.gov, the Pentagon’s official voter assistance site, can be complex and convoluted, but it is quite authoritative if you need something to show to consulate personnel.

Please persist.

And be assured that your vote will be counted. In this election, vote-counting will be carefully monitored. One party or the other will raise a loud cry about every uncounted vote.

In The Fray Contributor