Pam's Points: Congressional war dodging, a draft and recycled rails

U.S. goes to war, but where's Congress?

It's been quite a week - lots of congressional saber rattling about presidential overreach, but, oops, our congressmen and congresswomen really just wanted to complain, not really debate and vote. After all, they all have a lot of campaigning to do back home just ahead of the mid-term elections.

Yet with a new poll out showing that more than 90 percent of Americans were news-aware of recent ISIL beheadings of American and British journalists and another poll showing two-thirds of the country thought the United States ought to do something about it, Congress pecked out a show vote.

On Wednesday, the U.S. House voted to approve a small part of the mission President Barack Obama has outlined and several times asked Congress to debate and consider. That small part was Obama's request to train and arm Syrian rebels to fight the jihadis. On Thursday, the Senate followed suit.

Meanwhile, the overarching, much thornier debate about the president's war powers and battlefront strategy likely won't happen until mid November -- conveniently after voters go to the polls on Nov. 4 for the midterms.

As The New York Times put it in a story on the Senate's vote: "The Senate gave overwhelming approval on Thursday to the training and arming of Syrian rebels, then fled the Capitol with the House for the fall campaign, sidestepping the debate over the extent of American military action until the lame-duck session of Congress later this year."

The Chicago Tribune put it this way: "Sorry. Gotta go campaign. War vote has to wait."

It's a really good thing that these Congress members are not on America's front lines. They'd turn and run there, too.

Wither the draft?

Speaking of war, a friend and Vietnam veteran who was a Navy volunteer has suggested that Congress might be more thoughtful about war votes and saber rattling in general if the United States still had a draft.

He suggests reinstating the military draft as a hedge against wars of choice.

"This, I believe, would be a new ballgame in Congress that has -- the last time I checked -- less than 1 percent of its military-age children serving in the armed forces," he wrote recently in an email to me. "With a draft, the President and Congress would think twice: They would feel compelled to have debates and a vote."

He is absolutely correct. If my or your babies could get scooped out of college or their first jobs and plopped into a boot camp and then a war zone, we'd be smothering those Congress members and they would be singing an entirely different campaign song.

My friend also reminded me that George Bush refused to let the press photograph caskets arriving at U.S. air force bases from Iraq. My friend added: "If during operation 'Shock and Awe,' we had a draft, there would have been demonstrations in the streets," and voters with military-age children would demand that Congress "give their children the courtesy of an up or down vote."

Recycling used rail lines

Chattanooga will soon be spending a $400,000 federal transportation grant [the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, or TIGER discretionary grant] along with $300,000 in city taxpayer dollars to study passenger demand, routes and fares for a light-rail passenger train line through parts of Chattanooga.

Our grant request was among $9.5 billion of such requests, and the study that would recycle some of our old and unused tracks into two rail systems totaling about 44 miles is a good idea -- but not one that won't involve spending more money later.

Recently retired Chamber of Commerce President Ron Harr has said a $40 million upgrade of rail lines and passenger equipment could be a major asset for Chattanooga by adding rail service from downtown to East Chattanooga and to Enterprise South, where VW and Amazon are growing and crowding existing roads with cars. Lisa Maragnano, executive director at the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority, has said a new rail line could complement the city's bus line and offer another alternative to cars.

Yes, $40 million sounds like a lot, until you consider the fact that widening 1.6 miles of U.S. 27 through Stringer's Ridge was budgeted to cost $102.5 million and with some complications now is estimated to require $105.5 million. Even in more normal terrain where 34 massive retaining walls aren't needed, building four-lane highways in urban settings cost an average of $8 million to $10 million per mile, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association's website. And, yes, we pay for those roads -- and their maintenance -- too.

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