May not be planning on a draft, may be planning that the surge is so spectacularly successful, they can start drawing down troops.
For some reason I’m reading that as an LOLcat caption.
Huh? Wha?
In the event you are right, then the military will simply have one or two extra corps, a trivial expense. If I am right, we will need troops to fight the wars the politicians start. Obviously, a draft is a prudent precaution to take.
Only if you want them to have the troops to fight those wars. IMHO, what we need is a much smaller military. Less costly in itself, and it’ll help keep the politicians from trying world conquest fantasies.
It’s not a draft, it’s a freedom raffle.
Reminds me of this :
This thread is a strawman. The strongest statement Lute makes is “I think it makes sense to certainly consider it, and I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table…” which is certainly true. In the same sense, I absolutely guarantee you that it makes sense to consider invading Canada, and we have plans to do that somewhere in the Pentagon. There, someone’s job is to have a plan for every conceivable scenario.
No reasonable person reading Lute’s comments could walk away thinking Lute was actually calling for Congress to re-instate the draft.
There’s more support for the idea that the Democrats want to reinstate the draft, considering it was a Democrat that actually introduced a bill to do just that. But again, no serious person accused the Democrats of that, since the bill was clearly a ploy to repudiate the idea.
The difference here, of course, is that when that happened, we didn’t have a thread with multiple participants giving credence to the absurd idea.
No, the difference is that the Democrats are not presently run by warmongering idiots. There wasn’t any reason to believe that the Democrats really wanted a draft, or were politically suicidal enough to push for one if they did. On the other hand, the Republican leadership does have an obvious use for drafted soldiers, and appears outright irrational.
Then what is your problem?
Which is why I made no such claim in my OP. Strawman, indeed.
Maybe August 11 is National Bizarro World Day or something, but I have to agree with Der Trihs on this one. In fact I think he nailed it.
When the Democrats introduce a bill calling for the draft, whatever my opinons on political grandstanding aside, it’s not hard for me to see it as mere political football. If the Republicans were to introduce a bill, or raise it as a serious issue, or even bring it up in passing like they’re doing now, the situation is different.
Let’s be honest. Five years ago, could anyone, Democrat or Republican, have predicted Bush would have done something like get us involved in Iraq? I mean seriously believed it? This took most–if not all–taxpayers by surprise, didn’t it? And now we’ve become mired in it. And now our troops are being stretched to the limit. And now the same braniac who got us into this mess is sitting there wondering what to do next.
Bush might not be stupid on an absolute scale, but there is no way in hell he belongs in the White House. His decisions have led this country from bad to worse, and I can see no reason to think he’s going to make any more of an intelligent decision regarding the draft than most of the other decisions he’s made, or rather, the decisions his advisers have made, and he just sort of follows. I’m trying to think of a president less in touch with the citizens he ostensibly serves than Bush, and quite frankly, I can’t come up with anyone. Maybe Harding. But no. No, Bush and his advisors have shown a marked disregard for both rational decisions and public opinion, and when he or anyone under him brings up the draft, I worry.
So how many casual one-nighters does it take to be officially too gay?
None. You can never be too rich, too thin, or too gay.
I love misposts!
Which Republican leaders are calling for a draft? I guess I missed that part…
I’m sorry, but that is simply the tired old argument that Bush is “irrational” and therefore anything bad you say about him is true. In this case, of course, is not even just Bush, but “the Republican leadership”.
Not my point. My point is that whenever it’s been brought up in the past (typically by a Filthy Liberal Politician) the standard SDMB Righty response has been that 'the Generals wouldn’t want a bunch of low-skill troops in our high-tech army".
That’s changed, apparently. Once again, the geniuses who proclaim to know how things “really work” fail spectacularly.
-Joe
You have to agree that in a war where the enemy could be anywhere, lots of warm bodies (so we can effectively scout everywhere at once,) would be a lot more effective than mere intelligence about who is and isnt an enemy.
You’d agree that 50,000 drafted troops is more ethical, effective, and cheaper than keeping our costly and ineffective Arabic interpreters, right?
No, no, and no. Forcing men to kill innocent civilians in The War on Terror is immoral. A volunteer army is more efficient, fights longer, and better. Nothing about a draft is better than a volunteer army.
I’m surprised the Republicans haven’t figured out a way to marry their two pet issues and send illegal immigrants to Iraq.
I heard the interview and heard it just as Bricker says it, not as Fear presented it, as “a trial ballon” or “a real posibility” for the near future … “perhaps as soon as next spring” …
He was making the point that militarily we are stretched pretty damn far and, when asked point on, that as a military decision a draft might, at some point, make sense, as it becomes more and more difficult to stretch a limitted number of troops farther and farther and harder to compete for soldiers out of the elgible job applicant pool. For now though “the all-volunteer force is serving us exceptionally well.” Moreover that it is not a military decision but a policy decision. And as a policy decision “that’s a national policy decision point that we have not yet reached” (as he was saying before he was cut off to set up a question assured of getting a more exciting answer … I mean what could he say? “No, we’d never think that a draft could ever make sense. Never. Not even to consider.”?
It is not on the table as a serious current policy consideration.
I mean c’mon. It isn’t like there is a shortage of actual stupidity coming out of this administration that we need to create some that isn’t there.
After the Civil War the wartime draftees and volunteers went home. A volunteer army with a large fraction if immigrants as members patroled the plains and conducted the campaigns agains the native population there. From what I’ve read a large fraction of Custer’s 7th Cavalry was brand new immigrants. The Regimental song, Garryowen, originated among its Irish members.
Volunteering if the US is attacked as in WWII, or the national existence is threatened as by secession is one thing. Things like the Iraq adventure are something entirely different. I seriously question whether JFK or his brother Joe Jr. would have volunteered for an operation like that in Iraq. For example, when our current vice president was asked why he didn’t serve in Vietnam he said he had “other priorities.” Many others did likewise.