Perhaps if there was a draft, lots of people would start to understand the importance of using their vote in the next elections, maybe they would not be quite so complacent and perhaps they would take an interest in politics.
Pax Americana? Is that some cable TV network that runs episodes of Seventh Heaven dubbed into Spanish?
Oh wait - that’s the mighty American umbrella of peace and prosperity that the world lived under from the 1945 surrender of Japan until…the Greek Civil War of 1948? The North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950? Anyone? Anyone?
Bueller?
Conscript armies suck. The U.S. military does not need a draft, and the military leadership emphatically does not want a draft. A draft only works when you need soldiers for cannon-fodder. If you need them to be highly trained, highly motivated, technically knowledgeable, resourceful, and genuinely interested in doing their jobs to the best of their ability, you want a volunteer force.
If the issue is manpower, the U.S. could increase that quite a bit without a draft. The army in 1990 had hundreds of thousands more soldiers than it does today, and it had them without a draft. You can increase recruitment by A) paying more, in salary and benefits, B) campaining for soldiers more (advertising, recruitment drives, etc), or C) lowering standards for admission. All of these options are preferable to a draft.
Of course, most calls for a draft today are totally disingenuous. They don’t come from an honest desire to make the military stronger or more capable. Rather, they’re a way to drum up opposition to current policy. That’s it.
I don’t really think they are very united in wanting to force us out, to be honest. I have a deep suspicion that the various groups are more concerned with trying to stake out a share of the power in Iraq and are mostly looking now to the post-American occupation situation; I think most of them consider it a foregone conclusion we’re on our way out.
As for the draft, before we ever consider a draft we have to consider redeployments out of less essential areas, heightened recruitment drives, and reactivation of retired personnel who are still healthy enough to perform their former duties.
We could form a Foreign Legion very easily.
US Citizenship for 4-6 years as a grunt.
Good/bad?
Not a terrible idea, non-citizens can currently join the United States military if they are in the country with legal permanent residence, though.
If we have a draft nowadays, I would think it would have to include women, since they occupy most careers in the army. I can’t see how you could logically argue for a draft without women, can you? If women were draftable, then a much larger portion of the population would be vocal in expressing their opinion about entering wars.
We should have mandatory government service for all 18 year-olds but not a draft. The mandatory service could be in the military or it could be something a bit more peaceful like being an inner-city teaching assistant or helping to build a new public fiber-optic internet infrastructure.
Most importantly, we should not maintain a standing offensive army. That’s how we get into trouble in the first place. Because as long as we are paying all that money for such an offensive powerhouse, we are going to use it.
Used to be we maintained enough of a military to defend the nation and that’s it. It was only if we needed to massively increase the fighting force (e.g. WWII) that we used a draft. When the Cold War came around we decided we needed a huge standing military all the time and considering the war we were expecting to have to fight against the Soviets, it made some sense.
The Cold War is over. Time to get rid of that standing force that the single most respected person in our history warned us never to have. It only serves the interests of the military-industrial complex that another incredibly respected president–a Republican–warned us to be wary of.
What has this nation come to when we follow the whims of a cowardly chimp and his Sith Lord master instead of the solemn advice from Washington and Eisenhower–the Gods of two of our three greatest wars?
What we need in Iraq, at a minimum, is a force that can speak Arabic. Since our volunteers overwhelmingly don’t, they’re intervening in a civil war, fighting assorted insurgencies, with the equivalent of a blindfold on. We’re all but using this skilled force as cannon fodder. Might as well use conscripts.
Some of this is already being done, of course. High school kids approaching their 18th birthdays get regular calls from their Army recruiters; it’s practically legalized harassment in some instances.
It’s kinda the mirror image of all those chickenhawks who say we’re in an existential conflict, who are or should be quite aware of how overloaded our current force is, yet don’t volunteer to serve. Especially the ones who say they’re doing something more essential by blogging in support of the war.
The difference is that the calls for a draft don’t kill anyone.
No major world power fails to maintain a standing Army. With the level of professionalism and expertise currently present with most militaries, it’d be folly to try and fight a major war with mostly conscripts and volunteers ala World War II.
If anything World War II taught us the folly of not keeping a large enough standing army (we’ve actually had a standing Army since the 18th century, by the way, when that most respected American was still alive, we had one pre-WWII, it just was not large enough to serve our needs for a massive world war.)
Since isolationism has proven to be disastrous, and is accepted to be such by most historians, not having a standing army is disastrous. Having no standing army is the equivalent to isolationism and it would severely hurt us as a state.
Also, if you’re really asserting that us maintaining a standing army “for the Cold War” has caused us to use our military more, I think you’re badly mistaken.
First off, of course, we’ve had a standing Army forever, it used to be a very small standing Army, but we’ve had one for ages and ages and just because it was small does not mean it was “offensive” or “defensive” it was used for both. And pre-Cold War, we used it quite a lot. We’ve landed troops on foreign soil many times throughout the 19th century and pre-WWII. In the Philippines, in Cuba, in Panama (during the Panamanian independence before we established the canal), in China during the Boxer rebellion, in Mexico, in Hawaii when it was a sovereign Kingdom, and et al.
And even though it’s being done, we’re still scraping the bottom of the recruiting barrel.
And to the extent it’s not being done, you have to ask, why the hell not?? It’s not like Bush doesn’t know how often we’re sending the same troops back there, over and over again; how many are all but extorted into re-upping (and getting a bonus for doing so) by the threat of indefinite stop-loss orders; and all that. And if he doesn’t, he should, and those working for him surely do.
Whenever Bush talks about supporting the troops, he’s being totally disingenuous. It doesn’t come from an honest desire to make a difficult and dangerous job no worse than it must be. Rather, it’s a way to drum up support for current policy. That’s it.
So what you’re saying is that there’s no war big enough to justify a draft. If I’m incorrect about that, how big does a war have to be, before we judge that it’s too big for the army we’ve got?
You see, this is the problem I have: we clearly didn’t have enough troops from the beginning to execute this war properly, just like Shinseki said. And it wasn’t like there was anything magical about 2003; this war could have waited a year while we recruited a larger army. Hell, since they knew from 9/12/01 that they were headed for Iraq, and since we’d have had lines out the door of recruiting stations back then if we’d put out the call, why the fuck didn’t the Bushies do this??
Anyhow, by April 2004, everyone had to know we needed more troops. But the days of easy recruitment were gone. So do you draft, or keep fighting with too small an army? War proponents have been facing that choice for the past three years. Fighting with too small an army - the choice that’s been made - now how’s that working out?
Aren’t we doing all three and still having problems? 
How long a service (1, 2 yrs)? Where are we going get the money to pay millions of teenagers to do this? Do they get to live at home or in government housing? How much would it cost to build this housing? How do you make people do quality work when they don’t even want to be there in the first place and would like nothing better than being “fired”? The threat of prison? We barely have enough room for real criminals.
There was an article in Salon a few days ago about military personnel fleeing to Canada to avoid service. And that’s with an all-volunteer military! It wasn’t a lot–they cited a few hundred people AWOL, and my guess is that the number in Canada would be far less than that.
But, in an age where people have immense opportunity to avoid a universal draft (fleeing abroad, claiming to be gay), what is the point in having a universal draft? The people who don’t want to go will find a way out, and the people who go will have made a voluntary decision that it is better to serve than to choose one of the ways out. In short, we’ll end up with a voluntary military anyway. It’s just that we would have created a much different incentive structure to volunteer, and I’m not sure that it’s one that would be productive.
In any case, this is kind of moot. The military says they don’t want a draft, and until they say otherwise, there isn’t ever going to be one–not to mention the political thorniness of the issue. If we really want to increase the size of the force today, that’s a supply-demand problem, and the way you increase supply is to increase the incentives. If we don’t have enough people joining, then clearly we need to increase incentives to the point that they will join (that is, if we want more people to join). Maybe that means doubling or tripling salaries–I don’t know. Or the idea of offering US Citizenship as mentioned earlier would be a powerful incentive too. But calling for a draft is, IMHO, a waste of everyone’s time.
I’m not really sure how you reached this conclusion from my post, but let’s suffice to say it’s not even remotely in the same galaxy as what I said.
When I said you don’t want to fight a war with mostly conscripts ala WWII, my point was, “you want a larger professional Army.” It didn’t say anything as to whether or not you should ever open up conscription.
Let me guess that you aren’t 18? If not, would you go back and fulfill your service or have you already done so?
I love it how these people calling for a draft are too old for it to include them. My three brothers and I are all eligible right now. Not a single one of us was old enough to vote for any of congress or the President when they authorized military force in Iraq. Why the hell should we go and be shot at or killed in a war we don’t believe in for people we don’t give a fuck about?
Send the retirement community there. :rolleyes:
There’s no chance in hell that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would survive a draft. None. It simply wouldn’t be feasible or rational. This isn’t the 60s were being gay could land one in prison or a mental hospital.
It’s my opinion conscription is a big enough imposition on personal liberty as to only be justified in the defense of the state. Thus it was justified in the War of 1812, the American Civil War, and World War II. It wasn’t justified in the Korean War, WWI, or the Vietnam War. Note I actually supported the decision to defend South Korea, I just think that if you’re going to take the position of doing things like that in general you need to have a large enough standing Army to do such things without conscripting. People shouldn’t be taken away from their lives against their will unless it is in true defense of country.
That isn’t to say I don’t support X U.S. action that wasn’t defensive, but was rather a support of ideas like collective security or international peacekeeping, but that I believe such affairs should be carried out by volunteers.