Ben Stein Calls for Military Draft

[Muffin]

[QUOTE=alphaboi867]
Good point, if the military raises it’s pay high enough and gives good enough benefits it’s recruitment/retention problems could disappear, but how just how does military pay need to be to attract enough quality people?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know, but I expect that a study asking people whom the military would like to recruit might give a good indication.

Regardless of the amount, it seems to me that it would be much more fair to spread the cost financially across all taxpayers and recruit true volunteers, rather than to select a few people against their will to be killed.

(BTW, I had seriously considered joining my country’s (Canada’s) military at one time, but decided against it simply because the wages were to low.)

[Tuckerfan]

[QUOTE=Monty]
I can’t see how this is accurate. There’s a statutory force level for the Armed Forces and, unless I’m incredibly mistaken, the recruiting goals are set to meet those levels, not to meet some public relations fake target number.
[/QUOTE]

I heard Barry McCaffery (former general and drug czar) make that same claim on NPR. I’ve done some googling to try and find a cite for that, but no luck.

[Martin_Hyde]

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
OK, you were operating in my blind spot there. Because I can’t see what possible need we’d have on an ongoing basis for a much larger army than the one we went into the Iraq War with.

Now that we don’t have to worry about the Soviet Union invading West Germany, there’s little defensive reason for a bigger army. And then there are wars of choice that lead to occupations, and those that don’t. For the latter, we don’t need a huge army either, and the former are simply a bad idea.

We really don’t want to do another one of these, 10-15 years down the road, because we won’t get it any more right than this one. Even if we go in with the requisite number of troops for containing an insurgency.
[/QUOTE]

Well, I still agree with the decision to go into Iraq, so I view it as part and parcel that if such actions are going to be going on, we need a properly sized military to handle them.

Our military isn’t the size it is because of the Cold War any more, it’s been recognized that throughout the 1990s we’d still need a sizeable military anytime we needed to deploy troops around the world. We have large commitments to keep thousands in Germany, Korea, and et cetera, and we’ve had Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Balkans since the end of the Cold War. I don’t see any reason not to increase the size of our military.

[Martin_Hyde]

[QUOTE=Wolfian]
War of 1812? My knowledge of American history at that time period is spotty, but didn’t the Americans essentially start that one in order to conquer tracts of Canada/get Britain out of North America?
[/QUOTE]

The War of 1812 was started for a few reasons. The western congressmen wanted more land, the people wanted an end to impressment. The country was very divided on the war.

But whatever the reasons for starting the war, a foreign army landed on American soil and thus the interests of the state in self-defense justified conscription.

Getting hung up on whatever reasons there were behind the war is more or less meaningless in the context of what I was talking about. When a state is actually being invaded by foreign armies (regardless of who started the war) the state has the right to impose on its citizens and conscript them in order to defend the sovereignty of the state.

To my knowledge conscription wasn’t actually used in the War of 1812, though Madison tried to start a draft.

[Martin_Hyde]

[QUOTE=mswas]
A bigger army will work to our detriment. The problem for us as it is, is our force cannot react quickly enough to developing problems. We lack the intelligence, considering we just kicked out a sizable chunk of our Arabic translators being that they were gay. We need a smaller more nimble and highly trained force, not a larger more ponderous one.
[/quote]

Lack of agility isn’t the problem, nor would more troops make us less agile. This isn’t the age of Napoleon where an Army is one large group of men all marching together, where more people slows the military down.

The problem is doctrinal in that our soldiers have never been adequately prepared for counterinsurgency. This isn’t the kind of thing that is best taught on the fly, it has to actually be prepared for and systems have to be in place for it, we need to focus less on “missions” where soldiers escape base for a few hours to ride around town and more on actually having constant, continuous presences in the streets, more akin to that of a police force.

[mswas]

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Lack of agility isn’t the problem, nor would more troops make us less agile. This isn’t the age of Napoleon where an Army is one large group of men all marching together, where more people slows the military down.
[/quote]

I’m going to have to disagree. It’s called ‘bureaucratic creep’. We’re not talking about marching orders we’re talking about a group of 10 people being able to shut down a section of oil production before the intelligence is able to identify the players, identify the plan, and convince the powers that be that it warrants attention and get orders assigned.

The problem is doctrinal in that our soldiers have never been adequately prepared for counterinsurgency. This isn’t the kind of thing that is best taught on the fly, it has to actually be prepared for and systems have to be in place for it, we need to focus less on “missions” where soldiers escape base for a few hours to ride around town and more on actually having constant, continuous presences in the streets, more akin to that of a police force.

Nah, that’s totally untenable. You can’t police everywhere. Saddam trained his military to be an insurgent force between 91 and 03. If even half of them are playing the insurgency game that’s hundreds of thousands of trained troops building distributed networks working in cell structures. That’s not even counting the Shi’ites. We simply do not have the manpower to police all of the middle-east and no draft would change that.

I am of the opinion that the sociological implications of this are lost on most people, particularly the people who are giving orders. More troops policing the streets of Baghdad won’t do anything to stop a bomb from going off in a subway station in Berlin. The more we focus on Iraq, the less attention we have to give to other places. Having given attention to Iraq we’ve stretched our troops to thin to be watching Afghanistan, when the real trouble is within Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Ethiopia just sent in troops with North Korean weapons and American money to toss out the Islamic courts from Somalia. What they have created now is an insurgency in Somalia.

I’m curious have year read anything about the close to 50,000 Lebanese operating out of Paraguay in an area that is not controlled by the Paraguayan government at all? The CIA has been moving American troops in there. They say it’s to fight Hizbollah in Ciudad de Este Paraguay, which is sort of like the pirate mecca of South America. The locals in that area claim it is to dominate the Guarani Acquifer, which is one of the largest fresh water acquifers in the world.

It is not at all about increased troop presence, it’s about elite troop mobility and better intel.

[MovieMogul]

[QUOTE=Monty]
I can’t see how this is accurate. There’s a statutory force level for the Armed Forces and, unless I’m incredibly mistaken, the recruiting goals are set to meet those levels, not to meet some public relations fake target number.
[/QUOTE]
They’re definitely doing some fudging:

Last year, the Army missed its recruiting goal by the biggest gap since 1979. It met its quota this year, in part by lowering standards. The Army has nearly doubled the percentage of recruits it will accept who score badly on aptitude tests and increased the maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42. It has also admitted more recruits who previously would not have made the grade for criminal, medical or moral reasons. In 2005, 17 percent (21,880 new soldiers) qualified under such waivers, a 42 percent increase since the pre-Iraq year of 2000.

The Army says that the waiver program simply gives young people who made mistakes a second chance. But the matter is not academic. In an extreme example, Pvt. Steven Green, the soldier in federal prison under charges that he raped and killed a 14-year-old girl in Iraq and murdered three of her family members, got into the Army with a waiver. He had three criminal convictions and a history of substance abuse. Segal said that to expand the Army anytime soon might mean that the ranks will be filled with “more people with criminal records.”

In addition to lowering standards, the Army has dramatically increased the number of recruiters in the field. But signs indicate that they are increasingly desperate. The Army briefly suspended recruiting efforts completely in May 2005 after receiving reports that recruiters were forging documents, helping young people dupe the drug-testing system and asking teens to lie to their parents.

And again

The U.S. Army exceeded its recruitment goals for January, the eighth month in a row in which it has hit the numbers expected of it. One reason for this newfound success? The Army is accepting more and more recruits with criminal histories.

As the New York Times reports, the number of criminal-background “waivers” granted to recruits has grown by about 65 percent in the last three years. The Times says that the “sharpest increase” has come in waivers for “serious misdemeanors” – crimes like aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide.

[Martin_Hyde]

[QUOTE=mswas]
Nah, that’s totally untenable. You can’t police everywhere. Saddam trained his military to be an insurgent force between 91 and 03. If even half of them are playing the insurgency game that’s hundreds of thousands of trained troops building distributed networks working in cell structures. That’s not even counting the Shi’ites. We simply do not have the manpower to police all of the middle-east and no draft would change that.

I am of the opinion that the sociological implications of this are lost on most people, particularly the people who are giving orders. More troops policing the streets of Baghdad won’t do anything to stop a bomb from going off in a subway station in Berlin. The more we focus on Iraq, the less attention we have to give to other places. Having given attention to Iraq we’ve stretched our troops to thin to be watching Afghanistan, when the real trouble is within Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Ethiopia just sent in troops with North Korean weapons and American money to toss out the Islamic courts from Somalia. What they have created now is an insurgency in Somalia.

I’m curious have year read anything about the close to 50,000 Lebanese operating out of Paraguay in an area that is not controlled by the Paraguayan government at all? The CIA has been moving American troops in there. They say it’s to fight Hizbollah in Ciudad de Este Paraguay, which is sort of like the pirate mecca of South America. The locals in that area claim it is to dominate the Guarani Acquifer, which is one of the largest fresh water acquifers in the world.

It is not at all about increased troop presence, it’s about elite troop mobility and better intel.
[/QUOTE]

How do you “produce” better intel? That’s outside the scope of what we’re talking about. We have elite troop mobility, the United States Army, Navy, and Marine Corps have been continuously restructured since the Cold War, with the focus being an ability to deploy a significant force anywhere in the world in only a few days time we have that capability.

Mobility has nothing to do with our problems in Iraq, it’s arguable we need to get more mobile if our goal is to deal with every hotspot the world over, from Paraguay to Indonesia. But I’ve seen absolutely no evidence that we aren’t the most mobile military force in history with reorganization towards smaller operating groups and greater mobility having been continuously focused upon over the past few years.

The problem in Iraq has little to nothing to do with mobility or intel. I’m not sure why you think we need to police the entire Middle East, I’m talking about Iraq and key locations in Iraq. Saying Iraq can’t be policed is like saying the United States can’t be policed. Iraq can be policed, can it be policed perfectly? No, of course not. But neither is the United States or any other country. We’d have less success in Iraq than we would in the United States, for example vis-a-vis policing the countryside, because Iraq is less stable. But the more security we provide, by pro actively having a continuous presence on the streets, the more stability “dividends” we reap.

You seem to be talking past me. Your bringing up stuff like Paraguay shows your interest is in deploying troops at random around the world wherever we locate a “hot spot” and then I guess leaving. Like some sort of SWAT team. The problem with that of course is, unlike a SWAT raid a military action taken against a “hot spot” can get you bogged down for months or years. There’s no guarantees, other than the fact we are in Iraq right now and our situation there has nothing to do with lack of mobility.

As for Iraq being unimportant, for better or worse it has become important now, to ignore that is folly.

You also vastly overstate “bureaucratic creep” as having a serious effect on military mobility in the United States Armed Forces. We already have significant portions of rapidly deployable troops, I’ve seen little to suggest that by upping our manpower we would reduce the mobility of those divisions.

[Martin_Hyde]

There’s a reason that historically militaries have been filled with criminals. This isn’t something new or even entirely unreasonable when faced with severe manpower shortages.

[Merijeek]

[QUOTE=appleciders]
I’m 19 and I don’t think a mandatory period of service is a horrible idea. Mandatory military service would be essentially immoral, and I think anything over about 18 months would be ridiculous, but the idea that you give some of your time to society as well as money in taxes isn’t a bad one. Getting that system established, though, would be a nightmare. Can you imagine what colleges would do?

Doesn’t Germany do something similar to this? After turning 18, you have to serve 12 months in the army or 18 months in a civil-service position?
[/QUOTE]

If you look at those 12/18 months as a “tax” rather than a chance to server your country, I wonder how people would view it.

-Joe

[RTFirefly]

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Well, I still agree with the decision to go into Iraq, so I view it as part and parcel that if such actions are going to be going on, we need a properly sized military to handle them.

Our military isn’t the size it is because of the Cold War any more, it’s been recognized that throughout the 1990s we’d still need a sizeable military anytime we needed to deploy troops around the world. We have large commitments to keep thousands in Germany, Korea, and et cetera, and we’ve had Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Balkans since the end of the Cold War. I don’t see any reason not to increase the size of our military.
[/QUOTE]
Excluding Iraq, our current army could have easily handled all the other situations. So it really comes down to Iraq and similar situations. If you still think invading Iraq made sense, then wanting a larger military makes perfect sense too. I of course think that’s crazy talk, but you know that, and we can probably forgo debating that one more time.

[Sam_Stone]

@Merijeek

If you look at those 12/18 months as a “tax” rather than a chance to server your country, I wonder how people would view it.

Like the gross abridgement of freedom that it is.

I find the notion that free people somehow owe a stint of servitude to society to be repugnant. I’m not a serf, a chattel, or a peasant who’s life is owned by someone else. No one has a right to conscript me into a service for any reason.

[mswas]

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
There’s a reason that historically militaries have been filled with criminals. This isn’t something new or even entirely unreasonable when faced with severe manpower shortages.
[/QUOTE]

But that the technology exists to network a small number of people using goods available on the open market, that have the power to disrupt the systems that support millions of people. That IS new. Also, urban warfare as it is today is a specific military discipline. Soldiers of the past were not being trained in urban warfare, which is just as applicable in Los Angeles as it is in Baghdad. A guy I met told me about how freaky it was to see MS13 graffiti all over Baghdad. Read up on MS13 if you would, you might find it to be rather interesting.

[mswas]

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
How do you “produce” better intel? That’s outside the scope of what we’re talking about. We have elite troop mobility, the United States Army, Navy, and Marine Corps have been continuously restructured since the Cold War, with the focus being an ability to deploy a significant force anywhere in the world in only a few days time we have that capability.
[/quote]

We should focus on being able to project force within hours for tactical strikes anywhere, not a focus on maintaining an invasion force in any particular country.

Mobility has nothing to do with our problems in Iraq, it’s arguable we need to get more mobile if our goal is to deal with every hotspot the world over, from Paraguay to Indonesia. But I’ve seen absolutely no evidence that we aren’t the most mobile military force in history with reorganization towards smaller operating groups and greater mobility having been continuously focused upon over the past few years.

My point is that being bogged down in Iraq removes our ability to move quickly. Our resources are not unlimited no matter how badass our military may be. Bringing more troops into Iraq focuses on the war as if we were fighting a centralized enemy. We are not fighting a centralized enemy. It doesn’t matter whether or not with some ridiculous number of troops we could pacify Iraq. That is focusing too much on one area and forgetting about the larger picture.

I am not talking about the mobility of troops, I am talking about the extra layers of bureaucracy that are created by expanding the size of an organization. You are comparing the US military to other forces. We aren’t talking about forces. We are talking about asymmetrical warfare, and enemy that is only tenuously united by a common ideology, but there isn’t anything truly resembling a top down hierarchy. Terrorists are dealing with each other in a blackmarket capacity, like Gangs, more than ‘militaries’. It’s about the organizational structure and the problem you are adapting to. The comparison of what capability our military has in comparison to other forces of its kind.

The problem in Iraq has little to nothing to do with mobility or intel. I’m not sure why you think we need to police the entire Middle East, I’m talking about Iraq and key locations in Iraq. Saying Iraq can’t be policed is like saying the United States can’t be policed. Iraq can be policed, can it be policed perfectly? No, of course not. But neither is the United States or any other country. We’d have less success in Iraq than we would in the United States, for example vis-a-vis policing the countryside, because Iraq is less stable. But the more security we provide, by pro actively having a continuous presence on the streets, the more stability “dividends” we reap.

The Iraq war is a distraction from the real war. It locks our forces down in an untenable situation. Iraq can be policed, certainly, but at what cost? Do you have some examples of successful occupied countries in history where the populace did not want them there? I have not seen evidence of ‘stability’ dividends. It requires too few people to throw a fly in the ointment.

You seem to be talking past me. Your bringing up stuff like Paraguay shows your interest is in deploying troops at random around the world wherever we locate a “hot spot” and then I guess leaving. Like some sort of SWAT team. The problem with that of course is, unlike a SWAT raid a military action taken against a “hot spot” can get you bogged down for months or years. There’s no guarantees, other than the fact we are in Iraq right now and our situation there has nothing to do with lack of mobility.

I’m not talking about going in and trying to pacify hotspots. I am talking about going in and breaking up cells. I do not think we should try to govern other places as we have been. The whole nation-building idea is a neo-colonialist fantasy.

One way they can make Intel better, is not fire Arabic translators just because they are gay.

As for Iraq being unimportant, for better or worse it has become important now, to ignore that is folly.

It is important, but it is not the entire problem.

You also vastly overstate “bureaucratic creep” as having a serious effect on military mobility in the United States Armed Forces. We already have significant portions of rapidly deployable troops, I’ve seen little to suggest that by upping our manpower we would reduce the mobility of those divisions.

I disagree. You are still talking about deploying a centralized military against a decentralized foe. A person acting alone can easily destabilize centralized structures.

[Musicat]

[QUOTE=Merijeek]
If you look at those 12/18 months as a “tax” rather than a chance to server your country, I wonder how people would view it.

-Joe
[/QUOTE]
As MORE taxes? Obviously, we aren’t taxed enough.

[Lemur866]

[QUOTE=BrightNShiny]
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.

[/QUOTE]

Except fleeing to Canada is completely pointless, because Canada will ship you back. This isn’t the Vietnam era, when Canada refused to extradite draft dodgers, on the grounds that dodging the draft wasn’t a crime in Canada. Canada can and will extradite AWOL volunteer soldiers, because desertion is a crime in both Canada and the US.

It seems to me we’ve got a set of people here who didn’t think clearly about what volunteering for military service really meant, and now aren’t thinking clearly about what “fleeing to Canada” really means.

Anybody who really wants out of the military can do so, you just have to fail your drug tests. The only caveat is that you don’t have to mind getting a dishonorable discharge. Going AWOL accomplishes nothing, because you’ll eventually get that dishonorable discharge anyway, whether it’s today or a couple years from now. No

[greg58]

[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
He seems to feel that it’s the only way to achieve victory.Does he have a point?
[/QUOTE]

If we’re going to go around the world trying to “spread democracy” we better have a draft or we won’t have enough soldiers to march to their deaths.

[Merijeek]

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Like the gross abridgement of freedom that it is.

I find the notion that free people somehow owe a stint of servitude to society to be repugnant. I’m not a serf, a chattel, or a peasant who’s life is owned by someone else. No one has a right to conscript me into a service for any reason.
[/QUOTE]

Sure, but you’re over 18, so this will be other people who are expected to serve.

-Joe

[villa]

It’s odd that when people like Ben Stein talk about conscription they always mean conscription of manpower, and would throw their arms up in horror at the concept of conscription of wealth. I guess sending someone’s kid off to die overseas is much more acceptable than nationalizing a factory to produce needed war materiel.

[RTFirefly]

[QUOTE=villa]
It’s odd that when people like Ben Stein talk about conscription they always mean conscription of manpower, and would throw their arms up in horror at the concept of conscription of wealth. I guess sending someone’s kid off to die overseas is much more acceptable than nationalizing a factory to produce needed war materiel.
[/QUOTE]
So “Draft Ben Stein’s Money” isn’t gonna be on TV soon, huh?