If the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq can see to it that only good conservatives and loyal Bushies get hired, it should be easy enough to ensure that only people like that get drafted.
Yes, but a properly designed hat can conceal it. (OTOH, the most appropriate hat for him mirrors and accentuates it.)
Of course it’s a tax.
The existing system already has a good mechanism for requiring most people to serve the country: it’s called “get a job if you want a half-decent lifestyle”.
I’m not an expert on Canadian law. FWIW, the article made it seem like this policy was partly a function of the current party in power and that with a different party in power, it could change.
But it seems to me that there are plenty of non-extraditable countries that are easy enough to flee to and move money to.
Are there civilian consequences for this type of discharge? Would people generally be discouraged from pursuing this route? (These are genuine questions–it’s not an area that I’m familiar with)
Oh, and I may have to rethink my stance on the effect a draft would have on DADT. According to Stars and Stripes at least one service man who was discharged under DADT has been recalled to duty.
Very well said.
There is no way DADT would even be practical in a draft. It’d be too easy for someone to get declared morally unfit for service. Any conscript could say “I like boys” (or “I like girls” in a coed draft) and there’d be no way to disprove it.
Well, if you think it’s a certainty that the government will always choose the most practical route, then we have a fundamental disagreement about the way things work. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this point.
I can support a universal draft if the U.S. is actually threatened by invasion, or if an identified enemy is in the process of enslaving huge areas of the earth in which the U.S. has an economic and/or security stake, but that hasn’t happened since the 1940s. Beyond that I just can’t support it, despite having argued just a few months ago in favor of some form of universal public service for all high school graduates. (I reserve the right to change my mind.)
It’s my understanding that modern military thinking eschews massive troop/tank invasions in favor of more surgical air-ground strikes with superior firepower and technology to decapitate the enemy quickly. Although it’s fairly new to U.S. operations, we were fairly successful using a proxy army in Afghanistan to keep down our own casualties, at least in the early going.
This philosophy appears to have two flaws, however. The first is that, with a smaller, quicker, more easily deployed military force, it’s far too tempting to use that force unwisely, as we’ve done in Iraq. (I want to point out that, like the overwhelming majority of Americans and people around the world, I unreservedly supported the war in Afghanistan, and was greatly heartened when our government didn’t make the same mistakes in the beginning that the Russians had made.) The second is that, while it’s easy to get in, it’s hard to accomplish anything while there because there just isn’t enough people power. I think the Iraq misadventure has proven this.
It’s possible that the massive human wave the Allies threw at Europe and the Pacific to win World War II also made it possible to “pacify” and then rebuild Germany and Japan afterward. That wave was possible only through conscription. And conscription was possible because most Americans believed that the United States should be involved in that war (indeed, after Japan attacked, it was almost impossible to not be involved at least in the Pacific.)
I don’t think conscription is possible right now because Congress would have to authorize it, and I believe huge numbers of Americans would be e-mailing and telephoning their representatives and senators with the message that a “yes” vote for the draft would be a "no’ vote for a continued political career.
Well, it certainly isn’t any part of the social contract between American citizens and their government. There are other nations in which this is a clear covenant between citizen and state, but in these cases the modern version is a benign remnant of just what **Sam ** called it – serfdom. The very idea that we don’t owe our government any service is exactly what sets this country apart from its European and Asian predecessors. I would hope, however, that if our nation was attacked, you’d be obliged to join the rest of us in defense. And I use “attack” and “defense” in the most literal of senses; I’m not talking about some theoretical “war on terror.”