Certainly true. Look at the numbers in WW2. Despite Pearl Harbor, no US service was even close to meeting their recruiting needs without the draft.
Yesterday I read an article about the decline in suicide rates in Iraq and Kuwait (sorry no link… lost it). It mentioned specifically that low morale was more prevalent among reservists and transportation units. Combat Units were better… if not exactly singing and dancing about being in Iraq.
Obviously people in combat units have a bigger chance of having chosen to serve despite Iraq and so less to gripe about.
As for WWII… the draft was something normal back then… to bring back draft after having a volunteer army so long is much harder.
Could you go into some detail, please? Because if this war has shown us anything, it’s the futility, in an age of Fourth Generation warfare, of farming out in-theatre ‘non-combat’ jobs to civilians: when there are no front lines, anyone involved in the task must be prepared to fight. Such people can either be soldiers, or people we hire from Halliburton at astronomical rates.
OK, let’s do the math: as of today, 28 months into the Iraq adventure, 1771 Americans have died of wounds incurred there. Assuming a constant troop strength of 140,000 in country, that’s 542 deaths per 100,000 troops per year.
Compare that with American males aged 18-35. Our troops in Iraq also include women (lower mortality rate in civilian life) and older males (higher). Hopefully the exclusions balance. (Want more precision, do it yourself.) Of 100000 births, the expectancy is that 98,693 will live to age 18, and 96,367 will live to age 35. I get an average annual death rate of 139 per 100,000 from that.
542 > 139. So unless domestic reserve duty or peacetime army is ~4x as deadly as civilian life for a similar group, I think not.
There is a limit. A Reservist (or Guardsman) can only serve for two consecutive years, with a break of, I believe, six months. This can be changed by Congress, but thus far they have shown no indication of a willingness to do so.
As far as how well the military can serve for extended periods, that’s more a question of the individual. I don’t see how that can be quantified with any sort of objective standard.
There is no more expected from the Reserves than there is on Active Duty. They serve side by side, and only people who look down on Reservists under all circumstances would ever notice any difference.
Whatcha gonna do about it?
Exactly.
Besides, there won’t be a draft. A voluntary* in the American Freedom Club, however…
-Joe
*There are degrees of voluntary
It’s probably because the American people trust GW to see us throught this rough spot. At least a majority of them must trust him because they selected him as national leader at the last presidential election. Not only that, the majority also elected GW supporters to the legislature so that his pet projects will be looked on favorably. He gets to appoint judges who will rule favorably on those pet projects if they are challanged.
Y’know, I’m beginning to worry about the viability of the American Experiment In Self Government.
If voting could change anything, they wouldn’t let us do it. 
I really don’t know what the straight poop is, but I’ve read several stories like this one and this one indicating that retention is not the problem, but rather that it’s recruitment that is down.
Granted, part of that is because the bonuses for reenlistment are up. Nonetheless, it seems that the problem is not that people who have been deployed are fed up and leaving in droves; on the contrary the article suggests that
Rather, a normal number are leaving (presumably for all the usual reasons), and the military is having problems finding new people to replace them.
What the solution is, I dunno. But the problem seems to lie with the perceptions of potential recruits, not troops who have been deployed.
Why not just find all the pro-war folks, give 'em a plane ticket and a hearty slap on the back, and say “Great! Your flight leaves tomorrow!”
If even 1% of the folks who voted for GWB in 2004 got shipped to the front lines, we wouldn’t have this problem. 
I, for one, am glad to see that the military are adequately rewarded.