We had a telephone tax to fund the Spanish American War that wasn’t repealed for like 100 years. It’s an antiquated bureaucracy they haven’t bothered to eliminate yet. Besides which, no one said it’s impossible to ever happen. We said it shouldn’t happen.
Since when are random message board threads a suitable proxy for “US public opinion”?
I’m sure potential foes have therefore also found out in the same manner that “Mac and Me” is the greatest motion picture ever committed to film
I doubt anyone would be surprised that the public opinion in every country would be anti-carnage.
It might be a factor, but that’s probably a bad call on the would-be warmonger’s part.
For example, Nazi Germany looked at anti-war sentiments in England and thought, “awesome, they won’t have the will to fight us! One quick blow and they’ll surrender, because weak democracies have no taste for war”. Ditto Japan and the US.
Did that end up working out for either conquering nation?
I see what you did there. 
Not a draft, but if Trump could have gotten funding for it he might have announced a national program of recruits for border patrol.
Actually historically because of traditions dating back to feudalism, before about WW1 wealthy kids usually got to go straight to the officer’s corps, originally by directly buying a commission. For centuries war was considered glorious (at least if you weren’t a mud-slogging foot soldier) and through WW1 it was still considered noble and honorable. The upper classes did not shun war.
Well no. As long as they were out of harm’s way. With weapons getting better and better at killing at longer distances, the upper class’ appetite for actively participating in soldiering at almost any level dissipated.
I don’t think that’s wholly true. In WWI, significant contingents of the German, Austrian and British officer class still came from nobility (which mostly meant wealth), and that was still true for Germany and the UK in WWII.
“officer” - that’s the operative word.
When modern armies moved towards a more professional model, with a few notable exceptions, wealth or nobility no longer meant an automatic commission and command. I’m sure if being the first born son of so-and-so meant you were automatically an officer with limited training and potentially a high ranking one right off the bat, it would be a more desirable profession.
The World Wars did their part in ridding us of that model. Turned out that professionally trained and educated officers, no matter their background, were a considerable upgrade.
I would be in favor of drafting the graduates of our leading universities to serve in the ranks, not as officers. Ideally, officers dedicate themselves to the a lifetime of selfless service to the nation.
Enlisted soldiers serve their contract and then leave.
Two years of active duty and then two years in the active reserves sounds about right.
Of course just because we would have conscription, we need not have mass conscription. If we need a certain number of soldiers we need only draft enough to meet that goal. If your congressional district did not sign up enough volunteers, we would assign a certain number of draft slots to that district. Then the local board would pick the most-qualified, most-educated to serve.
Now instead of a blanket draft of all college graduates, you only want to draft enough to fill a quota gap? What criteria decides which graduates get to be called up? A lottery? An aptitude test? The graduate’s final GPA? While we’re at it, who will serve on the local draft board? Obviously it has to be someone able to determine the most qualified and best educated, like, say, a college dean.
While this article indicates that the U.S. military (particularly the Army) faces issues in meeting their recruiting goals right now, the article also notes this – issues which those who would be drafted under your scheme would likely also face in qualifying to serve:
The article goes on to note these two additional issues, which are systemic issues about the confidence in the military among both average Americans, and those who are actually involved in the military. These are issues which really need to be addressed, and again, a draft would do nothing to address them.
And I would like there to be war no more…which is just as likely as your proposals in this thread. Once again: Who do you propose we get Congress and the President to pass laws to enforce the measures you have suggested?
So local draft boards would have even more powr than they had in the past, being able to actively pick and choose which young men & women to conscript instead of simply processing deferments? Aside from the increased opportunity for corruption it’s not a given that most college graduates would even have the particular skills the military is in need of. Presumably STEM majors would be most needed and you just created a huge incentive not to study them (or attend college at all). And we assume that a future draft would include women on the same basis as men, but the modern military still has problems with sexual harresment and assault. We really should fix that before forcing women into that environment against their will.
It’s also more than a little paternalistic and reeks of communism
It’s one thing to need X warm bodies and try to implement a system that attempts to fairly select those X individuals by lottery. Yes, there were problems with how we implemented it in the past, but there were at least ostensible efforts to keep the process ‘fair’.
This idea? Where we directly pick and choose who to draft?
Beyond the obvious opportunities for cronyism and corruption, it’s basically telling kids “hey, we know what’s best for you and you’re going to do it” and also “a place for everybody and everybody in their place”. As a country, we used to be categorically opposed to that sort of central planning.
Beats me. I suppose talking about the idea is the first step.
Do the conscripts and their families still have to live in mold-infested housing and barracks? Because if you’re going to fix the military housing problem, you likely wouldn’t even need a draft. You’d increase enlistments and reenlistments just by fixing that other problem. If you’re not going to fix that, then you’re really screwing over those young graduates and their new families. Honestly, your whole plan seems complicated and expensive. All that effort and money would be better focused on fixing all the problems that are discouraging people from volunteering in the first place.
To be fair, I think that is more an issue with retention than recruitment.
But I agree fully otherwise.
Pretty much this.
We still believe in the magic of the free market in this country, right? The market solution is to make the terms of employment more attractive, and the supply of recruits will increase.
Have you been paying attention to all the whining about how “no one wants to work anymore”? It’s pretty clear that we just use the free market as an excuse to refuse to intervene on behalf of people who don’t pay millions of dollars to lobbyists, not an actual governing principle.