Do you favor reinstating the draft?

I would strongly support one or two years of compulsory national service after high school, but only if it could be implemented with essentially no exceptions. Military service would certainly be one option, as would any number of ways young people could contribute to society at home and abroad.

I agree completely with Gen. McChrystal about the need for a greater sense of shared civic duty, which can be cultivated just as well through non-military activity as military service. But the way to spread (lessen) the burden of fighting is to stop sending out troops to places in which we have little or no national interest, and no business interfering. Maybe compulsory military service would accomplish that by forcing middle and upper middle class families to challenge the way in which our political leaders freely (or expensively) send troops into dangerous places.

I have been saying “compulsory service” for years. We need to have the young befriend people from all over the spectrum of race and class, serve their country, learn disipline from basic training. Most importantly we need the CCC back. Get the unemployed youth out in nature working to improve parks and trails and send some money home.

Usually, the draft is presented as a way to close the gap between the military and American society. The gap arises because we ask a few to protect the many, and this creates the potential that each side will become alienated from the other, especially if the few becomes drawn ever more narrowly from a self-selected segment of American society. Sometimes, the draft is also presented as a way to make it more difficult to use the military in a cavalier fashion — not merely to bind the military to American society, but to bind the military, period, or at least bind the hands of political leaders who have the authority to order the military into battle.

However, I have yet to read a compelling case for reviving the draft that is premised on making the military more effective — more capable of defending American national interest, which is, after all, its primary purpose. The reason those arguments are not made in a compelling fashion is because the most likely result of a draft is a less capable military.

Are you kidding??

With years working with the VVAW…and other left wing outfits, I see no one of sound mind serious about re-enstateing the draft.

Frankly, if one is considering support for involintary service, one must sign up for such service. Put your life where your mouth is!!!

Glenn

As an American veteran I can say I wouldn’t want to serve with people who were forced to be there, I was fortunate enough to give all my years of service during the volunteer only period we have enjoyed here for the last few decades.

Conscription in a free society drips with irony; in order to protect the liberty enjoyed by the populace you remove it from them. If the citizenry are unwilling (rather than unable) to defend their nation, then perhaps that nation deserves what comes next. (in as much as a nation can deserve anything) Or perhaps, citizens do not deserve what they will not defend. Either way I personally find conscription beneath a free society, your mileage on this may vary of course.

A draft, or any other less-than-all-inclusive mandatory civil service, would actually cause strains because of its uncertainty. I think mandatory civil service is a great idea, but the funding for it is currently a political impossibility. I was in Germany last summer as their mandatory civil service was lapsing due to budgetary constraints, and it seemed almost more painful to cut it than to have never had it at all as many non-profit and government organization had come to rely upon these government-paid workers. It is not unlike how the Civilian Conservation Corps in this country built great infrastructure, the maintenance of which has since been underfunded.

No, I’m in favor of reinstating peace. We can’t afford any more WAR!

I was part of compulsory national service for men in the South African army and none of the objections raised this morning applied to that situation. The volume of people for example, is no argument whatsoever, because you phase it in gradually and not all at once.

With more parents with kids in the army, there is definitely going to be higher awareness of what your politicians fool around with when it comes to armed conflict.

No, not a military draft for all young people, but I do think the country should require all those age 18 and up to serve two years in a national service program. We have raised spoiled and sense of entitlement generations the past 30 or so years, and requiring young people to give back by serving two years in a national service program seems more than appropriate. If a person wanted to serve that in the military, fine, but it shouldn’t be required for all.

A draft or compulsory service of some sort is politically impossible. Such a system would be “socialism” to its very core. The very idea of a universally shared sacrifice and shared benefits is completely against the very foundation of the current incarnation of the GOP. The idea of supplying cheap labor to do the job of adults (perhaps even replacing union jobs) and an essentially inexhaustible supply of soldiers for the next great “patriotic adventure” to “protect our international interests” by a group of chicken hawks in Washington is unpalatable to the left. With an economy dominated by the military-industrial complex (over 60% of the U.S. budget), every global problem begins to look like a nail, and our armed forces become a hammer. I would advocate that we should raise the standards for someone to join the military; we would have a better educated, better trained and smaller force – and Washington would be forced to be much more strategic in their deployment. Further, any military deployment should be paid in full as we go by the citizens of the U.S. with a “War Tax”. The prospect that voters may have to each kick-in a couple thousand dollars per year would be enough to give congress pause.

Re: the statement, “I don’t elect the saber-rattling politicians, but dammit other people do.”

It’s not so easy to evade responisibility as that. The truth is, We the People elect them, regardless of how any individual votes. Like it or not, we’re all in this together. If you don’t like how others are voting, work harder to change their minds. If we want better politicians, we have to be better citizens.

Hell no! Unless you start with all the suv drivers. Then maybe we’ll rethink our energy and financial policies in this country.

“It’s not so easy to evade responisibility as that.”

Truth. The story of all politics.

I repeat others’ comments. We are broke. And the wars we are currently fighting can be left un-fought.

We don’t need a draft now. We need to downsize our military by probably 50% or 75%. We need to park most of our tanks, planes and boats and have most of our military families join civilian life.

And if we stumble across a war we need to fight, we will need to staff up initially with volunteers and then via a draft if necessary. That would be part of the implication of the decsion to go to war.

We cannot afford to be in a state of “always ready.” It’s too expensive and too tempting.

Many great comments.

Instead of re-instating the draft, how about un-instating expansionist wars of folly for arms industry profits?

The Founding Fathers that we all love to cite didn’t want large standing armies, and a militia would be raised to actually protect the country from external threat if necessary.

No. Having a draft is just one short step away from the idea that the US should be perpetually at war, in order to justify the draft in the first place. We have had enough meaningless, senseless wars, especially in recent history. I am, however, in favor of some sort of compulsory public service component for our young people. That being said, the oversight and management of such a program on a national scale would be very expensive and complex, perhaps prohibitively so.

Yes.

The United States Armed Forces must be represented by the full socio-economic cross-section of the able bodied American population. This is especially true in time of war. The failure to activate the Selective Service System makes American initiation of hostile military action politically more palatable, and therefore more likely, not less.

It should be noted that those opponents of a military draft who insist upon reference to the “all volunteer force” demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding, with regard to the intended overall structure of the U.S. Armed Forces during the late 20th and early 21st century. The term “all volunteer force” is mostly a term of political expediency and is essentially bereft of military meaning.

Beginning in the early 1970’s, the stated policy of DoD was to maintain sufficient forces to fight two simultaneous regional conflicts. These would assumedly be either a defense of NATO in Europe against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, or on the Korean Peninsula. During the Carter Administration, elements of forces dedicated to both of those operational theatres were also assigned to a contingency plan called the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF). All of these operational plans had a common feature to their structure. They all depended upon a cadre of active duty military personnel to maintain systems and resources during peacetime. Some of these forces were already in-theatre, stationed in multiple NATO countries, and in South Korea, Japan, and on the island of Okinawa. The remainder of the active duty component was stationed in the Continental United States (CONUS). Additionally, reserve units stationed in CONUS were specifically pre-assigned to units overseas. These reserve units were called “CAPSTONE” units. Depending upon the severity of the conflict, that active duty cadre was meant to be the nucleus around which reserve forces were activated. Exercises such as “Reforger” in Europe, “Team Spirit” in South Korea, and “Bright Star” in Egypt, were all annual rehearsals for these mobilizations. In the case of “full mobilization”, that reserve component activation was supposed to include activation of the Selective Service System.

During the war in Southeast Asia, the standard tour of combat duty was 13 months. To my knowledge, the only way to have served more than 13 months in Vietnam was to specifically volunteer for another tour. Now we are sending a very small number of Americans to serve multiple combat tours in Afghanistan (and previously in Iraq) totaling several years, while an overwhelming majority of able-bodied Americans of military age stroll obliviously through shopping malls when they’re not obsessing on “reality television”.

I got drafted in ’72. It wasn’t any fun, even though I enden up not having to serve due to the war being in it’s late phases. Lottery number was 11. Let’s not do that again.