The draft is a disaster. First, it will hamstring our government's ability to send soldiers into ambiguous situations. Fighting Germany and Japan after Pearl Harbor was an easy choice. Every other American war, other than the Revolution, was far more ambiguous, with VALID cases to be made for not pursuing them. We comfort ourselves in knowing that the people we send to war today knew what they were getting into, evaluated the risks and chose to undertake them. We did not plunk people out of college campuses, farms and factory lines and shove them into battle against their will.

Second, America has never had a real draft or conscription and the politicians would never allow us to have one. Even in WWII, the draft was riddled with exemptions. In Vietnam, the exemptions were class and income based which for a society which prides itself on Horatio Alger egalitarianism was a complete disgrace. I need not explain the process of hiring substitutes that got people out of the Civil War, and that was an existential battle for the nation. The notion that Binky and Buffy(or for that matter Joshua and Tammy) are going to be compelled to depart their New England prep schools (or private-school like public schools in upper income communities) and share barracks and (eek!)bathrooms with Carlos and LaWanda is inconceivable in America of 2005.

If we have a manpower shortage, just increase salaries and benefits across the board. Normalize the whole curve with newly minted 2d lieutenants getting 50K, and then have mandatory cost of living increases, and you'll get all the recruits you'll ever need.

Yeah, a draft will build national unity, sure. That's the ticket. That's how it's always worked.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/draftriots.htm

Conscription? Are you on crack?

Bart is correct. Good pay will attract all the recruits we need. If we're not prepared to pay for it we should not be fighting the war.

As George Orwell said "the shortest way to end a war is to lose it." That option is always before us.

I have an idea. Let's sink massive amounts of the Pentagon's budget down a continual basic training rathole.

Not a good idea?

Sorry. My bad.

As someone who was drafted (1966), I'm against bringing it back. If we're willing to pay enough, the manpower shortage will take care of itself. If the manpower shortages prevail, then we'll just have to chose our battles more carefully.

Nothing to add to the comments above, except to say that if the draft came back, every leftist drafted would claim CO status, and they'd end up in large government-run groups doing WPA-type work, voter-registration drives, and all the other things Democrats love, all on the Pentagon dime. I don't think anyone around here would think that was a good idea.

You want the draft back for "civic reasons"? Has a random mutation set you guys devolving? A good civic reason for not restoring the draft is that slavery was outlawed after the Civil War. If you want to raise troops, either pay for them or present a good cause. If you're so intent on government enforcing civic virtue, move to North Korea.

We don't need manpower--we need better citizenship.

Axel:

I'm fine with getting rid of civic duties so long as we get rid of civil rights too.

Civic duties? I pay taxes, does that count?

Bart's first point is particularly valid. It would in fact LIMIT the ability of the Congress or the President to act militarily in cases where we haven't been attacked.

Preemptive War to remove threats to our peace and that of our allies would be narrowed to only those cases that could be resolved by "shock and awe". If infantry were required the public would rebel. That goes for the current Iraqi War.

h:

It might limit their willingness to use troops, which would lead to our reliance on things like nukes. That would be a good thing. The more regular application of shock and awe would likely reduce the need for it.

Hopwever, history suggests we've been more casualty averse with a volunteer force than we ever were with draftees.

oj,

Not only was I drafted, I was also shot.

Allen:

Congratulations--you should be proud.

OJ,

So how would you fight Osama and Saddam? Would you merely nuke the cities where they might be? Now, I wouldn't really mind that but a lot of people on this website, including you, think I'm a psychopath.

Our culture, and particularly all of that 'just war' crap that we never hear the end of(Is there a circle of Hell low enough for Hugo Grotius to dangle in?), prevents us from using our vast technological advantages against the jumped-up fuzzy-wuzzies who oppose us. No longer are we allowed to 'Thank the Lord that we have got the Maxim gun and they have not.' Pressing our advantage would be a 'war crime.' As an aside, the sages who wrote the Talmud take a contrary view, specifically endorsing 'preemptive war' for example.

Given that political reality, which isn't changing any time soon, our war machine would be completely hamstrung, which is what the draft advocates like Patti (the 'crier')Schroeder and Charley (the racist crook) Rangel want. We wouldn't be able to use our nukes, because that would be a 'war crime' and somehow 'not sporting', and we wouldn't be able to use our conventional forces because that would put people who didn't volunteer for combat into harm's way, so we would be incapable of defending ourselves even after 9/11.

We got Osama, al Qaeda and the Taliban with hardly any men and did Saddam rather easily. If a draftee force would have made us leave Iraq by the end of 2003, all the better.

Leave at the end of 2003. Uh huh, right OJ and I suppose you think the Shia would control the situation just fine. Okie dokie.

Now to Afghanistan. We truly helped an indigenous group run the Taliban out. Key word in that sentence is "helped" as in back up, support, a few well placed bombs, that sorta of stuff. The Afghan configuration may have been sui generis. I don't know, neither do you. It certainly wasn't what occurred in Iraq.

As far as Osama (or his replacement) or Al Qaeda (or whatever new name they want to call themselves) only time will tell.

But the point of this discussion was the draft and in no way would it benefit us militarily. It would limit the flexibility of the President.

(terrible way elicit civic virture also, school uniforms would more likely succeed or those calisthenics the Japs do before they start to work)

h:

Yes, the Shi'a would have been fine.

When has the draft ever limited a President's options in the past?

Vietnam

Korea also.

Shia at this stage can't even finish off the Mookie much less the Sunni. Kurds will do fine.

Goodnight.

We fought in both for years and then left despite minimal casualties. In both the general public wanted the president to just go ahead and nuke the place. There were no options lost. Of course our huge losses came in wars with general mobilizations, rather than selective--Civil War & WWII.

Mookie's one of the good guys.

Isn't GWB going to reveal his secret plan to reimpose the draft later this month?

Approximately 4 million kids turn 18 every year in this country. Even if you did not pay them, just feeding and lodging them would cost Billions.

I think the pentagon should enlarge the size of the Army and the Corps. I am also intrigued by the ideas of Tom Barnett on creation of two types of force.

But running everyone through the military as a social work project is uneconomic and probably speaks to a deeper defect in our educational system that should be addressed directly rather than as an add on.

There are two problems that the military service are relevant to. One is the disconnect between the elite educational system and the Military. which is bad for the Military and even worse for the elite.

Second the price of higher education is out of control. Higher education should be provided to any citizen willing and able to 1. study and absorb it and 2. serve the larger society. Service to the larger society could be provided by, inter alia, service in the National Guard.

The political downside of the draft is too obvious to be worth further comment. It is a prescription for defeat, for, as I have stated elsewhere, it puts cowardice in service of treason.

But there is something else: traditionally, we have excused those with a valid contientious objection to war in any form from bearing arms. This is a matter of grace, and not of right. There is a very great difference between allowing c.o. status to a tiny minority and allowing those who merely have "other priorities" to substitute miscelllaneous good works for military service.

Bearing arms for your country is not the same as picking up trash along the roadside. If you don't see the difference between the militia and the corvee', there is little I can do to help you. One is honorable, the other servile. One is a responsibility and privilege of citizenship, thwe other involuntary servitude, Constitutional only as punishment for crime.

The political downside of the draft is too obvious to be worth further comment. It is a prescription for defeat, for, as I have stated elsewhere, it puts cowardice in service of treason.

But there is something else: traditionally, we have excused those with a valid contientious objection to war in any form from bearing arms. This is a matter of grace, and not of right. There is a very great difference between allowing c.o. status to a tiny minority and allowing those who merely have "other priorities" to substitute miscelllaneous good works for military service.

Bearing arms for your country is not the same as picking up trash along the roadside. If you don't see the difference between the militia and the corvee', there is little I can do to help you. One is honorable, the other servile. One is a responsibility and privilege of citizenship, thwe other involuntary servitude, Constitutional only as punishment for crime.

Odd then that we've won so many wars with the draft.

OJ,

Victory in the Civil War was inevitable, as long as we continued prosecuting it and maintain Scott's 'Anaconda.' It was a war of simple attrition.

Victory in WWI came because our initial influx of manpower overwhelmed the exhausted Germans. Had we been bogged down in the trenches for 3 years, the Bolshevik Revolution would have occured here.

We didn't win in Korea and certainly not in Vietnam.

WW2 was an exception because it was a popular war for the defense of the nation.

Bart wrote my reply before I had a chance. The big advantage of transformational technology is that we are politically unchained from the approval of those who have "other priorities" when we execute short, sharp wars of policy.

The problem is what to do when the war of policy is neither short nor sharp. I submit that, as I have maintained for the last two years, when we begin these things we must be morally ready to make them that way, and that it is irresponisible to hove gotten into a situation like this on the fool's hope that we were not going to have to resort to strong strokes.

Lou:

But we don't. We fight long drawn out wars trying to minimize casualties.

Bart:

S. Korea thoinks we won and WWII was unpopular.

However, we did win all of those with universal drafts, contradicting your point.

I have no clue where you got the notion that WWII was unpopular. Those 'peace' marches, massive flights to foreign countries to avoid the draft and draft card burnings seem to be absent from the historical record.

If you keep hanging around in the fevered swamps of paleo-conservatism and read Nazi wanna-bes like Chesterton and Belloc, it will rot your brain quicker than pot or booze.

South Koreans blame the current state of affairs on America failing to unify the nation.

The Civil War was an inevitable victory as over 75% of the nation's free population and GDP was in the North. All victory took was time. It was a war of attrition. And anyone who has studied the election of 1864 where the war was the major issue knows how close the North came to bouncing Lincoln and suing for peace. It was only the victories at Vicksburg and Sherman's March that kept the war going.

Are you going to try and tell me that Tom Dewey had 'a secret plan to end the war' in 1944? Or that he was going to cut a deal with Hitler and Tojo?

The crux of this famous story is that Americans wanted no part of the war in Europe:

http://www.library.gatech.edu/projects/holocaust/ohrdrufdes.htm

It's why FDR lost control of Congress in '42.

Of course victory over the South was inevitable. All our victories have been inevitable. That's why we can afford a drafted force instead of a professional one.

After the Congressional election of 1942, the Democrats had a 57-38 margin in the Senate, and 222-209 margin in the House. Bush, Rove and the current GOP should have such a 'loss of control.' Keep in mind that virtually every Southern Democrat was a New Dealer, due to the poverty of their region and the chance for small-time boodling.

Bart:

Because Southern Democrats were more conservative than Republicans that ended FDR's control of Congress.

Speaking of fever-swamps, this thread is getting pretty spacey.

Two reposts: first, to say that Belloc and Chesterton are "Nazi Wannabes" is so wrong as to be either stupid or malicious.
Theo-conservatives can be rough on people like Albigensians and Communists, but that does not make us Nazis. Nazis are pagans, and as such are themsleves high up on our "to-do" list.

Second, dragging out affairs in the quagmire does not minimize casulties; it usually maximizes casulties. What it does in to postpone taking responsibility for the situation. Think Vietnam, where 54K died because politicians had neither the will to win nor the will to lose.

Speaking of fever-swamps, this thread is getting pretty spacey.

Two reposts: first, to say that Belloc and Chesterton are "Nazi Wannabes" is so wrong as to be either stupid or malicious.
Theo-conservatives can be rough on people like Albigensians and Communists, but that does not make us Nazis. Nazis are pagans, and as such are themsleves high up on our "to-do" list.

Second, dragging out affairs in the quagmire does not minimize casulties; it usually maximizes casulties. What it does in to postpone taking responsibility for the situation. Think Vietnam, where 54K died because politicians had neither the will to win nor the will to lose.

OJ,

In the period from 1942-1944, was there anything FDR wanted to get through Congress that he did not get? In 1944, the partisan breakdown was 243-190.

FDR was not interested in civil rights and was probably as racist as Wilson, and far more anti-Jewish. The Southern congressmen like Sparkman were economic super-liberals whose sole purpose in Congress was to smother the South in Federal money to an extent that even Robert Byrd would find embarassing. Where was their disagreement?

Lou,

As for Belloc and Chesterton, Nazi wanna-bes is a little strong. But their records before and during WWII are clear, they both opposed any attempt by Britain to take in Jewish refugees and the opponents of allowing Jewish refugees into Britain, Canada, the US, Ireland and Australia relied heavily on their writings. Belloc and Chesterton were both also extremely anti-capitalist, anti-free market. Whether they took these positions because they were theists, pagans or diabolists doesn't really matter, in fact such distinctions are less important than one's position on the Designated Hitter rule. They provided intellectual cover for people to kill Jews and they sought to end or dramatically limit free enterprise. Whether that occured through intent, ignorance or incredible carelessness is irrelevant.

The writings of both men can still be found widely quoted in the world of 'White Supremacy.'

Bart:

The GOP picked up 44 House seats and 9 in the Senate in an election that was specifically cast by FDR as about their opposition to him waging the war. It was the final nail in the coffin of the New Deal.

http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/oped/moser/04/1942.html

As the article indicates, Americans were not opposed to the war only the relative incompetence of the FDR Administration in the way it was being fought. Their complaint was the politically if not strategically reasonable one that Japan should have been the focus. Allied victories over the Afrika Korps changed public opinion.

That is a wholly different matter from asserting that 'the war' was unpopular.

Polling of even the troops demonstrated they didn't want to fight the Germans. It's why Ike snarled. Everyone was fine with paying back another race for pearl Harbor. The rest was unpopular.

Saying that they would have preferred to have been fighting the Japanese is a wholly different matter from syaing they didn't want to fight the Germans. It was understood by pretty much all Americans that they both had to be defeated.

Germany declared war on the US, not vice versa. It was Germany's choice to fight us, not our choice to fight them.

Bart:

You've been reading too much Schlessoinger and Brokaw--people justifiably thought the European war a waste.