Journal pudge's Journal: Draft 11
Says Jack Cafferty on CNN:
Now if it's not possible to meet the goals only using the volunteers, then down the road, I assume, it could raise the question of having to resort to a draft.
False. There is no chance of a draft under the current situation (meaning, our current political situation, and being engaged in our current conflicts). And I mean that literally. There is no possible way to get a draft here. It is, literally, impossible.
The few politicians who want a draft mostly want it only to prevent the use of force, and even they are in such a small number that they could not effect change in policy. The overwhelming majority of politicians, including the President, are against a draft. I don't know if Gates is against a draft, though Rummy was, but the military as a whole is against it.
And most importantly, the American public is absolutely against a draft. This may be why most of the politicians are against it, of course. But even if public support for a draft is not a sufficient condition for the politicians to support it, it's a necessary one. And it doesn't exist.
So the only way we could get a draft is if the situation we're in changes significantly. And I don't mean Bush invading another country, like Syria or Libya or probably even North Korea, because obviously, that won't get him more public support for his military actions, which means necessarily that there won't be increased support for a draft, which is what is necessary to have a draft.
So for us to get a draft, we would likely have to be attacked. And not just one attack, even September 11-sized, but a series of attacks, a large-scale threat, one that makes the American people flip around and favor a new front in whatever "war" you happen to think we're in.
I don't even know if increased attacks on us by al Qaeda would do it. We need an enemy of sufficient size that requires an increase in the size of the military to get public support for a draft. Maybe you can have a plan to drastically increase the size of special forces to have them fan out across the globe etc., but you don't get such forces through a draft anyway.
I think it might require war with an actual national government, like China or Russia, to get the public to support a draft. And again, not a war that we start.
And if that happens, we wouldn't need a draft to get recruits anyway. As public support increases to the levels required for us to make a draft a political possibility, voluntary enlistment will also increase.
I don't think we will ever have a draft again in this country, at least, not in the forseeable future, because there is no scenario I can see where it would be both politically possible, and practically necessary or desirable.
good start (Score:2)
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stoolpigeon (email not shown publicly)
If I ever had your email, I no longer have it. (in looking for it, I did find the emails of several ex girlfriends that I was their first. One of them went psycho on me (I seem to have that effect...) and started doing things almost this bad [xkcd.com].
Back to the topic at hand, I'll be getting back into ATL on the 27th (possibly very late) and working on the 28th and 29th, but I am available those evenings. Send an email to the account above and we'll try to pick a time th
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but I thought... (Score:1)
But seriously, I think your right. We won't be seeing the draft anytime soon. If we're going to run away from Iraq after a few thousand casualties, how will we sustain the national will to fight in a major conflict with China? Where the casualties would be in the tens to hundreds of thousands.
What're your thoughts on making up the difference? (Score:2)
This isn't meant to be a loaded or slanted question. The options I see are either diminishing our presence, calling back more and more of the reserves, or having to out and out abondon some o
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In other words, say we need 500,000 troops (just to use a nice round number), but we can only get 400,000 through the current recruiting efforts. Having less do more will work int he short term, but it will eventually have an increasingly negative impact. So how to make up the difference when something has to give?
We don't. We learn to live with 400,000.
A draft is not an option with our current military situation, the conflicts we are currently engaged in. There's no point in asking whether we could make up the difference with a draft, if we "need" to or not. We cannot. At the very least, the public will not support it, so the politicians will not support it. It will not happen, cannot happen.
So if you can't get the troops you "need" without a draft, you do not get them at all.
I am not pretending to say what we
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I agree with you completely that the draft is not going to happen without an overwhelming external threat, but I still don't see any pleasant solutions for living with our hypothetical 100,000 shortfall. Do you think it better to pull out of a country compeltely, or just limit what we attempt to do there? At what level is reducing troops on our own soil acceptable?
Lots of tough questions, not a whole lot of good answers. I've been reading Heinlein's Expanded Un
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... I still don't see any pleasant solutions for living with our hypothetical 100,000 shortfall. Do you think it better to pull out of a country compeltely, or just limit what we attempt to do there? At what level is reducing troops on our own soil acceptable?
There's no possible answer in the abstract. It depends on risks and rewards. Is the mission we have a shortfall for essential to our security? Our economy? Our liberty? Are there other possibilities? Too many questions that need to be answered before you can even begin to evaluate that one.