Posted by Had E. Nuff on July 10, 2005 at 21:28:10 (PST):
In Reply to: Draft? posted by Jen on July 10, 2005 at 19:35:07 (PST):
: New topic. I thought this was a pretty interesting article.
: http://radaronline.com/web-only/politics/2005/07/draft-dodgers.php
: Draft Dodgers
: If a military draft is really out of the question, why is the Bush administration spending so much time planning one?
: by John Aravosis
: No wonder President Bush devoted part of last week’s “Iraq: You Gotta Want It!” speech urging Americans to enlist. Army recruitment was down 42 percent in April, so the Pentagon lowered the May quota, but still missed its mark by 25 percent, according to MSNBC. As a result, the army is in danger of not meeting its annual recruiting goal for the first time since 1999. And while the other services are hitting their quotas, the fact remains that of the 139,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq, about 105,000 are army.
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: The Pentagon is desperately trying to stop the hemorrhaging. The army lowered its academic standards last fall, and, just last month, the Wall Street Journal wrote that “To keep more soldiers in the service, the Army has told battalion commanders, who typically command 800-soldier units, that they can no longer bounce soldiers from the service for poor fitness, pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse or generally unsatisfactory performance.”
: Just what we need: an army of Federlines.
: The military’s recruiting problems shouldn’t come as a surprise. The mayhem in Iraq continues to grow while Afghanistan is playing catch-up, fast. According to the nonpartisan factcheck.org, “By most measures the violence [in Iraq] is getting worse. Both April and May were record months in Iraq for car bombings…with more than 135 of them being set off each month.” In Afghanistan, the Taliban-orchestrated violence has gotten so bad that it has left “much of Afghanistan off-limits to aid workers and has reinforced concerns that the war here is escalating into a conflict on the scale of that in Iraq,” according to the Associated Press. Potential recruits may be young, but they’re not stupid.
: Adding to the crisis, there are rumblings that more U.S. troops are needed. Democratic senator Joe Biden recently returned from Iraq, where, he says, American generals told him they need more troops. Republican senator John McCain agrees. But where will we get more troops when recruitment is down, our current supply of soldiers is getting killed or wounded, and Donald Rumsfeld now admits that we could be in Iraq for 10 to 15 years?
: Does anybody else feel a draft coming on?
: The late colonel David Hackworth, the most decorated U.S. soldier of the Vietnam War, wrote in an article last October that “the draft—which will include both boys and girls this time around—is a no-brainer in ’05 and ’06.” Even Republican senator Chuck Hagel warned last year that a draft “might become necessary” in the years ahead.
: The Bush administration, for its part, says categorically that there will be no draft. The Selective Service website includes a big notice on its home page reminding visitors that the House of Representatives voted last fall against reinstating the draft, and that both the president and Rumsfeld are against it.
: That’s all well and good, but the House vote took place only one month before last fall’s election. A recent AP-Ipsos poll found that seven in 10 Americans oppose bringing back the draft, more than half would discourage their sons from enlisting, and two-thirds would discourage their daughters. Those congressmen weren’t so much voting against the draft as they were voting to keep their jobs. More importantly, that vote does nothing to eliminate the growing recruitment problem that could eventually force a draft upon us.
: As for Bush and Rummy, keep in mind that they’re the guys who told us they had no plans to invade Iraq (they did), that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (there weren’t), that the invasion and occupation would be a cakewalk (it hasn’t been), that the Iraqis would greet us with flowers (they didn’t), that the mission was “accomplished” two years ago (it wasn’t), that 160,000 new Iraqi security forces are fully trained and ready to take over for U.S. troops (they aren’t), and that our coalition of allies remains strong (it doesn’t).
: Even more to the point, although the Bush administration may be promising publicly that there will be no draft, privately they’ve been planning one for more than a year. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported last year that the Selective Service secretly asked for the authority to increase the draft age to 34 and to include women. (Mind you, they suddenly need this added authority for a draft they assure us will never occur.)
: But it won’t be enough to just draft a bunch of grunts. The Post-Intelligencer also reported that “Selective Service planning for a possible draft of linguists and computer experts began last fall after Pentagon personnel officials said the military needed more people with skills in those areas.” And the New York Times reported that in 2004 that the Selective Service updated its contingency plans for a draft of doctors, nurses, and other health care workers and paid an outside consultant to figure out how to implement such a draft and how to sell it to the public.
: That sure is a lot of prep work for something no one’s considering doing.
There isn't going to be a freakin', draft.
Let's look at a couple of these points you made.
Recruitment is down. Of course it is, everyone who would have volunteered, had already done so, thus leaving only the ones who were just turning of age to enlist. This is always the case. Alot of guys don't enlist right out of high school. They take a year or 2 or more then go in then. All the young guys enlisted at once, eliminating those from 20 up who may have enlisted later. I know this might not sound like it makes sense. I'm having trouble wording correctly.
Next we'll look at the "no longer bounce soldiers from the service for poor fitness, pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse or generally unsatisfactory performance" issue. This is never done during war time, otherwise anyone who wanted to puss out could do so by mearly meeting one of the lower expectations...remember Klinger from M*A*S*H*
Third, there are the ideas of including women and not just drafting grunts. As for women I personally don't think they should be drafted, but equal rights is equal rights. And the "grunt" thing, I'm confused there. Earlier in your post you complain about them lowering the acedemic requirements, then you say that they are wanting more linguists and computer experts. What do you want to do here, only select the people between I.Q.'s X and Y? And if you are implying that they should not draft college students, then you are favoring the rich, intelligent guys and only sending the poor, lesser intelligent guys off to war.
And in closing, as I said at the start, I don't believe there will be a draft.
However, if this little conflict is causing us to even CONSIDER that the government might have the slightest reason to even consider a draft, something DOES need to be changed.
I am by no means belittling the scale of the engagement or the number of lives lost, but let's face it, this is nothing compared to the number of troops we would need if we were to go to war with, say, China. There is also always the threat of a multi-theater were we would have to be at war with more than one country on more than one front. If the system we have can't handle running the insurgents out of Iraq, it sure as hell won't handle one of these cases.
As long as there is a threat of war, there will be a threat of a draft.