I just read what I thought was a great Op-Ed in the NYT. It's not saying anything that hasn't been said since the 70s, but considering that the authors are Lieutenant General Karl W. Eikenberry, the current ambassador to Afghanistan, and David M. Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize winning Stanford US history professor, I felt it worthy of sharing. The text is a bit long here but it's not behind the paywall so it should be readable.
The draft lottery by necessity will have loopholes that will be disproportionately exploited by whites, and the powerful and wealthy. We literally have no reason to re-enact this without the threat of secession or an invasion from one of the other 4 permanent Security Council members or J-Big. Prior to our casualty reducing technological advances, the one thing that made Korea and Vietnam so easy to justify despite no immediate security or economic threat was easy access to able-bodied men, under threat of imprisonment, who should have otherwise been allowed to pursue careers and full lives in what up to that point was the most prosperous and internally stable time in our nation's era. I'm fairly ambivalent about the War Powers Act; our global role has permanently changed since the Battle of Britain and our executives need to be able to engage militarily somewhat co-dependently of the legislative and extended electoral cycle. No problem with tasking fully organized and well-funded units with developmental and humanitarian duties, at least in the wake of a full military occupation and until we're compelled to more fully fund and staff the State Department. In fact if we could contract our engineering and medical corps to other countries for development and training purposes, it might recoup some of our costs and diversify the experience for some of our personnel. Honestly if we'd spent more time doing this after V-J day than, say, the entire Cold War, the Third World might not even exist.
That last part was a rebuttal to Eikenberry's complaints about nation-building and diversifying the military's "duties," it probably doesn't directly address his assertion that we should reduce the number of third-party contractors. I probably just disagree with that on the basis of our having the most resources and wanting to do the best job possible, which would entail paying for additional help.
Didn't you hear? A white man's nickle is worth more than a black man's quarter, even if they're both poor and live in the ghetto
Not shocking or new that you're racially hateful enough to attribute some random saying to a black poster who's every bit as educated and well read as you. Get your bigoted head out of your bigoted ass and read up on college deferments and local draft boards: which only had black membership of 1 percent nationwide, if you actually want to discuss this issue.
Right, because the trends of America 40 years ago, right at the peak of the Civil Rights movement, can be extrapolated to what would happen today.
A 1 year conscription of every newly minted adult would probably rein in our war-lust. Or at the very least expose everyone to how the sausage is made. It'd also expose big problems with our military and society in general, but other nations have done just that, so it's a legitimate option. Must suck to live under perpetual frustration of the bad black boogeyman, dbag. Facts aren't on your side, and passive aggressive bigotry is neither considered smart nor witty.
Some can't and some can. I don't think people will be any more amenable to a peacetime draft now than they were back then. That shouldn't preclude someone from actually researching the two concepts I mentioned, or any other aspect of drafts, rather than just vomiting some dumb, bigoted quote to once again dismiss a black poster without providing any kind of rational argument or rebuttal regarding the discussion at hand. That's what I was responding to, not this.
Why don't we hold congress accountable rather than making things more intimate or whatever those guys are talking about?
I agree, but universal conscription becomes a bureaucratic nightmare, as well as a huge increase in expenditure to accommodate them-- that's why the authors suggest a draft lottery. Here in Israel, universal conscription means a lot of people that aren't smart enough / motivated enough/ etc to contribute often end up wasting time or worse, taking up space in army jails. That isn't to speak of people who resist the draft on ideological grounds, but officers I know are not terribly thrilled with the new push here to force the ultra-religious to join and the prospect of training and integrating them into combat units. There's also a common story of immigrants to Israel in their mid 20s wanting to contribute and serve (as well as benefit from the social integration the army provides people), but they are denied. There is no shortage of manpower, and if anything, more than a few flag rank officers have complained that the army here is often a babysitting service for people that have no business in a uniform and spend three years making coffee. Pouhe's concern about a draft being easy for privileged kids to avoid is legit. In the Vietnam era, all you had to do was be an art major at a junior college, an easy feat for most middle-class kids. It's what both my uncle and father (both chicken-hawk conservatives BTW) did to avoid Vietnam. But the writer's address that (though not in much detail). They say that a hypothetical draft lottery would look to be biased in favor of better educated kids. I'm guessing standardized testing would come in to play. It makes sense both in getting higher quality recruits and to distribute the burden more equally to the middle and upper classes.
This a bizarre article. Some solid points made, but the proposed solution is horrible. First, I'll just say that I disagree with the premise that a draft would make the federal government more reluctant to wage constant warfare. For why, I will excerpt HL Mencken's Notes on Democracy: Spoiler Forgive the lengthiness of the quote; I just like to read Mencken. I'm not going to go into much detail about how conscription = slavery, but for f***s sake, how in the hell could conscription not equal slavery? And who could endorse slavery - even for that oh so wonderful, incorruptable, angelic federal government of ours? To make a sincere suggestion that someone should have to fight in a war no matter their opinion on it is nothing short of disgusting. A few other random and scattered thoughts on the article: I agree that wars should be paid for in real time. I think that would stop warmaking much faster than a draft lottery. If you saw an amount on each paycheck for money taken out to fund the wars, you would be more inclined to want that war to end ASAP. On a related note, if you've never put it together how a central bank makes warmaking infinitely easier, now is a good time to explore that line of thinking. As Tom Woods once said, "If you want to stop the war machine, you have to stop the money machine." Having the President have to go through Congress to declare war (or anything like it) is another easy one that no sane person will disagree with. "Nation-building" should indeed not be the job of the military. GDP has nothing to do with how much "should" be spent on military actions. Just because we can more effeciently produce teddy bears doesn't mean we should increase military spending. Also, and this may be a bit silly, but did anyone else think of the Hunger Games when reading suggestions that there ought to be a draft lottery? A (supposedly) random selection of citizens who must go out and fight with their lives on the line for the benefit of others. The big difference being that in the Hunger Games, it was mainly for the purpose of reminding all of how the state provides them protection from alleged dangers, whereas in this proposal that is only one of the purposes. And now might be a good time to read this classic.
That's more or less my perspective. Ideologically, I would support universal conscription/national service as a way of breaking down class barriers and reminding people of what is truly important, but the military doesn't want a bunch of young kids who don't want to fight, so I won't let ideology override pragmatism. Not to mention the economic troubles of conscription.
