11.21.05

Military draft in the near future?

Posted in World at 3:55 pm by Tomas

In another forum I frequent (and moderate), that has a large majority consisting of young US males, there has been a discussion recently about the potential for the military draft to return in the United States. To put it bluntly, none of the folks commenting, young or old, are in favor of that.

The current biggest reason for the concern is how thinly the US military is spread right now, with no expectations of it getting better, only worse. Add to that the news items that keep coming up that the military services are having a difficult time meeting their recruitment goals with qualified volunteers, and the question of the US again going to conscript troops must come up.

Our biggest problem tying up our military right now is, of course, our invasion of Iraq, and our current attempts to put back together what we broke. (Anyone who thinks that the conditions for the citizens of Iraq are better now than before we went in there and took out their most recent dictator has not been paying attention.)

We really don’t appear to have any plan on how to extricate ourselves from this quagmire – the longer we are there the worse conditions get, quite honestly. Our military there are targets simply from the fact that they are there. This also makes ALL of us, worldwide, targets to some extent.

Quite seriously, a couple hundred thousand military folks from the other side of the planet (US Military) are really unlikely to change the way that part of the world has been run for over 4000 years.

That area has always been run by assorted warlords and religious leaders each intent on their own goals. This goes back to the very, very earliest of the recorded history of the human race.

That sort of deep cultural and societal drive can NOT be changed by outsiders overnight. It just isn’t going to happen. Sorry.

What makes the president think that in a couple years a few people, who don’t understand the cultures or even the languages, can change that kind of history, culture, and society in any significant way? Hubris!

The truth is, this president doesn’t even understand the enormity of the problem he’s stuck us, uninvited, in the middle of. To add to his non-knowledge of history, and cultures, he has no serious understanding if strategy, tactics or anything else military.

His best path would be to find the absolute best people he can in the disiplines involved, and give them the job of doing the best we can within our means. Not every problem can be fixed with just bailing wire, bubble gum, and bullshit.

Anyway, back to the draft: If we continue along the path our president has us locked into, we will need more quality ‘volunteers’ than will come knocking at his door. That means he must recruit folks who don’t WANT to be recruited. That means the return of the draft.

With a lot of luck that path will be changed and we won’t have to go there.

(Just for interest, when I was in Viet Nam and finally got to know the people, I finally understood that the vast majority of them didn’t really care who won the war. They didn’t care what government they were under, or what ‘system’ that government professed. All they wanted was for everyone else to go away and leave them alone so they could go back to living quietly and honestly, raising rice and little babies.)

I guess I’ll close with a couple of quotes from Heinlein. I could put 20 of his here that would apply and be correct. I’ll stop at just two.

What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars fortell”, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!
–Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 – 1988)

No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and in the long run no state ever has.
–Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 – 1988)

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