Rangel seeks to reinstate the draft [Archive]

JeffL

11-19-2006, 11:42 AM

Apparently the new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee intends to try to reinstate the draft. He was on the Sunday morning news shows and this is one of his ideas for "change." He also says that if people in Washington thought there was a chance their kids might get put in Iraq they would have never approved the war.

Which is, of course, a silly concept: no Senator, House member, or President is every going to have a kid go to war unless they "allow" it. Didn't happen in Vietnam, not gonna happen today.

extarbags

11-19-2006, 11:54 AM

This isn't the first time (http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/07/rangel.draft/) he's tried this. For him, there seem to be two motivations:

1. It's not fair that mostly poor people join the Army.
2. Lawmakers won't approve careless military adventures if their own kids might have to go.

Of course, neither of those overcomes the moral and practical problems with the draft, and number two can easily be overcome by even low-level influence peddling.

Anyway, I guess he thinks that his party's new majority is going to equal support for this goofy thing. Which it won't, I don't think.

Aleck

11-19-2006, 12:02 PM

Anyway, I guess he thinks that his party's new majority is going to equal support for this goofy thing. Which it won't, I don't think.

Rangel knows this isn't going to pass. However, he feels (as he has since the war started) that the war is unjust and the cost of the war is disproportionately borne by America's poor. His annual bill on reinstating the draft is his way of saying to the rest of America that the war is just screwed up.

Aleck

extarbags

11-19-2006, 01:47 PM

His annual bill on reinstating the draft is his way of saying to the rest of America that the war is just screwed up.

He really needs to find a better way of communicating with the outside world, then, because the only reaction he ever gets from this is "no thanks."

JeffL

11-19-2006, 03:23 PM

Rangel knows this isn't going to pass. However, he feels (as he has since the war started) that the war is unjust and the cost of the war is disproportionately borne by America's poor. His annual bill on reinstating the draft is his way of saying to the rest of America that the war is just screwed up.

Aleck

Since when has the draft ever been fair to the poor? Remember how it worked in the Vietnam era? The wealthy, the politicians, they all found the loopholes, while the poor under the draft would be screwed - now they wouldn't be in the military because they thought it was a good path and volunteered, they would be in the military because someone forced them in.

And if you want to see a REAL mess, throw draftees into Iraq.

Jason McCullough

11-19-2006, 03:37 PM

The draft was pretty fair in world war 2. Mind you, they drafted the entire country to do it, but it's not impossible.

wildpokerman

11-19-2006, 03:47 PM

The draft was pretty fair in world war 2. Mind you, they drafted the entire country to do it, but it's not impossible.

There are countries that have mandatory service for everyone for a period of time. I don't see why we couldn't do that.

Hans Lauring

11-19-2006, 03:58 PM

It's a strange defaitism thinking that the rich and influential will just automatically dodge the draft - it doesn't have to be that way.

Plenty of countries like my own have National Service/draft where everybody is equally likely to go.

Aeon221

11-19-2006, 04:37 PM

It'd be a good idea to have universal military service. Of course, I'm also a flat footed squinty eyed vegetarian, so I'm safe either way.

extarbags

11-19-2006, 05:34 PM

Plenty of countries like my own have National Service/draft where everybody is equally likely to go.

Not to war, though. Our current president got out of fighting in Vietnam thanks to his father's influence, but he did have to enlist in the military to do so.

extarbags

11-19-2006, 05:34 PM

It'd be a good idea to have universal military service.

How so?

JeffL

11-19-2006, 07:31 PM

Just saying, in this country we ran the experiment during the Vietnam era, and many decried how it was used to force the poor to fight the war.

Guido Jones

11-19-2006, 07:42 PM

Just saying, in this country we ran the experiment during the Vietnam era, and many decried how it was used to force the poor to fight the war.

Except about 75% of the soldiers in vietnam were volunteers, not draftees.

Greatatlantic

11-19-2006, 10:14 PM

I always thought the problem with Vietnam was they needed more soldiers then what an all volunteer army would provide, but they only needed a portion of possible draftees. Hence, people ask how those who have to go should be determined. A completely random lotto would have been one way, but thats not what happened during the Vietnam war. It was some people seeing themselves as more valuable to society, so why should they have to serve when somebody less valuable could do the same job.

XPav

11-19-2006, 10:32 PM

There are countries that have mandatory service for everyone for a period of time. I don't see why we couldn't do that.
It's a dumb idea. It leads to an unmotivated, untrained army that just sits on its ass sucking up money and NCOs that could better be used giving motivated volunteers the resources and training they need to get the job done.

Brendan

11-19-2006, 10:32 PM

A slightly off topic question. Since women now have equal rights in the military would females have to be drafted as well?

Chris Nahr

11-19-2006, 11:38 PM

Tsk. Obviously feminism is only about equal rights, not about equal obligations. Those remain exclusive to the stupid males!

Anders Hallin

11-19-2006, 11:58 PM

Yes, I'm sure the feminists are the most opposed to women in the military.

Gordon Cameron

11-20-2006, 12:50 AM

It'd be a good idea to have universal military service.

I don't share this sentiment, but then again, I'm a coward.

Chris Nahr

11-20-2006, 01:07 AM

Yes, I'm sure the feminists are the most opposed to women in the military.

What? The point was conscription, not being able to enlist when they feel like it. Please show me a single feminist who is in favor of a draft for women...

drewl

11-20-2006, 05:03 AM

Do you really think this war would have been started if they would've had to draft a force to fight it?

And what do you think the results of the 2004 election would have been had their been a draft?

Maybe that would bring the young out to vote, actually knowing their ass would be on the line instead of pretending it was in a video game.

FIDGAF

11-20-2006, 05:53 AM

There's a thought worth thinking about... Hey, when I was 18 I had to register for the Draft. I also made damn sure I voted.

PeterGinsberg

11-20-2006, 05:55 AM

What? The point was conscription, not being able to enlist when they feel like it. Please show me a single feminist who is in favor of a draft for women...

I went to a notoriously left wing school, and I had this very conversation with a few women's studies majors. As best I can recall, they were in agreement -- they were opposed to drafts period, but if they happen, they should not vary by gender.

Not exactly well known feminists, but your "please show me a single feminist who is in favor of a draft for women" could easily be turned around into "please show me a single feminist who supports a draft for men but not women".

A little googling shows that Phyllis Schlafley, universally hated by feminists, did much to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment by using exactly the argument (that it would allow women to be drafted). It's a pretty safe bet not many feminists share her view.

FIDGAF

11-20-2006, 06:17 AM

Israel mandates service for all of it's citizens and they have the tightest security on their planes with Al El Airlines. If it works for them, why not here?

MatthewF

11-20-2006, 06:20 AM

I don't share this sentiment, but then again, I'm a coward.

I'd change the phrase "I'm a coward." to "I don't like dying a horrible, violent death." But that's just me.

TheWombat

11-20-2006, 06:26 AM

It's a dumb idea. It leads to an unmotivated, untrained army that just sits on its ass sucking up money and NCOs that could better be used giving motivated volunteers the resources and training they need to get the job done.

Not necessarily. The army we sent into Vietnam in 1965, and which fought extremely well for the next two or three years, was a conscript army. The draft, instated in 1940, was ended shortly after WWII but reinstated in 1948, and ran from then until 1973. While there are conflicting interpretations of whether the Vietnam-era draft was unfair to the poor, it is hard to figure out exactly because only a relatively small portion of the drafted population ended up in Vietnam, and an even smaller portion in actual combat roles.

But in 1965-67 the US Army was far frmo unmotivated or untrained. It was a very good force. Now, the experience from 1968 onward, particularly after 1969 and Vietnamization, did indeed kill the Army; c.f. Shelby Stanton's The Rise and Fall of an American Army, a great book on the subject.

Historically, volunteer military services have been either professional forces in the vein of the British "soldiers of the Queen" or militia-like forces that were rarely if ever called into combat, except in true national defense situations. WWI and WWII were fought and won with conscript armies, the Israelis (when they were still in top form) won with a conscript military, and the UK today still fields a good force with national service. That doesn't necessarily mean that plan would be best of the USA today, but it's not something outside the realm of consideration I'd say.

Anders Hallin

11-20-2006, 07:48 AM

What? The point was conscription, not being able to enlist when they feel like it. Please show me a single feminist who is in favor of a draft for women...
Gudrun Schyman and the feminist party of Sweden (though their proposal is to change conscription to a more general community services, which military service would be part of).

Phil_Stein

11-20-2006, 08:02 AM

IANAS/V (I am not a soldier or veteran), so take the following with a grain of salt:

To effectively train a modern soldier, you need a minimum 2 year enlistment period, and probably longer. i.e. The training itself may not take 2 years, but it is expensive and time consuming to train someone, and to do so and then very shortly see them leave the military is not an effective way to run things.

There are apparently about 1.4 million active duty military personnel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_United_States) at the moment, plus another 1.3 million reservists.

Looking only at active duty military, if one assumes that even in a conscript situation, you'd need 30% of those to be careerists (officers, etc), and 70% conscripts, you'd be filling about 1 million slots with conscripts. Since they serve 2 year enlistments, you'd need about 500,000 new 18 year old draftees each year.

From here (http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/people/a_age2000.html), if I've done my math right, about 4 million teens turn 18 each year. So, only about 1 in 8 total 18 year olds would be drafted into active service, or 1 in 4 if you limited it to just males.

I strongly suspect that those with influence would game the system to make sure their kids fit into the 7/8 portion rather than the 1/8 portion. The reason the draft was more broad based in, say WW2 is that the personnel needs were so much higher. Even then, from what I remember reading, the influential often had the ability to dodge active service.

If you argue that the other 7/8 should do general community service, that's a bit different, but I'm not sure it's a winning argument. Forcing every 18 year old to spend 2 years on make-work type assignments strikes me as a waste of resources (human and monetary), and an overkill response to the problem of providing personnel for the armed services.

Ben Sones

11-20-2006, 08:12 AM

And if you want to see a REAL mess, throw draftees into Iraq.

Yeah, seriously. Ask the folks in charge of the military if they think the draft is a good idea. Every General that I've seen asked about it has been strongly opposed to any sort of draft.

SpoofyChop

11-20-2006, 08:26 AM

When somebody says "I want to reinstate the draft" but that person knows that there is zero chance that the draft will actually be reinstated, why do we take the whole episode at face value? Why doesn't this get described as "Rangel once again claims to want to reinstate the draft to get publicity for himself and confirm to his constituents that he's mixing stuff up"?

Move along everybody. Nothing to see here.

Hery

11-20-2006, 08:42 AM

Glenn

11-20-2006, 08:54 AM

I think the main problem is that draftees are typically much less excited about flying halfway around the world in order to get shot at and catch venereal diseases.

Chris Nahr

11-20-2006, 09:00 AM

Gudrun Schyman and the feminist party of Sweden (though their proposal is to change conscription to a more general community services, which military service would be part of).

I stand corrected then. That appears to be different in Germany, at least according to media reports. The feminist progressive left is typically against any compulsory service, true; but the male-only draft is a low-priority issue to leftists in general, compared to women & minority issues. The liberal FDP seems more strongly opposed to the draft than the Greens, and the Social Democrats are even in favor of the draft. On the other hand, proposals for a general community service are usually made by conservatives here, and promptly meet with feminist outrage.

ElGuapo

11-20-2006, 09:01 AM

I've never quite understood how this worked, but my Dad had to drop out of college due to lack of funds during the Vietnam War when the draft was active. Somehow he volunteered rather than risked getting drafted and got himself assigned to be in the rear with the gear (motor pool). Either that, or if you volunteered you got more money or something vs. being drafted. Maybe both.

Was there an incentive to join up rather be drafted back then? I've never really asked him all the details, other than knowing my Mom was pissed at my paternal Grandma for not ponying up the dough at the time and forcing him to go away to Vietnam. The day after they got married.

XPav

11-20-2006, 09:06 AM

Israel mandates service for all of it's citizens and they have the tightest security on their planes with Al El Airlines. If it works for them, why not here?
Israel is the size of my bathtub, and has one international airport, and are surrounded by people that have this habit of trying to destroy it every few decades.

In the US, we don't have these problems.

The army we sent into Vietnam in 1965, and which fought extremely well for the next two or three years, was a conscript army. The draft, instated in 1940, was ended shortly after WWII but reinstated in 1948, and ran from then until 1973
Times change. The US military has become extremely technology heavy, with, as Phil says, a longer time to make a more effective soldier or leader than before.

The military does not need a few hundred thousands teens with rifles.

Flowers

11-20-2006, 09:13 AM

I've never really asked him all the details, other than knowing my Mom was pissed at my paternal Grandma for not ponying up the dough at the time and forcing him to go away to Vietnam. The day after they got married.

In terms of not having to be nice to the in-laws, your mother is golden. As someone who never enjoys spending time with a significant others' parents, I envy the shit out of her. I have dated a girl with a retarded mom and no dad, and I still envy the shit out of your mother. Not so much what she had to go through, that's pretty bad. But the moral superiority and sheer ability to uninvite people to family functions? Wowie Zowie.

My Papa said that it was better to make 'em fuckin' draft you. Because a duty to serve your country is one thing, volunteering to die in a jungle for no good reason is another thing entirely.

Phil_Stein

11-20-2006, 09:16 AM

I think depending on the time, those who volunteered had more control over the service they went into and the specialty they had, and thus a better chance of avoiding ground combat.

My uncle grew up in a bakery and was happy to serve his time (in the 50s, I think - possibly during the Korean war), baking cakes and such for a general well away from the action.

ElGuapo

11-20-2006, 09:23 AM

Funny (well, not so funny) story about picking your specialty/enlistment.

A friend of a friend (I know that sounds like an urban legend but I actually have met the guy) enlisted, and gave as his condition: I want to be a pastry chef.

So everyone who hears this story goes "yeah right". We all envision the scene from FMJ. "Infantry. Infantry. Infantry.'. What does he end up doing? Being a pastry chef on a cook crew assigned to a Marine Corp General in Hawaii. Flirting with the girls, no combat, laying on the beach on his off days. The bastard.

That lasted about 5 months of bliss. Then he got a letter. "You are now a SAW gunner, report to Iraq."

Reporting for doooty!

Flowers

11-20-2006, 09:28 AM

There's a broken shell of a man who hangs out at The Pub on State Street in Madison. He signed up to avoid being drafted. He figured that his number would come up, and he may as well get it over with. He says he hates remembering trying to sleep while listening to dying people scream in the bush, but that's all he seems to talk about. He is a shorter gentleman and does not drink, if you are looking for him, he hangs out near the entrance and chats up the bouncers from time to time. Would he have been drafted? I do not know. I do know that his life has been a total mess since he went to fight in Vietnam.

Make them fucking draft you.

noun

11-20-2006, 09:42 AM

It was a retarded thing to say, and Rangel's logic for saying it in the first place is even dumber. The only time a draft made sense was when the fate of the world was at stake, and the last time that happened was in WW2. An unwinnable yet high casualty situation like Iraq? Yeah, fuck that.

In 2003, he proposed a draft covering people age 18 to 26. This year, he offered a plan to mandate military service for men and women between age 18 and 42.

Well, it would certainly give all the folks being laid off by corporations outsourcing their jobs something to do. But as someone turning 39 next month, I find the concept of a squad full of middle aged computer workers like myself undergoing basic training rather amusing. And assuming the government could even afford to train, house and feed that many people, the solider's wages would be shit. And I guess this would also give retiring boomers another chance to stay relevant in today's society...

JeffL

11-20-2006, 09:55 AM

I thought part of the problem the military establishment has with the draft is that it injects people that aren't interested in a military career into the military. So those people feel no compunction to keep their mouths shut about mismanagement.

Nope, they just prefer training and relying upon soldiers who decided they want to be soldiers. Frankly, complaints about "management" from volunteers carries a lot more weight than someone who never wanted to be in the military to begin with.

Mark Crump

11-20-2006, 10:14 AM

Well, it would certainly give all the folks being laid off by corporations outsourcing their jobs something to do. But as someone turning 39 next month, I find the concept of a squad full of middle aged computer workers like myself undergoing basic training rather amusing. And assuming the government could even afford to train, house and feed that many people, the solider's wages would be shit. And I guess this would also give retiring boomers another chance to stay relevant in today's society...

No shit. I'm 40, and I think the best words to describe is "cannon fodder."

TheWombat

11-20-2006, 10:59 AM

Times change. The US military has become extremely technology heavy, with, as Phil says, a longer time to make a more effective soldier or leader than before.

The military does not need a few hundred thousands teens with rifles.

Oh, no doubt about it. I wasn't arguing for a draft necessarily. And indeed, the days of mass armies are done. But your comments were about motivation and ability, not about suitability. There's nothing inherent in a conscript army that makes it bad; it's the circumstances that dictate whether it's wise.

That being said, opposing the draft on the grounds that it would bring people into the service who are not interested in it (not your point, someone else's in the thread I think) isn't all that convincing, as the folks who enlist now hardly enlist because of a burning desire to be in the military per se. It seems the biggest draws are a job, training, and education money. One might as well ask how you can build, in the long term, an effective military that way either. Apparently you can, so far, but perhaps only if you fight very short relatively low-casualty wars.

JeffL

11-20-2006, 11:12 AM

steve

11-20-2006, 11:30 AM

You could have multiple tiers in a draft scenario. People that enlist would be fast tracked to combat roles, while conscripts would do more civil tasks, just to do something for their country. They wouldn't be putting those people in battle, at least not unless there was an emergency.

It's an interesting idea, and it would certainly motivate the apathetic to vote. Of course the person who'd always get the most votes would be the one who pledged to stop the draft...

Phil_Stein

11-20-2006, 11:36 AM

Again though, assuming you have time parity AT LEAST equal to that of a minimum value enlistee (2 years), then you're talking about 7/8 of those who are conscripted (or roughly 7 million at any given time) NOT being used by the military, directly, unless the military dramatically increases it's number of active personnel.

So you've got about 7 million young people who you've got to find civilian WPA-type jobs for, and pay them to do them (and feed and house them). It's a huge waste of money and talent, and, as others have pointed out, it's really only being floated by Rangel and a few others to needle supporters of the war, not as a particularly serious policy alternative. Raising the upper age limit to 42 is just further evidence of this - "See, you thought you were off the hook but we're comin' for ya'"...

For that matter, if you really DID obligate everyone currently between the ages of 18-42 to do this (catching up the older folks over the course of, say, a decade or so), you'd have an enormous slice of the workforce taken off line and a huge drop in GDP, coinciding with perhaps the most expensive new government program in history.

Straw Man...

Flowers

11-20-2006, 11:44 AM

Fucking duh, Philip.

unbongwah

11-20-2006, 12:33 PM

noun

11-20-2006, 12:37 PM

"mandatory military service" != "mandatory combat duty"

AFAIK, countries with mandatory military service tend to be small and confronted by large, potentially hostile neighbors - e.g., Israel, Taiwan, South Korea - where it is all too easy to imagine a scenario where you need everyone able to fight (or at least with some idea what to do if and when hostilities erupt).

What about European countries such as Norway? They have a mandatory military service program, and when's the last time fricking Norway was in a war?

The problem is, with today's stop loss program in the US, it's not only mandatory but perpetual combat duty.

bigdruid

11-20-2006, 01:07 PM

I think depending on the time, those who volunteered had more control over the service they went into and the specialty they had, and thus a better chance of avoiding ground combat.

Exactly.

My dad, when faced with the possibility of being drafted, joined the Air Force instead. Spent the war with a cushy job as an MP guarding AF Bases in Thailand and Las Vegas. Beats the hell out of being a Marine or Infantryman.

Hans Lauring

11-20-2006, 01:11 PM

"mandatory military service" != "mandatory combat duty"

AFAIK, countries with mandatory military service tend to be small and confronted by large, potentially hostile neighbors - e.g., Israel, Taiwan, South Korea - where it is all too easy to imagine a scenario where you need everyone able to fight (or at least with some idea what to do if and when hostilities erupt).

Yeah, those damnable Swedes keeps us shivering in fear - good thing we have or conscript army...

... protecting us from our deadly neighbours in logical places like Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq.

TheWombat

11-20-2006, 03:59 PM

I think we need to be careful about the motivations of young people joining the military and how it is only those seeking a way "out" of something. A pretty good number of my friends have kids who have signed up, most of them indeed want to be in the military and had good options for other jobs/careers.

That is no doubt true. For the past thirty years, though, the military itself has been pushing the "get money for college" and "learn a skill" line as its number one recruiting line. With the exception of the Marines, and the Navy ("it's not just a job, it's an adventure") to some extent, that is. Yes, patriotism has always been a motivation and always will be. But does anyone really believe we'd be able to staff the military at effective levels without a very large amount of salesmanship based on rather more tangible incentives?

Anecdotes do not, of course, constitute facts but I find it intersting that the students where I teach seem to feel joining the military is "for losers." Coming from a military family I've never thought that myself, but I wonder how prevalent that attitude is among young people?

Ben

11-20-2006, 05:12 PM

I'm 24 and still have some friends college aged and I didn't see any real stigma against the handful of reserve enlisted or ROTC people in my extended social group. I don't know any infantry, though.

Flowers

11-20-2006, 07:20 PM

Recruiters are filthy liars might have something to do with it. My heart goes out to the kids who get snowed by those used-car salesman. Yes, I know, some people bla bla bla.

This isn't about them. It's about the guys who join and get jerked around for four years based on some wild lies.

Glenn

11-20-2006, 10:04 PM

Shortly after he returned home from Vietnam, my dad put his recruiter into the hospital. Never really felt any remorse about it, either.

FIDGAF

11-21-2006, 06:31 AM

Raising the upper age limit to 42 is just further evidence of this - "See, you thought you were off the hook but we're comin' for ya'"...

For that matter, if you really DID obligate everyone currently between the ages of 18-42 to do this (catching up the older folks over the course of, say, a decade or so), you'd have an enormous slice of the workforce taken off line and a huge drop in GDP, coinciding with perhaps the most expensive new government program in history.

You don't REALLY think that would happen do you? If they were to reinstate the draft it would be done JUST LIKE LAST TIME, hello?

At 18 you'd register, period. The military isn't interested in the old, they want young, fresh and PLIABLE minds to work with.

You don't go back and start pulling people that are past their prime, run them around until they keel over and arm them with large caliber weapons. Are you out of your fucking mind?

unbongwah

11-21-2006, 09:00 AM

What about European countries such as Norway? They have a mandatory military service program, and when's the last time fricking Norway was in a war?
As I said: "tend to be small and confronted by large, potentially hostile neighbors;" I didn't say they all were. Though last time I checked, Norway is kinda small and the former Soviet Union is right next door to Europe and was, until relatively recently, considered "potentially hostile."

Really, my basic point is that mandatory military service may not be a good fit for the U.S., given both the size of the population and the current challenges facing our military. Those countries which do require military service tend to face different geopolitical challenges than we do.

You don't go back and start pulling people that are past their prime, run them around until they keel over and arm them with large caliber weapons.
Actually, IIRC the U.S. draft age during WW2 was 18 to mid-40s (and Britain's was even higher). Dunno how many middle-aged men were called up to serve, much less in combat duty, but it was not simply a young man's draft.

XPav

11-21-2006, 12:47 PM

Yeah, those damnable Swedes keeps us shivering in fear - good thing we have or conscript army...
... protecting us from our deadly neighbours in logical places like Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq.
You do know that all Swedish troops deployed overseas are volunteers, right? Conscripts can't be deployed. Sweden has also been reducing the number of conscripts so it can actually deploy.

That's the other problem with conscript armies -- they generally don't deploy overseas, because that would be too hard on the conscripts.

I say again -- conscript armies are useless. Conscripting people to do make work is a stupid idea.

Phil_Stein

11-21-2006, 01:04 PM

FIDGAF - I think the point of my post was furthering my statement that this whole thing is a straw man, and that raising the upper age to 42 is further evidence of that...

FIDGAF

11-22-2006, 05:28 AM

First off, I seriously doubt that would ever happen. Raising the Draft age in this country would further infuriate the most influential age group so it's a political no-brainer that it would be death to their careers. Political suicide. You think the Soccer Mom's want their husbands in the service instead of making $$$ to buy them whatever they want?

The concept of either a mandatory year of service or registering for the draft at 18 like it has traditionally worked in the past would go over far better. That's because it wouldn't affect the people in our age category that's paying the taxes & bills, buying houses & driving the stock market.

At 18 you're still trying to figure out what you want to do with your life. Serving a year to learn how to defend yourself, handle weapons and attend some of the best schooling around might actually increase the amount of volunteers after they served their year.

drewl

11-22-2006, 06:19 AM

Look at the bright side, we've got too many fat people. Throw em in the army to get them in shape, if they keel over then that's one less person to drain the healthcare system......
better yet, since China makes all our crap anyway can we buy an army from them?
I'll go take my meds now...

Flowers

11-22-2006, 06:38 AM

This is America, mandatory military service goes against our founding principles. Only when it is a question of the security of the world and the nation can the draft be justified, and even then it is not an easy call.

wisefool

11-22-2006, 09:26 AM

It'd be a good idea to have universal military service. Of course, I'm also a flat footed squinty eyed vegetarian, so I'm safe either way.

They got shoes for that now, I think.

XPav

11-22-2006, 09:35 AM

The concept of either a mandatory year of service or registering for the draft at 18 like it has traditionally worked in the past would go over far better. That's because it wouldn't affect the people in our age category that's paying the taxes & bills, buying houses & driving the stock market.

At 18 you're still trying to figure out what you want to do with your life. Serving a year to learn how to defend yourself, handle weapons and attend some of the best schooling around might actually increase the amount of volunteers after they served their year.
The purpose of the military is to defend the US and its interest, not to enable teenagers to find themselves. Soldiers in for a single year would be useless.

noun

11-22-2006, 09:41 AM

In all seriousness, I don't see anything less than China's declaring war on the rest of the planet leading to another draft in the US.

FIDGAF

11-23-2006, 11:03 PM

The purpose of the military is to defend the US and its interest, not to enable teenagers to find themselves. Soldiers in for a single year would be useless.

If that year encouraged new recruits that were serious and had never thought that a military career was for them, wouldn't that do some good? You could never send them on active duty with "Regular" Military because Flowers would shoot the first MF that did something stupid, but you might get more interest in joining. If that failed, maybe some respect for the people that are serving would be a byproduct.

Tell me if it's me or are the rest of you getting a feeling that the country's youth is slowly becoming more "Me" and less "Us" when it comes down to something like serving? It's like they want to do their part as long as it doesn't involve actually joining a service. They back the troops as long as they don't have to become one of the troops. Maybe it's where I live...?

extarbags

11-24-2006, 02:14 PM

They back the troops as long as they don't have to become one of the troops.

Yeah, maybe it's a regional thing. For instance, around here I see that same attitude towards janitors.

I didn't realize it was hypocrisy to be glad that there are people doing a job that you don't want to personally do.

XPav

11-24-2006, 03:38 PM

Tell me if it's me or are the rest of you getting a feeling that the country's youth is slowly becoming more "Me" and less "Us" when it comes down to something like serving? It's like they want to do their part as long as it doesn't involve actually joining a service. They back the troops as long as they don't have to become one of the troops. Maybe it's where I live...?
No, its just you. "Kids these days" have always been less patriotic, less dedicated, uglier, smellier, and less respectful than whenever the person complaining was a kid. It has been this way since the dawn of time.

Jason McCullough

12-03-2006, 02:16 PM

Charlie Rangel (http://www.thepoorman.net/2006/11/21/king-solomon-pro-infant-vivisection/) is not really advocating a draft. Also, Swift was not seriously advocating that the Irish eat their own children (http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html).[/quote]

As he explained after voting against a similar bill he sponsored in 2004 (http://www.hillnews.com/news/100604/rangel.aspx):
Rangel accused Republicans of using his bill to assuage fears that President Bush had plans to reinstate the draft, stating, “The Republican leadership decision to place the draft legislation on the suspension Calendar is a political maneuver to kill rumors of the President’s intention to reinstate the draft after the November election.”
He went on to urge Democrats running for reelection to vote no.
“I am voting no, because my bill deserves serious consideration,” his statement continued.
“It should be subject to hearings and to expert testimony. The administration should come and tell us about our manpower needs, about recruitment and retention, about the extent to which out troops are overextended. And they should give us their views about shared sacrifice. If they did all of those things in a serious way, they would have to admit that my bill is an option.”

FIDGAF

12-03-2006, 08:25 PM

Talking to a few friends in Germany, it seems like the way they handle their "Draft" works out pretty well.

From what I can understand (Yes,there is a language barrier somewhat):

They serve 2 years and are not deployable. If they decide to stay in, they can be deployed. If they don't,they go back to their lives unless they're called up. They do NOT mix these recruits with regular troops.

So, anyone from Germany? Did I get this right?
If this is the case, why not adopt a policy like this here?
;)

Lizard_King

12-03-2006, 08:56 PM