Should the Draft be reinstated?
 

http://www.time.com/time/personofthe...m.html?cnn=yes

With U.S. forces stretched thin and many reservists on full-time duty, some urge a draft for reasons of fairness and practicality. Opponents say it's unnecessary and dangerous.

What do you think?

Wow I personally would not want to be drafted b/c I have no desire to serve in the arm forces. I mean it's not fair for me or any other possible draftee to go and fight a war in which we had no hand in starting, if whoever started the war or sparked it w/ a few little words (I will not say any names, you know who you are) they should be on the front line ready to fight and back up their words. So I would have say no to the draft.

The draft should not be reinstated. There is too much potential for political upheaval that can stress our society, like in the late 6s and early 70s. Also, a drafted military does not perform as well as a professional volunteer one.

The underlying problem here, in my opinion, is that we have too many reservists and too heavy of a reliance on the National Guard. These entities are like a sacred calf to members of congress. Cutting back on reserve or guard, in order to increase the number of full time professional soldiers, is not a good political option.

The trend towards increased reliance on the reserves and guard makes sense during peace time, but this is when you don't need them. A well planned military does not build around peace time logistics. Changing this is expensive, but not that expensive. US military spending is under 3.5% of GDP and it should probably be in the 4-4.5% range.

Personally, I would rather see universal military or government service instead of a draft. Everyone (men AND women) serves either in the military performs some kind of government service as soon as they turn 18 in order to become eligible for government assistance such as student loans.

No deferments or exceptions except for reasons of health. Conscientious objectors (with reasons that are verifiable) can perform their obligation in some civilian agency such as the Peace Corps/Americorps, or should they elect to serve in the military, perform noncombat tasks such as a medic.

My two cents' worth, before taxes take it all away.

I do not agree with the draft, primarily because I don't think that every man has what it takes to be in the military. I do like the idea of service OR military being required of both men and women.

Dee

I am SO behind this! Only, I think that health should only play a part in WHICH type of service one performs, not excempt any one. In Israel, everyone serves a specific time (either 18 months or 2 years, I forget) when they turn 18 or graduate from high school - no deferments. You cannot be admitted into college without first serving.

They have a nation of people who know how to perform basic military operations - how to load, clean & use a gun, how to best prepare for attack, etc. Those who cannot continue in this area serve while doing childcare, record keeping or whatever. One branch is much like the CCC camps that we had here during the Depression - the guys who pretty much created a lot of the National Parks, made the benches, cleared the areas, etc. It's not ALL about violence - but it does stress military preparedness!

If a tiny country can do that, just think how much improved the USA could be!!

Good luck getting people who are like 4'10 and 90 lb to do any form of heavy lifting. My cousin is around that size (ok, a little taller, she's 5 ft...or claims to be. I think I'm more than two inches taller than her), and always has to go to the grocery store with at least another person. Otherwise, she won't be able to take everything home.

Have them work in child care. Or filing. If my mother-out-law could do it (she was 4'8", 85#), I'm sure someone 18 or 19 could do it much better.

You do manage to carry your school books, don't you?

Nope, neither my cousin or I carry heavy loads of schoolbooks to and from classes very often. We do if we're going to and from the library. Otherwise, we bring a notepad and pen.

MY MOTHER-OUT-LAW!
http://www.handykult.de/plaudersmili...py/roflmao.gif This deserves a "special smiley!!! LOL!

I'm very torn on this issue.

I absolutely believe that no one should be forced to fight in a situation like this. I would be more than willing to serve in a noncombatant position, but I know that I would be such a mental mess in combat that I would be more of a danger than a help.

I would agree with any sort of mandatory military service that allowed plenty of noncombatant positions for people that wished not to fight to serve in other ways.

That's why I don't agree with the draft too. I don't ever in my life even want to see a gun, let alone hold one, learn to use it, etc. It's just me (and I don't think nobody should have guns... so don't bother letting this get into gun control). When I say "service", I'm referring to some sort of community service, whether it is the Peace Corps, tutoring kids in the inner city, feeding the homeless, hospital volunteering, or cleaning up trash on the roads.

The biggest road block to it, as I see it, is financial.

Dee

Thank you!! The way I see it, they used to be my in-laws, now they're my out-laws. Somehow, it takes some of the sting out of a bad situation.

That sounds good. Kids in Ontario have to have 40 hours of community service in order to graduate from high school. That works out to 10 hours per year of high school, which isn't much. Yet some kids still complain. In any case, if I were a high school kid today, I'd get everything out of the way either in Grade 9 or the summer between Grade 9 and 10. That way I wouldn't have to worry about it afterwards, and spend the rest of my high school years concentrating on school and only school. Leaving things to the last minute is just BAD BAD BAD.

No way not many people want to be drafted for something they never wanted to join before. Especially if it for a war they disagree with. That would cause problems like it did for Vietnam. It will never happen, it would be political suicide for the party that endorsed it.

I would just like to see the people of the armed services get paid more, so that more people would look at it as a viable option. I think that the problem with the lack of people interested in military careers is in direct relation to the poor pay that the men and women of the armed services take home. If we paid our military men and women better, I don't think we would have to even think of drafting people.

We have a community service hour requirement at my high school as well, but it is 100 hours over the course of 4 years. While it's good, it's no where near the amount of hours that I would like to see performed. This a completely different subject, though, for another thread... :)

the pay isn't that bad anymore actually . . . especially for officers.

Having lived through the draft (literally), I agee with the above.

The situation we have now is one of almost turning a reservist or National Guard member into a full time soldier. That's unfair in every respect.

We have cut the military budget so much that we must rely too much on the Reserve and Guard components.

The Average Joe looking to enter the military isn't going to be an officer. Be that as it may, I still think both officers and enlisted members of the armed services should be paid more. They put their lives at risk to protect our freedoms. Call me crazy ;)

Cluey, you're crazy!

That would be a very bad idea...unless there was a serious, and NECESSARY war pending...not like the one we have now IMO!

I agree -- unless there is a war going on that the vast majority of the population agrees with, it would pretty much be political suicide to suggest reinstating the draft or even universal military service. Especially right now, because the majority of those opposed to the war in Iraq brought up the point that going into Iraq would stretch our military too thin -- it's going to be more of an "I told you so" thing at this point than anything else.

Like it or not the government is probably going to have to work with what they have, especially for the time being.

As for members of our armed services being paid poorly:

The actual take-home pay may be low, but the benefits (IMHO) more than make up for that, and make the life of an active-duty family financially more comfortable than that of a civilian family with the same salary.

1. Housing allowance if you choose to live off-base. There is on-base housing for singles and families. In the event that you want to buy a home, the VA offers low-interest loans without a down payment.
2. Subsidized healthcare during active duty and retirement. Even if one did not make a career out of the Armed Forces, he or she still has the benefits of the Veterans Administration hospitals (which, granted, vary in quality).
3. Access to the Base Exchanges and Commissaries, which offer goods for a lower price than off-base.
4. Job security.

NCOs may make less than officers, but most don't have a college education. If you consider the benefits offered by the Armed Forces, despite the seemingly low salary, it's probably more than most 18 year olds with just a high school education could make.

Uhm the people that disagree with this war would more than likely disagree with any war that the US has been in.

Also many supporters of the draft are against the war in Iraq because they think that it creates equality since then the sons of even the advocates of the war will serve.

And Israel isn't the only country with mandatory service - there are many countries that do require it and most aren't at war even.

-Rudey

I think about my 18 year old little sister, and how she would be demolished in a war. She would have no chance. Poor girl. The draft sucks. I think we should use the Olympics as a form of war...

Gee, a lot of us in the 60's thought the draft sucked, too -- but it didn't seem to matter.

The problem with waiting for a major conflict before instituting a draft is that it takes a long time to gear up to begin the process -- then the draftees must be trained (basic, AIT, etc.) and by the time the first draftees enter the pipeline, probably at least a year has passed.

Unfortunately, for the draft to be effective, it must be ongoing.

Can we just dump our violent criminal population into these countries?

-Rudey
--Heavily armed of course

I completely disagree with the draft - at least right now - and ALWAYS disagree with any form of forced community/military service, whether it's to graduate from high school, get loans, whatever.

I dig Rudey's "dump the criminals" idea. But I think the cast of Barney and Friends should be included also. :)

and Britney too.

According to the Liberal/Conservatives or Conservative/ Libearls
some years back, "WE NEED TO CUT THE MILITARY BACK!".

This has been done ever since the Founding of This Country!

Every War from The American Revolution to today virtually had to conscript members to fight.

Remember the Main! Pearl Harbor. being the two last largest.

Now because of the idioticy of our duley elected Morons, we are and have been once again thrust into this same position, time and time again! Lets build the National Guard and Researves up, Citizen Soldiers.

Lets have wars in so many differnet parts of the world that people expect us to get into the middle of!

No, we have Familys, Businesses, Schools, who have lost productive people that mean so much to our economy!

These are the people dieing and leaving the same afore mentioned items.

Tempt people to Join The Military not force them to. They want me during Viet Nam and I could not go! Thank god, what a damn mess that was and how many people (Ours) were killed and left so many familys without Parents, or how many it screwed up!

While not in the Military, I was a Police Officer and went on the Streets during the Riotous years of the Late 60s and early 70s. Yes, that was a war, it was people shooting and killing each other!:(

There many young people if tempted to join, they will, as there is no central Home authority or School Authority that can give them the Dierction for life and they are lost!:eek:

Just how many of you have ever worn A Uniform or carried A Weapon? I venture to say damn few!:(

Well, I went to Catholic school, and I've gone shooting... :p

I'm firmly opposed to the draft. We shouldn't start wars we don't have the resources to fight. What kind of army would be fighting if it was full of men who didn't want to be there?

Your first point could be proved wrong simply by looking at all the army Veterans out there who were against this war. At least in my city they were some of the first and most vocal protesters against it. There were a lot of men and women who served proudly in WWII, Korea and even Vietnam who were against this one.

And as for the second, I know plenty of people -- granted a lot of them are pretty young and don't know all that much yet -- who were against this war and didn't have a clue about the military's composition and what issues there are with it. And I'm sure some of them wouldn't have cared if they had.

There were a lot of reasons why people were against this war, not just some generic sense of hippie liberal pacifism. There were a lot of people who would have gladly supported it if it had been carried out differently or a different/better case had been made for it. And it was, for the most part, those people, not the hippie pacifists, who were the ones warning that going to Iraq was stretch our army too thin.

And I don't think that any of us are naive enough to believe that the draft is going to create equality. Instead of who has to serve in the army in order to get money for college and who gets their Daddy to put them through Princeton, it comes down to who has to do the actual fighting and who gets to skip out on his duties in the Texas Air National Guard.

My first point could also be proven wrong if you had some evidence or facts or anything like that showing those veterans weren't outliers. But until then there is a strong could. Hey some veterans are diabetics - so I guess that translates into Veterans are diabetics? Yeah ok thanks come again...next time say something funny...funny haha.

-Rudey
--Rudey
---Rudey
----Rudey
-----Rudey

Heather, that is one of the most specious arguments that I have read. You live in Madison, Wisconson, a bastion of the American Left. Your anecdotal observations are anything but indicitive of a broad sampling of American veterans, or of the population as a whole.

Also, the United States has never entered into a war in which it had a fully staffed military. The US is currently suffering from Bill Clinton's decision to reduce the American miltary from two theater capability to one. The time that it would take to restore it back to two theater capability is at least a half decade.

But getting back to the point of this thread, people, like Charlie Rangel, who have recently called for the reinstatement of the draft, are putting class warfare ahead of what's best for America. Reservists have time, and time again proven to be less effective. The casualty rate of reservists in the current Iraqi theater of operations is six times higher than that of fulltime professional soldiers.

Supporting the draft is essentially supporting a decrease in the effectiveness of the American military, an increase in American civil unrest, and a diminishment of the credibility of American force.

Very very very true. This is true of my very politically conservative military base hometown, where all of my older male relatives, and fathers of friends served at some time in their lives, and guess what? They're against this "war," too. Not a bastion of liberal thinking, this place.

If anything, I am very happy that Selective Services has tweaked its college deferment to prevent an inequality of socioeconomic and racial representation that happened in Vietnam.

Oh and what percentage of veterans is this town?

-Rudey

I would say a rough estimate of about 60-65% of the men where I live are active duty, retired, or spent some time in the military. One air base to the east, another to the left, and minor installations throughout the area.

Now do you have a rough estimate of what percentage of overall veterans they are? How about a rough estimate of how many of them were against this war? I love these rough estimates.

-Rudey
--2+2 is roughly 5...except it's really 4 if you think about it :)

And I live in the most conservative county in the state, and one of the top ones in the nation. It's a bastion of the American Right. I hear our people go to Madison to protest, it's only about 45 minutes away, if that. The opposition to this war in ALL PARTS of Wisconsin was stronger than a lot of people expected. Even our segregated cheese-eating citizens can get upset over something they think is WRONG. I wouldn't say her perception is skewed. I saw demonstrations in Milwaukee at my conservative university that is a bastion of the Religious Right and demonstrations in Waukesha, which wouldn't be any more conservative unless we moved BYU or Bob Jones here. Don't criticize her argument based on location...oh wait, New Yorkers can't hear.

Also, the retirement benefits are superb. On top of it, even when you are a retired military officer or soldier, you are still paid. You also still get health benefits and other great insurance deals (they have a car insurance company, USAA, which offers insurance to those who have served or their families....the premiums are much lower than a regular person's premium). It's kinda like being a teacher. The pay isn't wonderful but you have awesome benefits.