Agreed. And it turns boys into men way more often than not. The draft served America well up until 1973 when it ended. I remember sitting in the college dining hall when the local radio station announced, one by one, the lottery birthday order for the draft in 1972. My birthday was somewhere in the 200s and I shrugged it off - - I was way out of range for ever being drafted. It was later that I joined the Marines.
It is good that you enlisted, I was very pro-service at the time also, yet anti-draft.
I spent 2 years fighting the draft, got my permanent deferment, and then immediately enlisted in the Army.
I had seen the draft as something that the government couldn’t do, as slavery, but in the Army I came to see a bigger picture, and saw the need for a draft at times, for instance during the Cold War, and I also had concerns about what an all volunteer military would eventually become as the military became it’s own career, government branch of federal service.
This tiny military worries me, as does knowing that the military is slowly becoming yet another federal job rather than a lean, mean, male warrior force.
I was in the Army when the draft ended, and I predicted what we are seeing, and it will get worse after another generation or two.