[Gondring]

"The willingness of today's National Guardsmen to continue in combat is courageous and admirable, but cannot be expected to last indefinitely, and the political cost of returning to the draft system would be incalculable."

That's not an untrue statement, though. And the long-term effects on recruitment are evident, as many people who would have signed up as only a Home Guard (without overseas deployment except following military attack by another nation) no longer have a place to enlist.

If we are going to be an active participant in overseas nation-building/interventionism, then we need a larger active-duty regular military, not the current alignment of National Guardsmen for offensive combat. Besides, the current regulations have limits on redeployment of Guardsmen, such that we are having to dig deeply into inactive reservists, like the 70-year-old sent to Afghanistan in 2004.

[68skylark]

If we are going to be an active participant in overseas nation-building/interventionism, then we need a larger active-duty regular military, not the current alignment of National Guardsmen for offensive combat.

I've heard this kind of statement from some people on both the left and right. But it's not a widely held view -- thank goodness.

There are plenty of good reasons -- both political and military -- why the Army National Guard and other reserve forces will continue their current role.

[LibertarianInExile]

If we are going to be an active participant in overseas nation-building/interventionism, then we need a larger active-duty regular military, not the current alignment of National Guardsmen for offensive combat. Besides, the current regulations have limits on redeployment of Guardsmen, such that we are having to dig deeply into inactive reservists, like the 70-year-old sent to Afghanistan in 2004.

Yeah...yeah! In fact, what we need is a sixth service, one that just focuses on cleanup operations after the rest of the military beats the crap out of the organized opposition.