Posted on 05/03/2009 8:02:08 PM PDT by truthandlife
Rep. Charlie Rangel, Congress's lone champion of reinstating the military draft, can count on another Korean War-era vet for support: Republican James Baker, a soldier in the Reagan and Bush administrations. Baker, secretary of state during the first Gulf War, visited a private girls' school in Virginia, where he was asked how to attract kids into some kind of service that gives them a stake in the country's future. "This is a very unpopular thing that I am about to say," he warned. "But one thing that makes it harder to go to war is to have a draft, because when you have a draft, then everybody's got a stake in it, and the costs of war are brought home much more vividly and vigorously to the American people. I think national service is a wonderful idea." But unlikely, he conceded: "You get killed if you support a draft, politically, but it sure would raise the stakes. Everybody would understand a lot better what we have at stake when we go to war."
Great, then become a youth pastor. The fact that we've got some ingrates around isn't a reason to do something that damaged readiness and harmed domestic tranquility when we did it before. The volunteer military performs fantastically, and using it to solve a societal attitude problem isn't any better an idea than any other for of social engineering.
The voluntary military is stretched to the breaking point, and requiring someone to serve their country isn’t ‘social engineering’.
If you’re so enamored of all volunteer forces, move to the Vatican. They hire their’s in Switzerland.
Thats a pretty accurate name for it. I wonder if we could organize a boycott and protest when they try to sign people up.
An army of mindless ideologues to do Obama’s bidding.
To market a draft in this manner,is equivalent to involuntary servitude.
Some of the stuff about the military being "broken" or "stressed" is hooey, some is accurate. But it's worth noting that recruiting and retention targets are being hit. It's also worth stating once again that the draft harmed combat readiness and damaged domestic tranquility in the Sixties and Seventies. Solving a "stretched" military with something that harmed their readines and discipline before is like trying to cure gonorrhea with an injection of herpes.
There's a reason the military wasn't interested in the draft even when some of the services were missing their marks and the Guard and Reserve were overtaxed. There's a reason that even Congresscritters in safe seats won't vote for it. It's because it's a rotten idea.
If youre so enamored of all volunteer forces, move to the Vatican. They hire theirs in Switzerland.
The gratuitously insulting suggestion that I leave my country because I disagree with you on military policy is noted.
When I was in during the early Nineties, the senior NCOs still shuddered at the prospect of a draft...and that was in the Air Force, the service that received by far the fewest draftees and experinced by far the fewest draft-related problems! Like I said, if you want to improve the attitude of youth toward serving their country, become a youth pastor or high school guidance counselor.
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