Posted on 07/04/2023 6:45:51 AM PDT by Antioch
Fifty years ago, one American faced Independence Day having just lost much of his personal freedom. Dwight Elliot Stone, the U.S. military’s last draftee, was inducted into the United States Army on June 30, 1973. Private Stone served not in Vietnam but in the safer yet equally humid swamps of Fort Polk, Louisiana. His 17 months in uniform brought down the curtain on the draft. Stone was the last of more than 17 million men conscripted into the U.S. military.
Those who joined the American military in July of 1973, and in the five decades since, have been part of what is known as America’s “all-volunteer force,” or AVF. For most Americans, the AVF is something to be celebrated, but foreign to their daily lives. The AVF gave most Americans the freedom to be indifferent to their military, shifting the burden of service to a smaller, self-selected cohort of citizens.
The AVF receives endless accolades; American politicians often refer to it as “the finest fighting force the world has ever known.” But despite 20 years of war and military interventions with mixed results, the all-volunteer force has been subject to little debate about whether it’s still the right force for America.
When these discussions do occur, most focus on democratic accountability. As President George W. Bush quipped about the Iraq War to a group of Oval Office visitors in 2006: “If I had to do this with a draft army, I would have been impeached by now.” The idea that misguided wars might be prevented by a more engaged population has its appeal, but the AVF also faces more
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
“Quantity has a quality all its own.” - Stalin
I came along 1977 and generally saw mostly a success story with the volunteer deal. I could see the pluses and minuses via the officer and enlisted angles. I’d readily agree that a quarter of the officers were not that capable, but about every decade...they had some overage of people and purged them out.
Presently, I live in Germany, and the volunteer thing is in serious jeopardy. They are bending over backwards....doing a lot of things that you wouldn’t see in the US situation. It’s not helping. Even the Germans are bringing up the draft idea again. Within the public, I doubt if more than 30-percent would support this.
One of the reasons they want to crash the economy. Basically force people to join, if they want to eat.
You found another topic you know nothing about and want to turn it into yet another of your constant weird rants.
Not in the American military, we have no intention of using millions and millions of our men’s lives to wear down an enemy.
Idiot wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and scattered across Africa. One looming on the WWII Eastern Front with us in the nazi role, a looming war with China. Our military filled with perverts, homos and trannies AS OFFICERS. They cannot fill the ranks.
So this guy wants a draft.
Agree TOTALLY with you.
“You found another topic you know nothing about and want to turn it into yet another of your constant weird rants.”
Yet another RANT from the Neocon Supporter bunch.
“””Not just the feminization of the military leadership, but also the perversion of the leadership with perverts able to serve openly.”””
It is all part of the same package, once we opened up the military to females in about 1972, the future was made and we haven’t seen anywhere near how far it can go.
We are still in the early stages of the feminization of the military.
Crashed the economy for Covid, and what? That didn’t motivate anyone for recruitment. The economy is crapping-up for the past two years, and I don’t see people rushing to end up as a E-1 in the Navy or Army. What is it presently....8-million men between 18 and 50...not actively seeking employment...sitting in dad’s basement?
If they were thinking of a driving force...by the time you discuss woke-stuff, gender ideology, pronouns, out-of-shape teens, drug-use, and reality in 2023...you can cross off 90-percent of potential people.
I think the opposite will occur where 2025 arrives and we remove US forces in Europe because a downsizing has to occur. They won’t be able to fill 15-percent of all billets.
Army’s Last Draftee to Retire After 39 Years
Published July 03, 2011 Associated Press
Mellinger told the draft board there was a mistake.
“I ... told them I don’t need to go into the Army, I’ve got a job,” said Mellinger, who hung drywall for a living. “They just kind of laughed.”
(snip)
He heard so many war stories in training that he was fired up about going, and was disappointed he was instead assigned to be an office clerk in Germany.
(snip)
Mellinger wasn’t long for clerking. He earned a spot in the Army Rangers, and would go on to do more than 3,700 parachute jumps. And despite the 1991 parachute accident that gave him the material for the wind chime, breaking his leg in several places, he went on to run nine marathons. He was made a command sergeant major in 1992.
Nearly a decade later, he was sent to ground zero in New York right after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as part of an advance party from the First Army. Then came his time in Iraq as the top enlisted soldier of the multi-national forces in Iraq, where he says he survived 27 roadside bombings during his deployment of nearly three years straight.
(snip)
“Draftees are pretty maligned over time,” he said, “but the fact is they are part of every branch of service up to 1973, and when you look at what those military branches accomplished over time, I’ll let the record speak for itself.”
“Being drafted was probably the best thing that ever happened to me because it forced me to grow up and shed the foolish ideas I might have carried throughout my whole life. We need it now, desperately”
No way in hell that a decent American kid should be drafted and put under the command of lesbians, homosexual colonels wearing dog masks and sodomizing junior officers, march around in red heels, etc.
No draft (involuntary servitude) with this military and on behalf of this thoroughly corrupt government in DC.
As childish and immature as I was, The Army provided a mans' perspective I would not have gotten from my successful, white collar father.
My father was not a bad or absentee guy, he just had a different (and we WERE Bawstin city types, in a suburbian kind of way) viewpoint on a lot of things different from say, corn fed redneck types.
I never agreed to the doing away with the draft and I think it should be re-instated, but NOT into a woke military.
Everything woke needs to be pressure hosed out and down the drain and every scary element of 17-20 year olds being yelled at and quasi abused should come back.
MANY a Marine can attest to their initial training as the foundation for their manhood 40 or more years later.
my two cents' worth.
“my two cents’ worth.”
Your ‘worth’ is a LOT MORE than two cents.
Maybe we’ll end up using mercenaries, similar to Russia’s Wagner group. We could call it the Joplin Forces. (After Scott Joplin. He was black, y’know.) It would allow our Overlords to empty the prisons, freeing up precious space for anti-vaxxers and unrepentant meat-eaters.
First thing they need to do is look at consolidating support services. Much of the Stateside support services are performed and managed by civilians anyway. One Admin system, one supply tracking system and one medical reporting system now you no longer need competing programs across the services. You reduce the number of Flag Officers and General Officers running the same programs across four services. Army takes Admin, Air Force takes Intel and Navy takes Medical or something to that effect. You will always have Sailors, Soldiers and Airman trained in those fields for deployment, but as a Marine you may go to Admin and find a Soldier doing your orders, a Marine your pay and and Airman managing your billeting. All of the above managed by a civilian. It already happens at many Joint Commands. As a Navy Chief I ran an Air Force Customer Service Department. Eventually you have a single Support Command for Intel, Supply, Medical and Chaplains. But it will take decades and a lot of pain to get this done.
Back in 91 at Bragg (will always be Bragg to me for as much as I hated the place) we had a female CO (captain) and female 1st sergeant (think it was an e7 acting). Not a great time as the CO had a last name that worked into parody for some country song about thunder thighs / wandering eyes that some troops sang it openly and the 1sgt who was married to another e7 in the company was having an affair with the warrant officer 2 who was in the same platoon as I was (I was a lowly e3 at the time). It was not exactly an uplifting experience as the 1sgt and wo2 seemed to have several spats over various things to include one time coming back from a field exercise and while at vehicle recovery stuff in front of the motor pool as I was slowly driving the wo2 in a humvee, the 1sgt was in the field trying to coordinate things and she and the wo2 had some words and she must have mouthed off to him as he jumped out of the vehicle while we were still driving and just started tearing her a new one right in the middle of everyone. He got back in the vehicle and told me to drive while she just sat down in the field and cried. It was a sad sight for all of us.
The army was supposed to be comprised almost entirely of state militias that were called up when Congress issued a formal declaration of war.
Those days ended when state militias were disbanded after the Civil War.
Now we're just like any other fading empire.
Well no chance of us going back to isolationism after WWII.
The globalists said, “See, told you so”, when they blamed WWII on the US’ isolationism after WWI and the US refusal to join The League Of Nations.
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