Getting rid of the idea of (sort of) universal service by ending the draft was a reaction to our problems in Vietnam, a way of reducing the political heat, and, looking back, I think we made a mistake in ever getting rid of it. What's the main difference between a small volunteer military and a large conscript one?
A smaller volunteer force will, pound for pound, be more effective, highly trained and dangerous.
It will also be politically, socially, and culturally isolated from many segments of the society it is built to protect. There are now multi-generational military families. Almost a caste system, and not just of officers but of enlisted men. The military has never been so isolated from the people, and living in it's own world.
For a long time, I figured that was a fair trade, since fielding a winning force was of paramount importance. Now I'm starting to see what some people see in the draft. It puts a much larger segment of the U.S. into the fight. There's a danger in having a military that the people don't identify with. George Washington, among others, were against the idea of professional armies. In our case, the problem isn't a tyranny of the military, but a tyranny of pacifism that doesn't understand what their military is about.
What we gain in combat power by having select volunteers, we can't use, for lack of overall national will. There's no national will, because there's no personal identification with the fight or the fighters. A draft may make it harder to start wars, but it'll make it easier to win the ones we're in.
Interesting post. Among my friends, 8 of us have children in the military. Of that group, none of them joined the military for money to go to college and none of them have less than two years of college. My son has one degree and is working on second and is blessed with a trust fund for education. In one family, the young man my son's age is third generation in the Army. His grandfather served when drafted (I think Korea), his father is lifetime and he joined in junior college once the whole thing in Afghanistan began. He and his father are both currently in Iraq. This is a white middle class, generally conservative group. In my son's basic training class, the majority were also white - judging by the automobiles and clothing at the graduation ceremony, most were also middle class. The minorities in his class were latino and some asian - as I recall only two or three black persons in the whole group. I have the group pictures as reference.
I can see how a draft involves a larger segment of society, but if you talk to the military personnel - they don't want a draft. They don't trust draftees - particularly those who served during Vietnam.
I wonder if anyone has statistics on the relationship between the makeup of the military and the make up of society in general.