More horse hockey from people that can’t stand the fact that by using volunteers we have built THE FINEST MILITARY IN THE WORLD.
Some of us were alive and served in Viet Nam, and can tell you what an ABSOLUTE DISASTER forcing people into the military that didn’t want to be there was.
An even more absurd comment:
“But more importantly, with how the draft worked during World War 2, by lottery,”
Obviously the bozo that wrote this had no father or brothers that served during World War II. If you were rich, there was ZERO chance you were going into the military if you didn’t want to. The saving grace during that war was that the country WAS behind it, and most did serve.
Financial and manpower constraints will ensure that the days of empire and "world leadership" will one day end. Hopefully, it will be in time to return to the kind of republic the Founders envisioned.
The best way to unite the nation in war is a formal Congressional declaration of war and a no-exceptions draft. A volunteer army is a private force of the President and can be thrust into war at his whim or pretext.
The Vietnam era military was the finest we had ever had, and it was overwhelmingly volunteer, with the draft merely used to fill in what came up short from recruitment, today we have to beg women and grandmothers and moms to fill in the enlistment shortages.
We also have a military too small and weak to fight a major war, and that is devouring our budgets in pay, benefits, day care, and supporting families, gynecologists, pediatricians and quality of life issues.
We are losing the ability to fight major wars.