Comments on: We ended the military draft. Maybe we need it again. Or something like it.

By: Jessie Morgan

Jessie Morgan — Sun, 13 Nov 2016 23:43:00 +0000

In reply to IMB Seventy. nobody said we should militarize our entire population. he only said the 18 year olds. It's not like we're sending in 10 year olds or anything. And I can see what he's getting at. A draft means more soldiers in the military, getting sent onto active duty to replace those who have been on active duty for a while.

By: IMB Seventy

IMB Seventy — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 08:53:00 +0000

In reply to TJ. Why should we militarize our entire population? Wtf?

By: TJ

TJ — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 18:18:00 +0000

I am a Vietnam veteran. And I belong to Veterans for Peace. And I favor re-instating the draft; more specifically, Universal Conscription. All 18 year olds (with some exceptions for disabilities) would serve for 18 or 24 months with no exemptions. The first two months would be basic training (haircut, uniforms, physical training, weapons training, hand to hand combat, military orientation, etc.). Then four months of Military Occupational training (everything from infantry to artillery to engineering, mechanics, cooks, clerks, computers, etc.). Then the final 12 – 18 months could be spent in the military or another government assignment such as Americorp. Upon discharge you would be required to keep and maintain your uniforms for another 4 years, just in case you are needed. Then our leaders might not be so quick to pull the trigger on wars of aggression or to protect corporate interests. We would also have a more physically fit citizenry with various vocational skills and a sense of discipline and duty. And everyone now has skin in the game.

By: joetheiceman

joetheiceman — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:09:00 +0000

In the years of the draft, the Army looked like much of America. All political and religious points of view were part of the Army due to the draft. Today’s all-volunteer Army is self-selecting, and mostly conservative and Christian in outlook. There are preachers who tell their flock to join the Army to become paid government missionaries. The Army no longer looks like America.
Some liberals would be drafted and might like the Army, become officers. The more conservative element of the Army would have to make compromises to work with more liberal elements.
I believe that if we do not impose a draft, in the future the Army may be so conservative that they will consider themselves a separate arm of the United States. I can remember during recent campaigns being told that the Army would have to approve the person who became president. We need to combat this mindset.

By: Cthulhu0818

Cthulhu0818 — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:01:00 +0000

The best way to get rid of the need for a large standing army is to make it impossible for the scions of the rich and powerful to avoid service.
If the 1% want to start another war for profit, not only do ALL of their of age children get drafted and sent to the front lines FIRST, so do the member of the 1%, if they’re still of service age.
When they have their skin in the game, they won’t want any wars.

By: glen_tomkins

glen_tomkins — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 13:05:00 +0000

The easiest way to avoid a military that develops its own culture inimical to the civilian culture of our society, is to not have significant standing military forces at all. That’s what this nation did between wars, disband its military back to a corporal’s guard, all the way up until the Cold War.
The very fact that we don’t adopt that easy way to avoid this problem — plus all the other problems entailed by standing forces (the huge price tag, the systematic incompetence bred by maintaining forces that have no real mission, the draw towards unnecessary, even destructive, fake missions created by the absence of any real need) — is the best demonstration of the danger posed by the solutions you entertain, which all amount to attempts to keep our military tamed by keeping it civilianized. We’re currently living the failure of that approach. We mass-mobilized to fight WWII, and all those former civilians brought back to civilian life after the war a militarism the war inculcated in them. Re-mobilizing, despite the lack of need and despite all the downside, was the consensus response to the ginned up “threat” of world Communism, because so many had become conditioned by fighting the good fight in uniform in WWII that a military response was the unquestioned knee-jerk response.
We don’t need a military in peacetime, not beyond a corporal’s guard. We don’t need to force anyone into uniform in peacetime to maintain a military we don’t need. We don’t need to civilianize the military, we need to de-militarize the wider society. That cannot happen until you and the conventional wisdom stop your unthinking acceptance of the idea that we need a large peacetime military.