Hello-
Interesting post and reader comments. I’m not sure where I stand on the issue of the draft, except to make a couple of points. The All-volunteer force (AVF), it should be clarified, is not really a force where you serve voluntarily. You join the military on your own volition, but serve thereafter at the pleasure of the government. That is, once you get in, you cannot simply leave when you have served what you feel is a reasonable term of service. Therefore, it is my belief that it is more accurate to call our force vountarily-recruited, and not purely volunteer.
Moreover,stop-lossing and related measures already amount to a backdoor draft as well. So one could argue that we already have a draft, just not an up-front, formalized one but instead an under-the-table one affecting only a small portion of the country, one that has already done its part.
I do not doubt that members of the AVF are among the best soldiers our nation has ever produced. However, no one in the AVF is qualified to make the judgment as to whether or not they were better than their fathers or grandfathers, who were often draftees. As I recall, they fought WW2, Korea and Vietnam quite admirably, and most draftees did their duty. The argument of whether the AVF is ‘better’ or ‘more highly motivated’ than its predeccessors is alot like comparing Ted Williams and Barry Bonds – entertaining and interesting but not really possible. Different eras, different conditions.
Draftees may pose disciplinary and other problems for the services, but they also leaven the ranks with people who are not members of the professional military, folks who are citizen-soldiers. They serve the function of keeping the military honest, keeping it from getting too incestuous and insular as an institution, something any service member – if they are honest – will admit is occasionally a problem. The services are big bureaucracies, and engage in the same CYA behavior other big organzations do – i.e., cost overruns, burying mistakes instead of airing them, careerism over national interest and so on. Draftees are one check against that sort of behavior, because they have nothing to lose by telling it like they see it.
Having said all of the above, there are certainly problems with a draft, I am not denying that. But if the threat against us gets big enough, all this political posturing against the draft will go right out the window and you’ll see young people lining up for their SS registration. The government has done it before and will do it again if need be. The courts have upheld the legality of the draft on many occasions in the past.
One note to consider: Why does the military cling to the antiquated notion that only the very young can serve effectively in the services? I am in my forties, and tried to enlist after 9-11, and could not get in after more than three years of trying. It bothered me immensely to see the quality of some of the young people serving, how slovenly, out-of-shape, etc. a few of them were. The vast majority of the people in the services are squared-away, highly-competent people, but I saw some bottom-feeders, too. Why they get in and guys like me with skills, education, physical conditioning, good character cannot is a mystery. Granted, middle-aged people are most likely never going to comprise the bulk of our military – we will always need young people – but shouldn’t our services make every effort to use qualified people even if they are a few years above the age cutoff? Last I checked, those soldiers out there are on their 2nd, 3rd or even 4th tour. They need help, so let’s give it to them in every way possible. Performance is what counts, at least in my book.
Final point: Although the pay has gotten better, military compensation does not yet match what highly-qualified young folks can make in the civilian sector. I have a buddy who wants to join up, and he is having problems figuring out how to keep things going – pay his bills – while he is at basic training. And if he ends up joining, he’ll take a 50% pay cut over his civilian job to do so. It is preposterous to me that the people we ask to defend our nation make so little money. That’s an outrage, frankly. We ought to be ashamed. We have billions for another sub but not enough to pay our grunts a decent wage. Yeah, I know it gets better when you get promoted, but the E1s, E2s and E3s are doing a lot of the fighting and dying in this war, and they deserve better.
Pete
