America Doesn’t Need a Draft
By James Durso
August 02, 2017
Recently a proposal was made to bring back the draft in place of the all-volunteer force America has relied on since 1973.
The advocates of a draft feel the volunteer force is too expensive, the military and civilian populations are no longer connected, and the country lacks a sense of “shared sacrifice” when only a small proportion of the populations is in uniform. The proposal may also be a “backdoor attempt to restructure how America fights its wars” by shifting more combat units into the National Guard and Reserve,” though it doesn’t ‘fess up to that.
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/08/02/america_doesnt_need_a_draft_111951.html
A draft is a terrible idea, and the justifications in this article are terrible:
The advocates of a draft feel the volunteer force is too expensive,Great -- so we're going to solve that by reducing the pay of those people who choose ( and there will still be plenty of volunteers....) to serve their country. That's brilliant -- screw over the junior enlisted. That's "fair".
the military and civilian populations are no longer connected, and the country lacks a sense of “shared sacrifice” when only a small proportion of the populations is in uniform.A draft won't solve that problem -- it will still be only a small percentage who actually end up serving unless you chop enlistments down to two years or less, in which case you are weakening our warfighting capability. The only other option is massively expanding the size of the military to make room for all the people you're drafting, which makes the military far
more expensive.
And this whole concern about "disconnect" is really confusing cause and effect. The problem is that the country itself is divided long before people enter the military, and whiny urban millennials aren't going to change how they view the country just because they got drafted. They'll just resent it, be disruptive, and make a big freaking stink. Who the hell wants to have a platoon full of SJW's?
