Hey...I was thinking of those who have expressed dread at the idea of reinstituting the draft, so while I was visiting my friend in the Army I asked him about it.
He had some interesting insights to this. The primary reason he can't see it happening is something I don't think I've heard anybody else bring up: It would change everything about how they treat their people.
Under an all volunteer service, when there is any kind of problem with personnel, they can take the approach of "you volunteered for this" and generally counsel those that need it. They do not have to be the barking, hard-nosed stereotypical drill-seargant types we would expect.
However, a return to conscription would change everything. Now you would have people who truly don't want to be there, and have to handle them completely differently. By this time you have people who have been in the military for 20 years or better who have never operated under the 'old' system, it would require a complete change of how they do things.
Plus, with all volunteer, they can afford the luxury of living off-base with the expectation those same volunteers will return the next day. Otherwise, they would have to go back to locking down bases and back to the famed "2 day pass" just to get outside the gates. They're not prepared to move all their personnel who reside off-base into the base without some serious building.
That would not be an easy thing to institute.
Basic training locations would be able to handle the influx of people, but training schools and existing bases likely would not. With base closings through the 90's, there's only so much room to put them, and only so many advanced training facilities and what they can handle these days.
It will likely take something exceptionally major happening on our shores before reinstituting conscription would ever become a reality here.
Still...doesn't mean we shouldn't speak up against it, but I don't think it's much more than a pipe dream at this stage.
I don't see a draft happening because then the children of powerful people would be on the hook to serve, the better way for Bush to get what he wants is to sink money into the Armed Forces so that they make lost of lucritive offers while at the same time destroying the ecconomy so that desperate people from low income areas join to get out.
When have the children of powerful people ever served?
I'd like to think there won't be a draft -- the only good point I've seen Bush make...maybe ever...was in the second debate, where he countered the draft rumors with the fact that an all volunteer army better suits todays modes of warfare. The army isn't about strapping guns and backpacks on a million gurnts and digging trenches. It's about having highly skilled, highly motivated people working with high tech, billion dollar technologies.
The only thing our now-eternal cycle of war will thrust upon us is a massive debt and a floundering economy.
And of course a bunch of families of volunteers I'm glad I don't happen to be part of.
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He had some interesting insights to this. The primary reason he can't see it happening is something I don't think I've heard anybody else bring up: It would change everything about how they treat their people.
Under an all volunteer service, when there is any kind of problem with personnel, they can take the approach of "you volunteered for this" and generally counsel those that need it. They do not have to be the barking, hard-nosed stereotypical drill-seargant types we would expect.
However, a return to conscription would change everything. Now you would have people who truly don't want to be there, and have to handle them completely differently. By this time you have people who have been in the military for 20 years or better who have never operated under the 'old' system, it would require a complete change of how they do things.
Plus, with all volunteer, they can afford the luxury of living off-base with the expectation those same volunteers will return the next day. Otherwise, they would have to go back to locking down bases and back to the famed "2 day pass" just to get outside the gates. They're not prepared to move all their personnel who reside off-base into the base without some serious building.
That would not be an easy thing to institute.
Basic training locations would be able to handle the influx of people, but training schools and existing bases likely would not. With base closings through the 90's, there's only so much room to put them, and only so many advanced training facilities and what they can handle these days.
It will likely take something exceptionally major happening on our shores before reinstituting conscription would ever become a reality here.
Still...doesn't mean we shouldn't speak up against it, but I don't think it's much more than a pipe dream at this stage.
L
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no subject
I'd like to think there won't be a draft -- the only good point I've seen Bush make...maybe ever...was in the second debate, where he countered the draft rumors with the fact that an all volunteer army better suits todays modes of warfare. The army isn't about strapping guns and backpacks on a million gurnts and digging trenches. It's about having highly skilled, highly motivated people working with high tech, billion dollar technologies.
The only thing our now-eternal cycle of war will thrust upon us is a massive debt and a floundering economy.
And of course a bunch of families of volunteers I'm glad I don't happen to be part of.