Stoopid Stuff

Do you Feel a Draft?

In my travels recently, I have come across a surprising (at least to me) number of people who are convinced that the US Government will reinstitute the draft in some fashion, and they believe it will be soon. Now I'm no fan of the Bush administration, and would consider almost no ideological excess beyond their ethical limits, but I'm going to have to offer a pretty strong opinion on this one. There is not going to be a draft. Not in the foreseeable future. How can I be so certain? Hey, it ain't ethics or political restraint I'm counting on. In this case, it's simple practicality.

There are three reasons why it's pretty clear there won't be a reinstatement of the draft. Think of them as Cost/Benefit, Time to Market and Value. The political cost would be HUGE. Sure, you say, this cabal of thugs we call our leadership is so extreme, so ideologically driven, that they simply don't care about political cost. Well, maybe. But there's a cost you are willing to absorb, and then, no matter how driven by ideology you are, there are still costs you simply are not willing to pay. Plus, the Republican party, plus the legislature, would have an awfully lot to say about the cost of a new draft. Bush is out at the end of this term--many others would rather not be. The political cost of a draft would fall directly on the shoulders of republican politicians in Washington and throughout the country. They would be forced to put their jobs, even their careers at risk to support the draft, or they would have to break with their president and side with the minority party. Either way would be disastrous for them.

Which brings us to the "Time to Market" issue. Selective Service is a HUGE bureaucracy, and just getting it cranked up would take the better part of a year. At the same time, there would be massive debate in congress about fixing the known flaws in the system, and finding ways to make it fairer. They would argue birth dates, lotteries, deferments, and a whole host of other approaches and questions that would tie up the legislation for months. So finally, the first draftees show up at boot camp in a year or so, maybe longer. But to what end?

The US military, no matter how you may feel about the way it has been used recently, is, qualitatively, the best fighting force in the world, and by several orders of magnitude. There has been much discussion of the technological superiority of the US armed forces, but it is a whole lot more than that. The difference between a conscript army and a volunteer army, in capabilities, morale, spirit and courage are like night and day. An easy way to look at this is to look at the relative performance of the army infantry and Special Forces in Vietnam. Infantry was, for the most part, poor conscripts, while Special Forces, notably the "Green Berets", were all volunteers. In a nutshell, the infantry performed poorly, while the Special Forces excelled. When these draftees start to be deployed into volunteer units, no field commander is going to want them. They would be an infection, a negative value relative to esprit de corps, morale and desire. No, our military is structured the way it is, as a literally unbeatable fighting force, in a large part due to its all-volunteer nature.

And while no one expected the leadership to so grossly misallocate and overuse our forces, to attempt to supplement those forces with a conscript army would only make matters worse. I can give you a much more likely scenario. When the decision to invade Iraq was made, a lot of combat power was required. But the problem was, America was already involved in a war in Afghanistan. So, what did we do? We pulled the vast majority of our combat power out of Afghanistan to use in the invasion of Iraq. Sure, as a result we lost the countryside, we left chaos behind, we don't own any part of Afghanistan but some of the capital and whatever piece of ground we are standing on at the time, but hey, we took Iraq. So I ask you: If the Bush Administration wants to start a war with Syria or Iran, where are they going to get the troops? Just look at history. After the January elections in Iraq, fraudulent and disastrous though they might be, we can turn that country over to it's weak, illegitimate "elected" government, declare victory and use those troops for the next war to secure our oil empire. No draft required, just a little more deceit and dishonesty. Now that's a prediction that's SURE to come true...

posted by mikey @ 1:32 PM