Reinstating the Draft?

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fletcher

fletcher

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Oh, dear, dear God, please help me. This is only the 5000000th time I've seen this.

It's fake.

It's in a section called "Soapbox". It's on congress.org, not congress.gov. And both bills can be found here:

http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:H.R.163:

http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:H.R.163:

Both introduced in January and February... of last year. Both of which had the last action of them done... last year. The Senate bill doesn't even have a co-sponsor. The House bill is Charles Rangel--a Democrat--just trying to be irritating as per usual. It's his full-time job. And he actually introduced it as a protest against Bush, basically.

The military doesn't want it. They're smart enough to know that an all-volunteer force is more effective anyways. And it's not like they're trying to sneak it in in the total absence of stories about it. See the date on the first one? 2002.

The bill could still possibly be brought back and passed into law, but, if you were a good student during your high school government class, you might recall that it has to be approved by committee, voted on by both chambers, both versions merged into one bill, and signed into law by the President. And, then, of course, there's the issue of legal challenges, which is a big fish to fry, and those are going to be inevitable.

I think that the draft is one of the worst abrogations of human rights, but it's not going to show up anytime in the forseeable future.
 
Guess I've been had :p Thanks for clearing it up

I could seriously see this happening, it just got me riled up :banghead:
 
I think that the draft is one of the worst abrogations of human rights, but it's not going to show up anytime in the forseeable future.
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Disagree, the draft is needed now more then ever and will be reistated in time.
Sorry.
 
I think that the draft is one of the worst abrogations of human rights, but it's not going to show up anytime in the forseeable future.
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Sir, I am interested in buying the lifetime warranty on this statement....... can you tell me where to send the check?

The need for the draft will be determined by how long our military involvement in the Iraq area continues and how many reserve forces are driven out of the service in disgust. They will have to be replaced somehow. Since "stop loss" is still in effect right now, it's impossible to get an accurate gauge on what the severance rate will be once that is lifted. Time will tell if the draft comes back.
 
Now that IRAQ HAS BECOME AN AlQAUDA

recruiting zone- thanks to G.W. Bush, we're going to need that million man compulsory U.S. Army to fight them. :mad: Suppose some half brain representative could tell Bush he's screwed up big time.
 
The Pentagon doesn't want a draft:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2003/d20030114avf.pdf

The Republicans do not want a draft:
http://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/story.asp?ID=4374

The Democrats don't even really want the draft. The Democrat who proposed the House bill (Charles Rangel) voted against any appropriations to fund Selective Service in the three years prior to this bill being introduced.

This is all a political tactic to scare the ignorant during an election year.

By the way, bountyhunter - stop/loss orders only effect units deployed to combat zones, not the entire military. the idea there is it is difficult to conduct combat operations over a 12 month tour if 1/3 of your force (including staff and leadership) is rotating out to new jobs.

2003 was a great year for military recruitment and the military has been able to turn away qualified volunteers.

Finally, Congress has to authorize any expansion of the military manpower levels and they have not.
 
By the way, bountyhunter - stop/loss orders only effect units deployed to combat zones, not the entire military. the idea there is it is difficult to conduct combat operations over a 12 month tour if 1/3 of your force (including staff and leadership) is rotating out to new jobs.
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Maybe, but the stop loss currently under way is falling onto the troops rotating back out of country, which is to say it is hitting National Guard and Reserve units very heavily. Those people are patriotic and they did sign up to defend their country, but I can tell you from personal ear chewing that they NEVER agreed to take the kind of hardships they are suffering now so the could play riot control police in the sand hell they have been sent to. That was never their job, and they should never have been used in that way.

The bottom line is that what you said is only partly true: new enlistment quotas have been met, but that is misleading: during high unemployment periods, enlistment is always brisk for obvious reasons. But new recruits are not the problem: it is the "skill" positions which are filled to a large degree by reserve and guard under the "new vision" of the military.... which is that you keep the standing army tiny to save money and yank the reservists in every time the bullets fly.

What I said before stands: I am waiting to see the stampede for the hills that occurs among doctors, nurses and other highly paid technical positions out of the guard and reserve the minute the stop-loss is lifted. Those people take cuts in pay on the order of 70% when they serve and many suffer severe financial hardships when they do. This war has been a real eye opener to people who always believed they would only be called when our country was directly threatened.

And for the record: I am very familiar with who gets hit with stop loss, since my wife was called active for the entire duration of Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Her present unit is now active and in country, the only reason she is stateside is because she is now a CO and they have enough officers over there)... that and the fact that she is too old to serve in a combat zone. I would never say that last one to her face because she is qualified on M9, M-16, and M-4.
 
In the Army today, we have less than half a million personnel. Back in the eighties, when I was a rifleman, we had about 1.5 million active duty personnel in the Army.

Some folks say "Time for a draft!" The reality is a draft would be about the dumbest thing to do.

Want more troops? All congress has to do is authorize an increase in the number of active duty personnel and the recruiters will fill up the slots. We turn away folks right now, and we were turning them away in the eighties,when the army was over three times as large.

None of the "draft slaves for combat" folks want to authorize such an expansion, especially in the _cost_ of more troops. This is not about having more troops. It is all about:

A) paying slave wages to soldiers

and/or

B) Replacing the awesomely effective professional soldier with half trained and largely unmotivated draftees, who will do the minimum they are able and then _leave_.


The folks calling for a draft are either unaware of how the modern Army is put together, or actively trying to take it apart.

We have the most capable, winning, _lethal_ military in the history of our nation. No draft could _ever_ produce the capabilities of the professional volunteer, or our all-volunteer armed forces.


Want more soldiers? _Hire_ them! There is no place in a free society for slaves, or slave-soldiers, and I will be dammed if I will sit back and let the slave-soldier advocates trash the Army I helped build!
 
What would be the right reasons?

Burt, why is a solider who is motivated to join because of increased salary any more dedicated to the actual job of soldiering than a draftee?---Lone Gunman
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I'm not Burt, but at the most basic level the solider who joins for what ever reason is there because they wanted to be. The draftee is there because they have to be.


Both would seem to be there for the wrong reasons to me.---Lone Gunman
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What would seem to you, to be the right reasons?


Respectfully,

jdkelly
 
This is pure political BS designed to steal a few more votes from the party in power.

Imagine this scenereo: You have a military which allows combat units composed of a mixture of straight, gay, Lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and neuter, single, married and miscellaneous persons. These combat units do not necessarily use English as a primary language. Their level of aerobic fitness is at the lowest common denominator of the 19 year old anorectic female private and the 46 year old obese chain smoking National Guard sergeant. Their educational level is sufficient to read most comic books.

Now, add the low morale of a few hundred thousand draftees and what do you get?
 
"B) Replacing the awesomely effective professional soldier with half trained and largely unmotivated draftees, who will do the minimum they are able and then _leave_."

Conscripts are not required to be half-trained. The Israeli army is drafted, and they field some of the
best front-line infantrymen on the planet. (Compare their casualties during the recent operation in Rafah to American casualties in Najaf or Fallujah.) The difference is that the Israelis know that the only edge that an outnumbered army can have is in superior training and tactics.

US Army has lots of spares if a couple break, so they're not as concerned :(

Unmotivated, I'll give you. Most people I know are completely unwilling to put their lives on the line for this country. Or (just as bad) they are willing to risk their lives, but are not willing to kill. Unwillingness to kill betrays a lack of confidence in the justice of your cause.
 
jdkelly,

I don't know all the reasons why people would become soldiers, but I do think that if money is a primary motivating factor, then they are doing it for the wrong reason.

How motivated could a future soldier be who says "Hey the army just got a $100 a month raise, now I think I will join". A pay raise may help boost morale of those already in service, but I don't see it as a good reason for people to join in the first place.

There are certain professions that are "callings" more than jobs. Soldiers, preachers, physicians, and philosophers should all fall into that category.
 
I'm not Burt, but at the most basic level the solider who joins for what ever reason is there because they wanted to be. The draftee is there because they have to be.
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I enlisted during the southeast Asia fiasco, but most of the lads I served with were draftees. There was absolutely no way to distinguish between a "US" (the service number prefix for a draftee) and an "RA" (the prefix for an enlistee) on the basis of skill, motivation, or ability. Some of the best soldiers were draftees, and some of the worst were enlistees.

Look at the make-up of the force we have in Iraq now. It's not all regular army. It's not even all regular army plus army reserve. It's both of those PLUS NATIONAL GUARD. There's a whole lot of National Guard troops and a significant number of Army Reserve troops who are damned unhappy to be where they are, because when they were recruited the "sell" was on getting college paid for, not having to actually go out and get shot at.

Do really think some dork National Guardsman who signed up for the Guard because he never thought he'd have to fight is a better foxhole mate than a draftee who grew up knowing that he would be drafted? I don't. I'd rather have a fully trained draftee, who went through the same training I went through, beside me in a firefight than a weekend warrior who might ... or might not ... have shown up on the weekend someone showed them how to shoot a rifle. (Yeah, that's a bit of an exaggeration, I know NG types have to go thru Basic Training. The problem is whether or not they develop any proficiency, and if they do whether or not they maintain it.)

Our military is dreadfully, horribly, frighteningly under strength right now. Anyone who thinks we're going to triple or quadruple the size of our armed forces by enlistment is smoking some serious stuff, 'cause it ain't gonna happen. The draft will be reinstituted. It has to be, whether or not you like it. There is no other way we're going to achieve the numbers necessary to sustain our activities on the number of fronts we have open. Between stop loss and other little games, they're pushing the troops we have much too hard. Even at the height of the Vietnam "conflict," a full tour was one year. You could volunteer to stay another year if you wanted, not nobody was required to serve more than one year in-country. We already have troops in Iraq who have served their year and not been allowed to leave. Do you honestly believe those are happy campers? Many of them feel -- rightly, IMHO -- that they've been screwed by the system. They're not likely to re-up.

Now that it's common knowledge that the National Guard isn't the "safe haven" it was previously viewed as, do you honestly think people are going to be lining up in droves to enlist in the Guard? I don't think so.

So where are the troops going to come from to replace the ones currently in Iraq and Afghanistan when we do finally let them rotate out of Mesopotamia (as Jeff Cooper calls it)? I don't see any way to do it without a draft.

Disagree all you want, but that's the way I see it. But whether or not you agree, DON'T BE DISSING THE GRUNTS WHO WENT TO VIETNAM WHEN CALLED!
 
BTW --

Many on this forum and The Firing Line, and probably a goodly number of forums I've never heard of, are supporters of the 2nd Amendment primarily as it relates to handguns and the right to defend yourself. That's part of it -- but lets' not forget the militia and the right/duty to defend the country. I have a handgun, and a CCW permit. My primary concern at the moment, however, is stocking up on AR-15 ammo, because I have a nasty feeling that while all our combat troops are off playing in the sandbox, the game is going to be played on the home court.

If you don't already own an evil black rifle or three, that's a good candidate for national gun buying week.
 
Agreed. This is political posturing. Bill S89 in the Senate doesn't have any cosponsors. Not one. I can't remember the last time I saw a bill with no cosponsors. The House version has five cosponsors. Talk about damning with faint praise.
 
Disagree, the draft is needed now more then ever and will be reistated in time.
Sorry.
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They're going to have to put my dead body in a uniform, then, because there's no way I'm ever going to be drafted alive. I will fight, believe me.

The State does NOT own my life.

See my response in the "Mandatory Service" thread with a selection of Rand's essay, which, I note, nobody has bothered to rebut yet, because I do not think it can be rebutted unless you accept a host of other collectivist arguments.
 
I don't know all the reasons why people would become soldiers, but I do think that if money is a primary motivating factor, then they are doing it for the wrong reason.---Lone Gunman
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I think the military's financial package (pay, job security, health benefits, retirement) is "A" motivating factor for many soliders. I base that on my short experience in the military. Please note I said "A" movtiving factor.

But my question was, " What would seem to You , to be the right reasons?".
I just wanted to know what You thought were the correct reasons to join the military, but I'll accept "a Calling".



Hawkmoon,

Your post was well thought out passionate, and pretty much what I believe to be true.

But, what I said was that, "....at the most basic level the solider who joins for what ever reason is there because they wanted to be. The draftee is there because they have to be."

You've taken my simple statement and extroplaited it using your experiences and bias to make accuations about things I never said, or for that matter even implied.

I never suggested that either would be "happy campers" to be in a war zone.

I never said anything about Vietnam or it's soilders, so your statement of:
DON'T BE DISSING THE GRUNTS WHO WENT TO VIETNAM WHEN CALLED!
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is both wrong, and offensive to me personally. I won't ask for an apology, but I need you to understand, at no time did I display disrespect for anyone!


Respectfully,

jdkelly
 
Hawkmoon - you put a lot of history in proper context. Thanks for defending draftees. Too often they are slandered.

As an aside, a normal Army tour in VN was 12 months. For a draftee, he could extend to 15 months and get an early out after a total of 19 months in the Green Machine. The 3 month extension seems to be what's happening in Iraq.

Marines' tour was 13 months.
 
bountyhunter: High unemployment periods? Unemployment is currently around 5.6% - that is the same level it was at during 1996 in the middle of the Internet boom. Are we so soft now that unemployment rates of 5.6% are considered high?

What I said before stands: I am waiting to see the stampede for the hills that occurs among doctors, nurses and other highly paid technical positions out of the guard and reserve the minute the stop-loss is lifted.
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And so they are going to draft 18yr olds to fill the gap you are predicting?

Hawkmoon:
The draft will be reinstituted.
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No, it won't be. Name your time period and the amount of money you want to bet on it.

Our current manpower level is 1.4 million in the four services. In the past we have easily maintained manpower levels of 2.2 million using an all-volunteer force.

You mention tripling or quadrupling our manpower requirements. Why? Are you seriously suggesting that over and above an additional 700,000 men that we know we can provide with an all-volunteer force, we need manpower levels of 4.2 million - 5.6 million to meet our commitments? That's crazy talk. During the height of the Korean War, when we were occupying both Germany and Japan, fighting the Cold War across the globe AND fighting a major combat action in Korea (plus relying more on manpower vs. computers/machinery), our total military manpower was 3.6 million.

http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/military/ms9.pdf

Did you read the report I linked to? It was by the Undersecretary of Defense. It is a good read and he takes his time to explain why conscription is undesirable.
 
jdkelly --

My comment to not diss the draftees was intended for Burt Blade and others who said or implied that the draftees were a detriment to the Army. If you didn't say or imply that, you have no reason to be offended. The nature of this forum's software is such that it's difficult to respond to multiple posts in one post, and keep track of which comment applies to which post.
 
Did you read the report I linked to? It was by the Undersecretary of Defense. It is a good read and he takes his time to explain why conscription is undesirable.
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The Undersecretary of Defense works under the Secretary of Defense, who is adamently and blindly committed to a small armed force. Rumsfeld is the guy who ignored the general whose name I can never spell when he said we would need 300,000 or more troops on the ground in Iraq. Big Don disagreed and went with less than half that number ... and we are where we are as a result.

The Undersecretary of Defense has about as much credibility in this corner as a petrifed wombat.
 
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