Senator says US may need compulsory service to boost Iraq force

[Sergeant Bob]

Bob, I graduated high school in '93, not long after the Gulf War. At that time recruiters were turning away just about anybody who had any sort of problem and being very picky. I believe that was around the beginning of the massive cutbacks.

Yeah, they did some massive cuts about that time.
They had a quota for personnel cuts to meet. They were taking volunteers for early separation (with a severence based on Grade and time in service), and offering early retirement for senior enlisted (which I took at 17.5 years in 1994).
If the quotas weren't met, they were going to bring out the axe.

 

[Jay Kominek]

Instating it immediately afterwards allows for lots of time for voters to get used to the draft before the next election.

How many years does it take for Mom to get used to Little Johnnie running around some foreign country getting shot at?
How many years does it take for Mary Sue to get used to her husband running around getting shot at?

I bet the answer is at least "2".

And these days, Little Johnnie gets to vote, too. And he sure as hell isn't going to forget he's running around in some foreign country when he'd rather be the watching cute girls in Psych 101.

 

[DonP]

I nominate this for the weekly ...

"Bush is a Big Fat Poopie Head" - thread 'o the week from the lefties.

From now on I'm gonna nominate one thread for that award each week I think.

Every week it's something new to try and rattle or frighten people one way or another.

Last election it was: "They are going to take awy your medicare/childrens school lunches" if the Republicans get elected. Now we have higher school spending than ever and nobody is living in a cardboard box under a bridge. Except Teddy Kennedy of course after a big night out on the town. But that's nothing new, is it?

This time, Charlie Rangel, that paragon of virtue and honesty (and veteran of the Korean war that should know better) is trying to make the draft a big issue to scare everyone out there that Bush and Karl Rove are coming to get your kids as cannon fodder (love that metaphor).

Are they staffing up the draft boards? Yes, and I volunteered for my local one in case something really hits the fan. It's called a contingency plan and we better darn well have one for this too.

You got a problem with that? Or do you prefer the Al Gore/Bill Clinton/John Kerry "Put your thumb up your butt and hope for the best" plan?

Try, just once, to realize that Bush, with all his flaws and shortcomings, is not the fount of all that is evil in the world and everything that happens is not a conspiracy. Either that or buy extra tinfoil for this election year cause it's gonna get real ugly.

Unlike the last election cycle in 2002, there are far more Democrat seats in the house and Senate up for grabs in this next election cycle than Repubs. This could be a very bad year for your guys.

In the interest of full disclosure, if I serve on the draft board and it is reactivated, I promise to only draft the sons and daughters of my political opponents.

 

[M67]

Stray thoughts from a foreigner.

If I don't want to serve, and I don't want anyone in my family to serve, but I think it's OK to pay tax and hire someone else to do the fighting - isn't that a bit like a liberal who wants to ban guns and refuses to take responsibility for his own life, but who sees no problem in calling 911 to get someone else with a gun to take care of his problems?

They'll have a terrible time getting people in their 30's and 40's to show up, especially if they're not reservists. Folks this age have learned to think for themselves, and won't easily be molded into the military model.

I think that depends on the military model. People who can think don't automatically make bad soldiers. Just as conscripts are not automatically inferior to professional soldiers.

you'll have a mess of guys pulling a Corporal Klinger routine

Sounds like an idea for a "reality TV" concept.

PS: I have done compulsory military service. Only in peacetime, but I did so willingly, no one had to force me. I have difficulty imagining myself living in a country that I would not be willing to fight for.

 

[Correia]

"PS: I have done compulsory military service. Only in peacetime, but I did so willingly, no one had to force me. I have difficulty imagining myself living in a country that I would not be willing to fight for."

-And that is the crux of the matter. We do have plenty of people willing to fight. Enough that if we actively recruited more there would be no reason for a draft at all.

 

[Sergeant Bob]

Separation plans put on hold
as brass clarifies Stop-Loss program
By Wayne Specht, Misawa bureau chief

Monday, November 5, 2001

MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan — After seven years in uniform, Air Force Capt. Carolyn Forner was looking forward to joining her husband at Pennsylvania State University.

But the Sept. 11 terror attacks placed those plans on hold for Forner and hundreds of other blue-suiters around the world. On Sept. 22, the Air Force implemented Stop Loss, an involuntary extension program prohibiting Air Force members from separating or retiring.

<edit>

Stop Loss is not new. It was last used during Operation Allied Force in Kosovo, and in 1990, when then-President George Bush delegated Stop-Loss authority for operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf.

<edit>
Stars and Stripes

I must have missed the draft that always follows a Stoploss order.

 

[JohnBT]

Don't lock this thread yet, I'm still reading all those links to Salon, WorldNetDaily, The Guardian and The Washington Post. If I keep reading them long enough will my mind turn to mush?

John

 

[Nightcrawler]

There was an article about this in my lefty little school paper. The same puke that can't review a movie like Cody Banks 2 without finding a way to bash America wrote this. Basically? "Bush is going to pull you out of college and make you fight in a war! Vote for Kerry!" Even though the laws were proposed by Democrats in Congress, it's still Bush's fault. Typical.

Frankly, I was shocked when the paper printed an article about student-soldiers returning home from the sandbox without some kind of snyde commentary, but that article was writen by a different guy.

They whipped out that "cannon fodder" line there, too. That phrase is getting most tiresome. As I've said, I verymuch prefer the term "crunchie", myself. (And unless you've been in combat arms, you probably don't get the reference. Heh.)

 

[Nightcrawler]

If I keep reading them long enough will my mind turn to mush?

Probably.

 

[Correia]

Crunchy? As in you got in the way of a track?

 

[Thumper]

Yep...Stop Loss and Stop Movement got me during the Gulf War.

No draft then either.

Ignorant Left (as a whole...no one in particular).

 

[Tall Man]

I have done compulsory military service. Only in peacetime, but I did so willingly, no one had to force me. I have difficulty imagining myself living in a country that I would not be willing to fight for.

M67, can you please explain this contradiction? (The bit about not being forced to perform a "compulsory" activity.)

Thanks.

TM

 

[Nightcrawler]

Crunchie: Called that because that's the sound we (grunts) make when run over by tanks. LOL

You prettymuch nailed it, Correia.

 

[ID_shooting]

"Crunchie: Called that because that's the sound we (grunts) make when run over by tanks. LOL "

Well, we iether called em crichies or my favorite, TRACK LUBE

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

w4rma - I'll bet you $500 that if Bush is re-elected, there is no draft in the next four years. Care to take that bet? You can use the money to buy a rifle so you can talk about something other than political conspiracy theories.

 

[Gewehr98]

Correia hit it on the head.

Most of the harping about the draft has been from people in the opposition party who have something to gain by scaring the 18-25 voting demographic. Nobody in the current military establishment that I know of is in favor of a draft.

Matter of fact, the Air Force is scaling back it's end-strength by 16,000 personnel this year.

I don't know what the end-strength requirements are for the next couple years, but I do know if I retire then and start a post-military career as a government contractor overseas, w4rma and his pals at D.U. will categorize me as a mercenary.

Speaking of which, isn't it time you started another thread about mercenaries here on THR?

(Throwing a morsel towards them what live under the bridge and eat small children)

 

[Nightcrawler]

...will categorize me as a mercenary.

I'm a mercenary too! We can both wear fatigues and berets!

 

[M67]

Tall Man, I know that sounds like a contradiction and I guess it is. "Compulsory" means that if you're called, you can't say no unless you have a reason. But especially since the end of the cold war it has become so easy to weasel out that I would say that those who serve, in effect do so voluntarily. Most people here accept that living in a free country ain't free. Part of the price is that we have to be able to defend our freedom, so most Norwegian men have spent some time in uniform learing how. We have conscription not because some politicians have imposed it on us, but because we have elected political representatives who act on behalf of those who elected them. (That's the theory, anyway.)

But I guess what I meant was that I personally would have volunteered to do "national service" (as opposed to carreer military) regardless of the compulsory part. My excuse for being a bit unclear is that it is late in my timezone, I'm still at work, and I have to post in this hopeless furrin language. I can't very well admit that my keyboard is sometimes in "Drive" while my brain is still in "Neutral".

 

[w4rma]

I must have missed the draft that always follows a Stoploss order.

I'm sorry, but the situation Bush, Jr. has gotten us into is MUCH different from the the military engagements under Bush I or Clinton. The most recent comparison would be the Vietnam War under Nixon.

w4rma - I'll bet you $500 that if Bush is re-elected, there is no draft in the next four years. Care to take that bet? You can use the money to buy a rifle so you can talk about something other than political conspiracy theories.

I accept. Hopefully, we won't have to find out what the Neo-cons will do as America will boot them out of power.

 

[Nightcrawler]

Notice it's never military or DoD officials clamoring for a draft. It's always just a few apparently clueless lawmakers.

Funny, that.

 

[carp killer]

The draft would cost to much money. And with the federal budget deficit going crazy, it ain't gonna happen.

 

[atek3]

"Why shouldn't we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?" Hagel said, arguing that restoring compulsory military service would force "our citizens to understand the intensity and depth of challenges we face."

By 'some price' he means, get shot up fighting in some tin pot dictator's sand box, a place we shouldn't even be in the first place.

The Nebraska Republican added that a draft, which was ended in the early 1970s, would spread the burden of military service in Iraq more equitably among various social strata.

"Those who are serving today and dying today are the middle class and lower middle class," he observed.

Isn't that the same communist arguement used by Rangel and the other leftist draft supporters.

If I don't want to serve, and I don't want anyone in my family to serve, but I think it's OK to pay tax and hire someone else to do the fighting - isn't that a bit like a liberal who wants to ban guns and refuses to take responsibility for his own life, but who sees no problem in calling 911 to get someone else with a gun to take care of his problems?

No. Not at all. There is a difference between wanting and not wanting to serve, and being forced AT GUNPOINT to serve. In America we have something called the 13th amendment, it is a prohibition on 'involuntary servitude'.

involuntary(adj)- not subject to the control of the
will.
servititude(noun)-A state of subjection to an owner or master.
Lack of personal freedom, as to act as one chooses.

Sounds like a pretty apt description of conscription to me.
Whats the old line about 'a country people aren't willing to defend isn't a country worth defending'? Meaning, if people must be forced, at gun point, to defend the country, it should be allowed to perish.
If America was attacked by China, we wouldn't need a draft, because every red blooded American would sign up. On the other hand, if not a soul signed up and the army deserted people would be crudely signalling they'd rather be ruled by China.

atek3

 

[Gary H]

Draft w4rma


As for the rest of us, they have standards and wouldn't want us.

That's all this country needs is a conscripted military made up of high school students that can barely read and write. The military does not want the draft. Silly post.

 

[Reno]

It would be political suicide for anyone that has anything to do with anyone who supported it. Anyone who voted to reinstitute the draft would be out of office next time they were up for re-election. If Bush did it, anyone with an (R) next to his name wouldn't have a chance to ever hold poltical office again.

Not going to happen.

 

[HBK]

More leftist BS. It floods out of him like dysentary. The left WISHES Bush would start a draft so they could use it against him in the November election. As usual, if it is bad for our country, it is good for Democrats and liberals. Not a very enviable position, IMO.