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Return to Article: ADVICE+DISSENT: Viewpoint Forget the Draft

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  Having served and led in both draft and non draft military I would never advocate the draft. I get sick thinking of the disaster of the later draft days of project 100,000...the insertion of the lowest mental class draftees. I spent 90%of my leadership time on 10% of the troops who didn't have basic social or mental skills to serve properly.

  Your railing on the post service pension of 20 year retirees is both irresponsible and probably unresearched at the ground level. There is really no relationship between a career at MIT (with which I am familiar) and a career in the Military. To live in the military 7/24/365 world requires a totally different mindset than trying to adjust the very workable system with a 10000 mile screw driver from the banks of the Charles River. Be a good Beaver and visit 100% disabled veterans who for generations had to give up their EARNED retirement funds in order to get health care and disability compensation from a Veterans administration that until the last 10 years was not the quality of any civilian hospital. For your info I am a well educated, double masters degreed officer with manpower analysis, personnel,and education/training administration certification. I am 100% disabled, wear leg braces, had to learn to drive my car with hand controls, and because of the degree of my disability face an unemployable future. Get out from under the golden dome and come on down to SC, stay a week with me and two of my disabled cousins and see how we have lived with just that VA compensation. Get real Cindy. Get those military boots on your feet before you write anything more.

  VC Mullen Posted January 12, 2005 12:50 PM
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  I also agree that there is no need to reinstate the draft, now or in the future, barring a national catastrophe. The Democrats who floated this trial balloon, like Rangel, are despicable, and are just trying to undermine the Bush administration by doing so. Our current military leaders, who lived through the Vietnam debacle, don't want or need a draft. Today's volunteer military is comprised of motivated, intelligent young men and women who want to serve their country, and can be trained to utilize the vast array of technology available to our current military forces. Why insert disgruntled, angry, or lower quality youth into the military, for a 2 year hitch, when it takes 2 years or more just to train them properly? The draft brings with it a whole series of problems that the military and this country neither wants, or needs. It's just another phony issue in an exceptionally nasty, dirty campaign against the President.

  GovExec.com reader Posted October 5, 2004 12:10 PM
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  For every political pressure that favors a resumption of the draft, there's a far stronger one that stops it. Congress, the Bush Administration and the Pentagon are all well aware of it. Presently, polls show plenty of public concern as to how the war on Iraq is going awry. But as of yet there's little in the way of an organized anti-war movement, and college and high school campuses are particularly quiet. Decisionmakers are well aware that the absence of a strong anti-war movement is closely tied to the absence of a draft, and that if one were implemented for an already-dubious war, the campuses would explode. Politicians have every reason to avoid that headache; as in Vietnam, a strong, well-organized opposition to the war would make a tremendous difference in what options politicians can consider. For that reason, resumption of the draft is nearly impossible. Both Bush and Kerry are espousing policies that invite the US into a worsening chaos in Iraq for years to come, and the time might come where a draft might be considered as a last resort. But it won't come any time soon because there's simply too much opposition from the Pentagon and Congress, not to mention a majority of the public.

  GovExec.com reader Posted September 29, 2004 1:11 PM