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Senior Democrat Calls for Reinstatemment of Draft | by DesertRat66 | 2006-11-20 08:03:58 |
| I have major problems with this |
by basher20 |
2006-11-20 10:34:39 |
Number 1 - The military doesn't want a draft. There are very few military specialties in which a new soldier can become proficient in less than one year. Thus you would have the new soldiers actually effective for something less than half of their service period. This also means that you'd have to redirect a large portion of the officers and NCOs for the current force to train the incoming inductees. That would necessarily gut the effectiveness of currently deployed units.
Number 2 - It would be horrendously expensive. Something on the high side of 60% of the current military budget goes into the pay, housing, benefits, and medical care of the current force. new systems development and procurement is one of the smallest portions of the budget. Increasing the size of the current force at the expense of other areas of the military budget makes sense only if you're willing to have them armed with sharpened sticks.
Number 3 - The pro-peace benefits that are being suggested are based on a factual fallicy. The make sense only if you posit that the people who currently enlist are there because they have no other options. The DoD just released a study that shows that a majority of new recruits comes from ZIP codes that have above-average incomes. As far as thinking that it would put the sons of the rich in harms way, lets not forget about those who used family connections to get "safe" jobs within the service, such as photographing people getting off of airplanes, or guarding the southern border against the Mexican Air Force.
Number 4 - The idea that compulsury service is necessary to instill a sense of patriotism or belonging to the US strikes me as absurd. The government currently has 12+ years of schooling to achieve this goal if they thought it was important. I'd also be willing to bet that serving in schools would be a replacement for military service, meaning that children would be more likely to hear anti-military voices than they already do.
So, it seems to me that if you believe that paying more money to produce a bloated, lower quality military force is the solution to America's problems, then reinstituting the draft makes sense. |
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[ Reply ] |
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Why not | by DesertRat66 | 2006-11-20 10:46:28 |
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So you're offering this up as | by basher20 | 2006-11-20 11:05:18 |
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I'm not offering anything | by DesertRat66 | 2006-11-20 11:08:43 |
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Are you just jerking us around, here? | by Ravenlock | 2006-11-20 15:32:58 |
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So, first you post this article and say you agree | by ixeian | 2006-11-20 11:37:34 |
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If it happened two weeks ago | by DesertRat66 | 2006-11-20 11:56:39 |
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I think it did | by ixeian | 2006-11-20 12:24:06 |
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Not really at this time | by DesertRat66 | 2006-11-20 12:31:06 |
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