Feeling A Draft
A lot of people have been wondering lately if the United States might have to re-instate the draft. Pentagon producer Mary Walsh looks at how that idea is playing in the Pentagon. – Ed.
When Gen. John Abizaid, the 4-star who runs Central Command, tells 60 Minutes he has “not precluded the notion of more troops coming into Iraq,” there’s a lot of heartburn in the Pentagon about how hard it would be to find fresh troops to meet the demand. Abizaid himself admitted as much recently when he told the Senate Armed Services committee “ we can put in 20,000 more Americans tomorrow...but when you look at the ability to sustain that commitment it’s simply not something we have right now with the size of the Army and the Marine Corps.”
Fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with an active duty army of 600,000 is like fighting World War II with "the tiniest army we've had since 1939," retired General Barry McCarffrey said in a speech to the Military Officers Association.
So that means the Pentagon is ready to embrace Rep. Charles Rangel’s proposal to bring back the draft, right? Wrong.
“It won’t happen,” McCaffrey said. “There won’t be a draft, period, until the country’s survival is at stake.”
“It’s a terrible idea,” Bernard Rostker, author of a new book, I Want You! The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force. A draft, he said, “would compromise the quality of the military.”
Conscription would weaken the volunteer Army, they argue, not strengthen it. No one can figure out why the Army would want to bring in teenagers – who really don’t want to be there – and spend an enormous amount of time and money training them for a short 2-year enlistment.
Rostker also believes a draft would not come close to addressing the issues of social and economic equality Congressman Rangel raises. One million American men turn 18 and every year – Rostker believes there’s no way the Army can fairly draft 80,000 of them.
Yet there is serious concern – inside and outside the Pentagon – how the Army is seen by the rest of America. “There is a glaring disconnect between the all-volunteer military and the rest of us,” Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer say in their book AWOL: The Absence of America’s Upper Classes from Military Service and How It Hurts Our Country. “This is not a Democrat-versus-Republican issue. It is a class issue – small down, religious, and middle-class Democrats or Republicans are more likely to have someone in the military . . . than wealthy partisans for either party. Why don’t the elites serve? They probably never ever consider it.”
Several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff say “AWOL” is one of the most important books they’ve read recently and it makes some interesting points, among them:
- In 1956 Princeton University graduated 750 students – 400 of them joined the military. In 2004 nine joined the military – the highest number of any Ivy League School.
- Lyndon Johnson was last president with a child (or son-in-law) in the military.
For McCaffrey and Rostker it’s not just the fact that the Bush twins haven’t joined up, it’s that the President has not used his bully pulpit to urge military service. “One of the biggest problems we’ve got,” McCaffrey said in his speech, “is that I have not heard the Commander in Chief, any governor, any mayor any member of Congress ever stand up in front of a TV camera and ask the country, America’s families, to send their boys and girls to fight with us.”
General McCaffrey may not want to go back to the days of the draft, but he does think the Army and the Marines aren’t big enough for what the Defense Department is now calling ‘The Long War” and he’s blunt about how he see it: “The problem is the armed forces are too small, under resources, over-extended, committed to combat on multiple tours with a political leadership in the country that has not stepped forward and told the American people they’re in a war with 25,000 killed and wounded. That’s the problem.”
(Getty Images/Tauseef Mustafa)
Fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with an active duty army of 600,000 is like fighting World War II with "the tiniest army we've had since 1939," retired General Barry McCarffrey said in a speech to the Military Officers Association.
So that means the Pentagon is ready to embrace Rep. Charles Rangel’s proposal to bring back the draft, right? Wrong.
“It won’t happen,” McCaffrey said. “There won’t be a draft, period, until the country’s survival is at stake.”
“It’s a terrible idea,” Bernard Rostker, author of a new book, I Want You! The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force. A draft, he said, “would compromise the quality of the military.”
Conscription would weaken the volunteer Army, they argue, not strengthen it. No one can figure out why the Army would want to bring in teenagers – who really don’t want to be there – and spend an enormous amount of time and money training them for a short 2-year enlistment.
Rostker also believes a draft would not come close to addressing the issues of social and economic equality Congressman Rangel raises. One million American men turn 18 and every year – Rostker believes there’s no way the Army can fairly draft 80,000 of them.
Yet there is serious concern – inside and outside the Pentagon – how the Army is seen by the rest of America. “There is a glaring disconnect between the all-volunteer military and the rest of us,” Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer say in their book AWOL: The Absence of America’s Upper Classes from Military Service and How It Hurts Our Country. “This is not a Democrat-versus-Republican issue. It is a class issue – small down, religious, and middle-class Democrats or Republicans are more likely to have someone in the military . . . than wealthy partisans for either party. Why don’t the elites serve? They probably never ever consider it.”
Several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff say “AWOL” is one of the most important books they’ve read recently and it makes some interesting points, among them:
- In 1956 Princeton University graduated 750 students – 400 of them joined the military. In 2004 nine joined the military – the highest number of any Ivy League School.
- Lyndon Johnson was last president with a child (or son-in-law) in the military.
For McCaffrey and Rostker it’s not just the fact that the Bush twins haven’t joined up, it’s that the President has not used his bully pulpit to urge military service. “One of the biggest problems we’ve got,” McCaffrey said in his speech, “is that I have not heard the Commander in Chief, any governor, any mayor any member of Congress ever stand up in front of a TV camera and ask the country, America’s families, to send their boys and girls to fight with us.”
General McCaffrey may not want to go back to the days of the draft, but he does think the Army and the Marines aren’t big enough for what the Defense Department is now calling ‘The Long War” and he’s blunt about how he see it: “The problem is the armed forces are too small, under resources, over-extended, committed to combat on multiple tours with a political leadership in the country that has not stepped forward and told the American people they’re in a war with 25,000 killed and wounded. That’s the problem.”
For the record John McCain has a son in the service now who is probably going to Afganistan or Iraq.
What you would likely receive for this premium investment of course is an unmotivated and disenchanted soldier who counts his days rather than planning for his success.
If you want to increase the size and quality of the Army, it only takes one thing - money. Have Congress draft a check.
President is required to immediately go back to Congress for Authorization to Keep Troops in Iraq!
The Current military situation in Iraq does not reflect the originally stated Immediate National Threat Presented to Congress for the authorization of Use of Force. The subsequent use of American armed forces and financial expenditures to support such forces under these new conditions have not been authorized by Congress of the American People.
The Administration must realize that it does not have the legal authority to promote its failed war policy outside its original stated national threat mandate. American military Men and Women have not been sent to Iraq nor are we authorized by any law, to intercede militarily to impose or support a type of religious belief Civil War either Sunni or Shiite within the country of Iraq. Tax dollar expenditures in the billions and American lives of over 2,800 have currently been spent to eliminate the claimed immediate threat Iraq posed to America and this has been done. Any further military actions or monetary expenditures against Iraq outside the original congressional mandate are illegal under American Law and International Law and would open Americans up to Civil and Criminal (War Crimes) liabilities.