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...
(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...
