WHERE DO YOU STAND: SHOULD MILITARY SERVICE BE MANDATORY?
Congressman Says He Would Like To Restore A National Draft
By Todd Wilkinson, 11-20-06
Congressman Charlie Rangel is convinced that if more of his colleagues on Capitol Hill and their close friends were forced to make their own kids eligible for military service in Iraq and other violent hotspots around the world, American leaders would find greater pause in deciding whether to have the U.S. go to war.
Rangel, a Democrat from New York, a Korean War veteran, and the soon-to-be-new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, intends to introduce legislation that would reinstate a national draft requiring that all men and women turning 18 in America be available for possible military duty. Rangel believes that the current all-voluntary military is tilted too heavily toward lower and middle class soldiers letting well-to-do kids, who may support the war in Iraq, off the hook. A draft would also help replenish a military force that he believes of overextended around the world.
Rangel has tried unsuccessfully in previous years to get similar bills passed.
Do you agree that a mandatory draft would change the way Congress thinks about committing U.S. troops to combat service?
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
Add your comment below
>>>>>>
In summary, the additional years of recruit data (2004–2005) support the previous finding that U.S. military recruits are more similar than dissimilar to the American youth population. The slight differences are that wartime U.S. military enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on average than their civilian peers.
Recruits have a higher percentage of high school graduates and representation from Southern and rural areas. No evidence indicates exploitation of racial minorities (either by race or by race-weighted ZIP code areas). Finally, the distribution of household income of recruits is noticeably higher than that of the entire youth population.
Demographic evidence discredits the argument that a draft is necessary to enforce representation from racial and socioeconomic groups. Additionally, three of the four branches of the armed forces met their recruiting goals in fiscal year 2005, and Army reenlistments are the highest in the past five years. A draft is not necessary to increase the size of the active-duty forces. Our analysis using Pentagon data on wartime volunteers effectively shatters the case for reinstating the draft.
<<<<<<<<
But it seems to me that it would be much less likely that this or any administration (or congress, if it had the courage to exercise its constitutional duty) would commit the biggest foreign policy blunder in our nation's history (2,867 American deaths, ~50,000 Iraqi deaths, $344 billion spent and counting fast, all for a quagmire with no hopeful exit strategies) if they were sending their sons or daughters (wassup, Jen and Barb?) to die.
If we REALLY believed that war is the answer, we'd stand up and volunteer to to die on foreign soils, or at least sacrifice our children. Like our grandfathers and fathers (honorably and rightly) did in WWII.
So yeah, I'd like to see a draft. No deferments, whether National Guard or college or anal cysts (wassup, Rush?). Maybe then the chickenhawk congressmen, instapundits, thinktankists (what does heritage say about the war now?), and AM radio jocks would think twice about throwing their geopolitical temper tantrums and instead settle down and grow up and get real(ists).
He didn't want to believe that patriotism is still big in this country despite all of the libs in education. And he just can't accept the fact that our armed forces are the professionals that they are.
The draft makes us horny