Draft may be needed in a year, military analysts warn

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/march2005/310305draftneeded.htm

Draft may be needed in a year, military analysts warn

Arizona Republic | March 31 2005

WASHINGTON - If American forces aren't pulling out of Iraq in a year, a draft will be needed to meet manpower requirements, military analysts warned Wednesday.

With recruitment lagging and no end in sight for U.S. forces in Iraq, the "breaking point" for the nation's all-volunteer military will be mid-2006, agreed Lawrence Korb, a draft opponent and assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, and Phillip Carter, a conscription advocate and former Army captain.

"America's all-volunteer military simply cannot deploy and sustain enough troops to succeed in places like Iraq while still deterring threats elsewhere in the world," Carter concluded in the March issue of "Washington Monthly."

Korb is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and a senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information. Carter is attorney who writes on military affairs for Slate.com and other media. They debated at a symposium on the draft Wednesday.

While conceding that the Army, Marines, National Guard and Army Reserve -- the branches serving most in Iraq -- face recruitment difficulties, military officials have denied any plans to revive the draft, which was replaced by an all-volunteer force in 1973.

"The 'D-word' is the farthest thing from my thoughts," Army Secretary Francis Harvey said at a Pentagon press briefing last week. He said the all-volunteer force has proven its value and applauded the performance of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"When you get over there, there's no difference between the active, the Reserves and the National Guard. The quality is high across the board. ... It's seamless," he said.

During his re-election campaign, President Bush declared flatly that he would not reinstate the draft. And there is little support for conscription on Capitol Hill.

"Today, no leading politician in either party will come anywhere near the idea -- the draft having replaced Social Security as the third rail of American politics," wrote Carter.

However, the analysts said that the all-volunteer army is on the verge of "breaking" under current circumstances. The 3rd Infantry Division based in Fort Stewart, Ga., and the 4th Infantry Division based in Fort Hood, Texas, are among the units that are being sent back for a second tour in Iraq.

The National Guard and Reserves historically depend on men and women leaving active duty to fill their ranks, Carter pointed out. But they're not going to join if it means they will be sent right back to Iraq in an activated unit, he said.

Military men, women and machines are all suffering from repeated deployments.

"What keeps me awake at night is what will this all-volunteer force look like in 2007," Richard Cody, the Army Vice Chief of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 16.

Korb, assistant secretary defense for manpower from 1981 through 1985, said the current rotation is unfair to the "patriotic" men and women who volunteered for military service and are stuck on a cycle in and out of Iraq. Since only a tiny segment of the populace is sacrificing, there is no political pressure to change the system, he said.

"If you had a draft right now, I think you'd be out of Iraq," Korb said.

The American society "hasn't gotten the message that we're at war," agreed Carter.

"Those at peril are completely divorced from those in power," said Mark Shields, a syndicated columnist and TV commentator who moderated the symposium. "It's 'Patriotism Lite' -- you put a sticker on your SUV."

"America has a choice," wrote Carter. "It can be the world's superpower or it can maintain the current all-voluntary military. But it probably can't do both."

 

<- 4-f six ways from sunday, but forcing people to fight for something they don't believe in is f-ing wrong,yeah it's okay if your country has had a draft for 80 or more years and that was both peacetime and wartime but we don't do it that way

Hey at least the odds against it getting passed are high (only 1 member of congress has a child in the armed forces)

 

American forces WILL most likely begin to pull out of Iraq this year. The group of soldiers that will be deployed this summer are fewer in number than the group of soldiers going home.

Regardless of how things go in Iraq this year, I can't forsee any reason that we'd have as many troops there next year. If things go well, obviously that many troops are no longer needed and they can come home. If things go badly, the Bush administration is unlikely to want to waste more political capital on this endeavor and start bringing soldiers home anyway.

There's absolutely no way that a draft proposal could make it through Congress anyway.

 

Unless there's another attack, or multiple attacks.

 

quote: Unless there's another attack, or multiple attacks

Or another front to fight on, like in Syria or Iran

 

Well I'm just wondering how they're going to frame it for a nation of couch warriors.

 

just try to draft us and see what happens... i DARE you.

 

Maybe this is all the grand plan of Alan Greenspan to give the economy a jolt.

I'm sure the prison population would swell with the proliferation of draft dodgers that will be forced to sit in a cell for their choices - hence creating new jobs in the construction of new prisons.

I'm kidding ofcourse, but stranger things have happened.

I'm sorry, but unless the war threat on our nation is very real, conventional and on our 'turf' - meaning not another 911 - the vast majority of america wouldn't support a draft.

That doesn't mean I believe the law won't pass. It most certainly would, but not by a true democratic process.

 

if they draft us they will see an uprising like they've never seen before.

 

thats what im worried about

 

an uprsing? sure their will be protests

but I highly doubt there will be 'an uprising like they've never seen before'


all you will see from it is people refusing to go and hence finding themselves in jail.


The sheep in this nation are far too docile for what you are suggesting to happen.

 

We aren't all sheep... and many of us have realized over the past few years that protesting wont do ANYTHING.... If they attempt a draft, I am sure there will be some sort of uprising or revolt... may not be that big, but someone will go nuts.

 

I think it would be pretty interesting to see what kind of resistance there would be if the US pulled a draft. I hope there isn't one (obviously), but to be able to compare it to Vietnam and see what would result from it would be kind of cool....

 

Pearl Harbor got the government a draft.


Let's not forget that there's been a draft for every major American war except the Gulf War..

Just how in the hell would it be cool?

 

I knew someone was going to take that wrong...

I don't mean that I think a draft would be cool or anything, but if it DID happen, it would be interesting to see how people would react... Like if their would be resistance or not.

I hope to hell there's not a draft, but whether or not people did something about it would interest me....I don't know. Maybe I have a twisted sense of humour...:&

 

Reading through this thread, its pretty clear that this is more about fantasies that a draft would be called which would then prove the apocalpse really has arrived and we can all rise up in revolution.

Because neither party, nor the military itself, want a draft. Our forces are nowhere near the levels of the mid 1980s, why are we supposed to believe we can't enlarge the military (if we actually needed to) without a draft?

 

these god dman nazis

 

How can the US pull out of Iraq now? If they do, the terrorists (or freedom fighters, same thing really) will take over. Now, some of us can view this as a good thing, others as a bad, but the US definatly doesn't want it to happen, or else the whole war becomes useless and Bush looks like an idiot (more so, that is). So my forecast: draft.

 

Sadamm is gone, leave iraq now... so the people can really rule it.... but that wnt happen

 

Sorry to spoil the fun, but theres not going to be a draft.

There were some people saying the same thing about mid 2005 a year ago, now its mid 2006...

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/u_s__draft.html

Theres no need for a draft, and it would be a very politically unpopular desicion. Unless we go to a full scale land war with China, theres not going to be a draft in the next 10 years.