Feel a Draft? (The Nation)

[deadparrot]

"We're going to have to face that question," Senator Joe Biden told Tim Russert last Sunday when asked about the likelihood of a draft. "It is going to be a subject, if, in fact, there's a 40 percent shortfall in recruitment. It's just a reality." Unfortunately, Biden and others are probably right.

The Army has missed its recruiting targets since February and last month unexpectedly lowered its benchmark from 8,050 to 6,700 recruits and still only reached 75 percent of that downsized goal. The National Guard and Reserve have suffered a similar 25 percent shortfall. These recruiting declines are largely why the Army has only 35,000 of the 80,000 troops needed to rotate into
Iraq and elsewhere next year.

The lagging numbers, a product of inflexible military policies and an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, have forced a full-blown recruiting crisis. Last month the Army added 1,200 recruiters, boosted its advertising budget, upped enlistment bonuses from $6,000 to $20,000 per recruit and even offered $50,000 in low-rate home mortgages. They've also slashed the enlistment period from two years to 15 months and raised the eligible age for National Guard and Reserves from 35 to 39. In an attempt to plug the hole, the Army is recruiting more high-school dropouts with lower test scores. Applicants who score in the 10th to 30th percentile range on the military's standardized aptitude test are now being accepted at higher rates. Making matters worse, junior Army leaders are quitting after their enlistment.

The effects have been alarming. For the first time in twenty years, the Army suspended recruiting on May 20 to hold a full day of ethics training for its recruiters. The ethical breaches include "the recruitment of a mentally ill young man in Ohio and a recruiter in Houston who threatened to arrest an applicant if he failed to join," the New York Times reported. The abuses, said top Army recruiter Michael Rochelle, "were just flying under my radar." Reported recruiting improprieties are up 60 percent since 1999, with recruiters themselves suffering from stress-related illnesses, damaged marriages and suicidal thoughts.

more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/133516

[emanymton]

1. Regardless, Label It Republican Draft, EACH And Every Time!!!

Everytime the subject is brought up, make absolutely sure it is called Republican draft! for the war.

[MrTriumph]

8. They are calling it "National Service"- Call it what it is!

You are right. It is a Republican draft.

What's funny is living here amidst Republicans in NE Tarrant County, TX, let me tell you I have not seen middle and upper class kids aren't lining up in front of the recruiting station.

[David__77]

2. I'll be truly surprised if they create a draft.

That would do wonders to ignite a revolutionary movement in this country. We'd have our hands full organizing the millions who would be seething with rage. I think they'll find another way. The neocons would rather use fewer people do drop bigger bombs. Perhaps they'll simply use nuclear weapons, true to their criminal nature.

[MichiganVote]

3. Sorry. No draft. These bumbling fools can't so much as

get Social Security changed let alone convince Americans to send their little republicans to this war. Nope, not going to happen UNLESS
Bush engineers another 9/11 by overlooking the obvious.

[Crunchy Frog]

5. I fully expect there to be another terrorist attack

if that's what it takes. Especially since they really seem to want to go after Iran. I just don't see how they can sustain what they're doing without instituting a draft at some point, and that's even if they didn't have their sites set on yet more adventures.

I just hope that the Dems will let them take the complete fall on that, and not get sucked into being viewed as complicit. The only thing the Dems should be doing is making sure that any draft is fair, and goes after rich kids at Harvard and Yale, as much as poor kids in trailer parks.

[MichiganVote]

10. You're dreaming. The rich won't be sending Joey anywhere but overseas

on a visa. They have scads of money nowadays. The poor and the middle class will be hung out to dry. But not mine, I can tell ya.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. I'll direct yuo to this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3872311&mesg_id=3872311

Those who know history will realize why this is important and yes one is not only comming, but we may even argue, it is de facto already here

[acmejack]

6. Just holding out until after the 2006 elections, IMO

If they can make it that long. They have no qualms at running the existing troops inot the ground while they wait.

[silver10]

7. They don't want a draft ...

Not only would it add to the blatant proof that the bush administration are liars, but drafted kids who don't want to be there are hard to control and scare, especially if they have alternatives.

The shrubs would prefer to run our economy into the ground, downsizing wherever they can and sending jobs overseas - because the repugs have money and connections - they can afford to send their kids to good (at least decent) colleges, which is next to unattainable for the average Joe nowadays, and get their kids good internships and good jobs in big corporations, which are harder to get than ever before. If unemployment is high, everyone gets sifted out, and the poor who are ignorant, uneducated, have no alternatives, or can't afford college and know that they won't get anywhere without it, will be left to join up and fight their wars - so that defense contractors and oil companies can make trillions - blood money.

They prefer to keep the poor immigrants coming in, to keep labor costs low and add to the military ranks - attach required service to U.S. citizenship.

If you notice, even thought the chickenhawks and repukes are so supportive of the war, they aren't the ones going to war and volunteering (how ironic). It's the poor, and the kids who want to go to college. Look at the marketing campaigns, they are selling college for military service. The rich don't need it and aren't buying it.

[LoneDriver]

9. And when the poor come home from the wars...

Still poor, trained and armed. There was an apocryphal story of Viet Nam concerning black soldiers returning to Detroit bringing home 81mm mortars piece by piece.

[salin]

13. but that isn't enough. Money quote from the article:

Next year could be the toughest for recruiting since the all-volunteer Army began in 1973, Maj. Gen. Rochelle predicts. "It's comparable to having no savings account," added RAND Corp specialist Beth Asch. "They'll be living month to month." The hiring of poorly educated, unqualified troops will likely force a critical drop in the capabilities, training and readiness of the modern military, experts predict.

"America faces a choice," Paul Glastris and former Army captain Phil Carter wrote in the Washington Monthly in March. "It can be the world's superpower, or it can maintain the all-volunteer military, but it probably can't do both."

Serve that up to conservatives who keep pushing this war. Seriously it can not be done - maintaining "military strength" - while not having any backup (enough troops). It is ironic that Bush, in 2000, campaigned saying that Clinton had "broken" the armed services but that "he was here to help." (or something to that effect.)

[Zerex71]

11. I'm going to print out copies of the enlistment forms and put them

in a stack in my breakroom, the "FAUX News room". We'll see what happens. And don't worry, I'll use the copiers at work.

[NMMNG]

12. I've been hearing about this on NPR and seeing it on tv

I just got my copy of the Nation so I haven't had the chance to read it yet.

Pretty bad when they have to more than double the recruitment bonus to sucker people in. I've seen the commercial with the black guy telling his mom not to give him a hard time about his decision to join up (of course it is a black guy...wouldn't be some white-bread Ivy league college boy).

Now the NG age is up to 39? I wonder how long it will be before it's 45. If any recruiter comes knocking at my door I'll be sure to remind them I'm atheist and 100% lesbian, as well as a conscientious objector.

The military can go screw themselves with an AK47

[ikojo]

14. A draft already exists...it's an ECONOMIC draft....

Kids from less affluent families are bombarded with messages to join up. It's not rich kids who are fighting in Iraq, it's kids whose parents don't have the coin to pay tuition to even a community college or kids who come from towns where there exist few job opportunities.

I believe that before there is a draft in the US, the government will look around the world and employ more and more private soldiers. These employed soldiers will not be subject to US treaties (as if the US adheres to current treaties anyway). There are many many poor people in the world whose families would probably encourage them to join up for even a little bit of money.

Read Bob Herbert's column in yesterday's (6/16) NYT....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/16/opinion/16herbert.html?ex=1119153600&en=2672d91ee478ad56&ei=5070

snip

It's not known how aware parents are that recruiters are inside public high schools aggressively trying to lure their children into wartime service. But not all schools get the same attention. Those that get the royal recruitment treatment tend to be the ones with students whose families are less affluent than most.

Schools with kids from wealthier families (and a high percentage of collegebound students) are not viewed as good prospects by military recruiters. It's as if those schools had posted signs at the entrances saying, "Don't bother." The kids in those schools are not the kids who fight America's wars.