The Draft As Deterrent

[wakeme2008]

A good article

2-20-2006

The Draft As Deterrent (intro)

Hack always advocated the return of the military draft. It's a common thread in much of his writing. He believed that draftees had the guts to stand up and disagree with their superiors, since they weren't concerned with making the military their career.


The Draft As Deterrent

By David H. Hackworth

Originally published March 18, 2003

..cut..

believe it's been far too easy for the vast majority of Americans to pay little or no attention to George W. Bush's march to war, because most folks' pride and joy aren't prime candidates for body bags. And few average citizens have ongoing personal contact with a uniformed defender from the 1 million-plus regular warriors who make up our All-Volunteer Force (AVF). To them, our warriors are just uniforms they occasionally see floating around at airports or as background color in TV war dispatches.



Most recruits in the AVF come from non-vocal, working-class families – a disproportionate number from the poor and from minority groups – while more privileged Americans are conspicuous by their absence. For example, the Congress that voted overwhelmingly for the military solution against Iraq includes only one member with a son who's an enlisted grunt. The rest, like the majority of Americans since the draft went south, no longer share directly in the sacrifice that comes with sending our youth to face the dragon. /div]


http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=HOME%20DefenseWatch%201.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=2&rnd=433.69499829615364

[yurbud]

1. No. People will pay more attention, but when rich want war bad enough, they will snow the rest of

us, just like now.

[lligrd]

2. More To It Than That

While I agree that people find it easy not to pay attention (though I don't understand how they can be so ignorant) I think the premise is simplistic. The "people" can be scared into going along with nearly anything; witness the lack of protest by many who really did question this "war" in their hearts but were loathe to say so for fear of being called unpatriotic or worse. I know I have questioned whether my own speaking out was wise on occasion as I am sure many here have.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. Hackworth: wrong on theory wrong on facts.

The draft has never prevented or deterred war in the past and there is no reason to believe it wiil in the future. Quite the opposite: it provides a continuous stream of troops and enables military adventurism.

Hackworth was wrong on the facts.

"The data shows the force is more educated than the population at large.
Servicemembers have high school diplomas or the general equivalency diploma. More servicemembers have some college than the typical 18- to 24-year-olds. "To carry representativeness to the extreme, we would have to have a less-educated force or we would want a lower-aptitude force," Gilroy said.

...

On the socioeconomic side, the military is strongly middle class, Gilroy said. More recruits are drawn from the middle class and fewer are coming from poorer and wealthier families. Recruits from poorer families are actually underrepresented in the military, Gilroy said. "
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/joiningthemilitary/a/demographics.htm

What the draft will do is enable the government to take your kid or my kid against their will and waste their life in some misbegotten adventure. No thanks. Not now. Not ever.

[wakeme2008]

4. the data you are stating is from pre-Bush. The education level now is

much lower.