I'm wondering what your take is on the draft, Damon. I don't see how Iraq can be subdued without greater numbers and I think that it's likely that we'll begin to loose coalition members as the violence continues; what if the UK pulls out?
Well, its as I had said before: we reap what we sow. Right now we are paying the price of the Clinton era military cuts. The perception was afte the end of the Cold War was that we no longer needed an 18 division active component Army (FREX, I have no idea what the numbers cut in the other services, as I'm overwhelmingly biased towards the Army). Thus we drew down to 10 Active component divisions (of which only 6 were heavy -- barely 3 corps of fighting power). Although some (like Brin) would argue that the situation we're in is entirely the fault of the Bush administration (i.e. we didn't need to invade Iraq), the point is that the current conflict is, in my opinion, showing holes in the Clinton administration's intention of an armed force that can handle 2 different crises at once. As it currently stands, we hare having trouble handling just ONE. What would happen if the North Koreans crossed the border? Or China decided to move against Taiwan? Althouth many claim the latter highly unlikely, it still stands as a possibility (hit Taiwan when the US is preoccupied, a sort of "do it now and ask forgiveness later" sort of action).
I recall saying it at the BEGINNING of the offensive: we invaded with too few troops. They won the offensive but now are tied down loosing the peace. Personally, I would have invaded with 300K troops instead of the @120K, for a number of reasons I won't detail here.
As for the draft, again, I think I'm a little biased. I'm not totally opposed to the idea of some sort of mandiatory service, for social reasons (i.e. take a spoiled suburbanite, send him to Kosovo, and maybe he'll appreciate what he has here in the US). But then, any sort of compulsive military service tends not to produce soldiers that WANT to be there and accomplish the mission. A problem we had in Vietnam (amongst other things).
On a related note, I'm wondering how other list members would approach either being drafted or having their children/relations/friends drafted?
Personally (and this is barring a more legitimate conflict), if my son was drafted I would do everything in my power, legal or not, to insure that he didn't go.
Moral quandary. In some ways I'm glad I didn't stay in the Army since I have issues with the Iraq war (as I've said before, I think); I recently saw while browsing on Globalsecurity.org one of my old units is in-bound for Iraq. But then, I would still go without a question.
Right now, this becomes a very pertinent question for me. One of my relatives is of "draftable" age, and is a junior in college. Currently, I think he's becoming a bit of a screw-up (problems with alcohol abuse, and he's going to one of the top 20 universities in the country, so if he screws up academically...he's screwed. I know; been there done that, as it were). So while there's that danger, another part of me doesn't think him going into the Army would be a bad thing. My experiences certainly gave me a new (better) perspective on life, and I think it would for him, too.
Damon.
------------------------------------------------------------ Damon Agretto [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum." http://www.geocities.com/garrand.geo/index.html Now Building: Legends Aussie Centurion Mk.5/1 ------------------------------------------------------------
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