General Discussion

However, many of the comments I see here against a draft are assuming that calling up a draft will extend our involvement in conflicts.
Personally, I doubt it very much. Vietnam did change something - it changed how we looked at having a nation-wide investment in any conflicts our country got into. People forget there was a draft for both WWII and for the Korean conflict, and the US didn't just go on about their business ho-humming what was going on elsewhere in the world.
Right now, the US DoD is downsizing their personnel; many of the active duty are just being let go because there are not many billets that are career billets left; and the reservists and Guards are picking up slack. People bitch about "not my precious baby", but totally ignore their neighbor and his/her family, who are suffering all sorts of mental and economic issues that are spilling out into the general public, because of four or five or six deployments in a row.
What McCrystal is saying, is that if we had a draft, we probably would not be in the situation we are now, because all of America would have had some skin in the game, not just the few who either didn't know what they were getting into and needed a job, or those who are too uneducated or damaged in the first place to deal with life as a responsible citizen.

Yes, I served and retired - I volunteered. My husband served, also a volunteer. My father and my mother's brother volunteered for the Guard years before the Vietnam draft. I had an uncle who was a Corpsman with the Marines during Korea - who's experiences triggered his schizophrenia.
And even after seeing what the Guards and reservists and active duty military are going through right now, after all the lies and fake patriotism, I would support a draft that would involve the kidlet and her fiance, just so that everyone else understands what it means to go to war - it isn't a f***in TV show.

First whiff of a draft, and all the warhawk Uber-patriots will suddenly start questioning why they have to give up their sons and daughters for a conflict against some brown people somewhere else.

I would actually bet some of my hard-won income that we'd be out of Afghanistan and initiation of conflict in Iran or any of the other Middle-eastern dictatorships would be "off the table" as soon as the 50% or so of America who can't be bothered to find the Middle East on Google Maps suddenly realized their children were just as vulnerable to injury by IED as some poor youth somewhere in "the bad part of town". You know, the slacker kid who can't get the education or find any other job that pays enough that he has the same opportunities in life as some middle class snowflake who is able to parlay a job or degree off mom or dad's network, the throw-away who would supposedly benefit the most by volunteering to stay out of the job market for four to six years until he or she "grows up" - or gets killed.

For those who suffered through Vietnam - this isn't the same culture that gave us Vietnam. It's closer to the culture that it took a mass-casualty army to army type attack against an American force to finally get us whole-heartedly as a nation into WWII, so a major build-up of troop strength will really need to have a good, clear explanation for the country to agree to get involved.

If our nation continues to depend on "volunteers" - looking for educational opportunities they wouldn't otherwise get, National Guardsmen - who have often volunteer to be local disaster relief, and find themselves sent overseas instead of helping their state - or those who are looking to make the military a career because they can't do anything else, expect it to be involved in every single little piss-ant corporate-sponsored international adventure that any small group of congress-critters in charge of various committees agree to lend "American" support to.

What do you think got us into the Mexican American War or the Spanish-American War? What do you think got us into Nicaragua and the rest of those Central American "Adventures"? What got us into the Middle East and is keeping us here?
Having an "all-volunteer" military force that can be moved around like Risk pieces - that's what got us here.

Haele