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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...tary/2012/04/19/gIQAwFV3TT_story.html?hpid=z2
Tom Ricks posted this in yesterday's Washington Post- any thoughts?.
Personally - I don't agree with him- in fact it's flying in the face of what almost every other western country has been doing for the last 20 years which has been to eliminate their conscription based Armies. The volunteer military is clearly a better, far more professional organization than it was in 1973. And yet... military manpower is also far more costly than it was 35 years ago, and I think that the country has lost an important shared experience that it had for the 33 years that the draft was in place. But the draft has been gone for longer than it was in place, yet he and others who argue this often make it sound like the draft was the natural order of things and that it was the way to avoid unpopular long wars. But the draft produced armies that fought in Korea and Vietnam. so I hardly think that this is really the panacea for avoiding long, badly run wars.
Tom Ricks posted this in yesterday's Washington Post- any thoughts?.
Personally - I don't agree with him- in fact it's flying in the face of what almost every other western country has been doing for the last 20 years which has been to eliminate their conscription based Armies. The volunteer military is clearly a better, far more professional organization than it was in 1973. And yet... military manpower is also far more costly than it was 35 years ago, and I think that the country has lost an important shared experience that it had for the 33 years that the draft was in place. But the draft has been gone for longer than it was in place, yet he and others who argue this often make it sound like the draft was the natural order of things and that it was the way to avoid unpopular long wars. But the draft produced armies that fought in Korea and Vietnam. so I hardly think that this is really the panacea for avoiding long, badly run wars.