Draft reinstatement: How likely do you think it is?

[liberalhistorian]

I'm curious as to how likely you think it is that there will soon be moves to reinstate the draft, and that such moves will be successful. Personally, I think there's about a sixty-percent chance that that will happen. I sure as hell hope not, but we'll just have to see what happens. What do you think?

[Monkeyman]

1. Over My Dead Body

[HereSince1628]

2. Not until after the Iraq Occupation ends.

Universal conscription may be necessary but that solution to the broken Army will wait until it's back to garrison duty, cuz nobody is gonna want to get blamed with reinstating the draft to fight in a lost cause.

[MadMaddie]

3. With Recruitment down....

The ruin of existing troops, with deploying them over and over again....

What choice is there? Every additional deployment raises the risk of a soldiar not making it back home,

If a soldiar makes it home adjusting to civilian life with PTSD, war injuries is harder than it's ever been...A convenient oversite by this war administration...

No other countries are going to volunteer their troops to this on going disaster....

What choice is there?

When it comes....we have to make sure that we are on the draft boards to make sure that every one including Republicans go to this war....

[algreen90]

4. I only think a draft should be applicable....

....for a war that is in defense of OUR freedom not someone else's.

[newyawker99]

15. Hi algreen90!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[algreen90]

23. Why, thank you..

I've been a longtime lurker and enjoy this site immensely.

[Kelvin Mace]

5. Unlikely in the next 2 years,

since it would be an immediate election loss for whoever votes for it.

Bush is now raiding the Air Force for combat troops. After that, he'll raid the Navy and the Coast Guard. After that, he will have suspended elections and THEN he will institute the draft,

[mike_c]

6. it would be like the summer of 1968 all over again, or at least...

...I like to hope so.

[acmavm]

9. That's why I think that it would be a good thing if they tried it. THEN you'd

see some riled up people. If they were faced with the prospect that they'd be going into the sand dunes like kids of our generation had to go into the jungle, then the shit would hit the fan.

[liberalhistorian]

21. That's exactly what my parents and their friends

are saying about the draft, that it made them and their generation much more politically aware awakened them to what was really going on as well as the senselessness of Vietnam and sending more of them over to needlessly die or suffer. My uncle was a marine in Vietnam; he says now that he wishes he'd had the guts to take his draft card and tell them where to shove it.

[Sydnie]

7. I am a new member of my local draft board

My first training (after being appointed to the board by Mitt ... of all people ... last year) is June 3rd. I'll let you know what I hear, if anything, after that.

[liberal N proud]

8. They can't have my kids

[liberalhistorian]

18. I hear ya there! My son, my only child, is sixteen,

and they are NOT NOT NOT getting him, no way! Never mind his freeper father, who's been nagging him about being in the military since he was seven years old, and who's really stepping up the pressure now that he's only a couple years away from high school graduation. I tell him he can send his 7-year-old son into the meat grinder in eleven years, and leave mine the hell out of it. The military wouldn't take him due to his health issues, so he's had a bee in his bonnet about that for thirty years. Now he's trying to live vicariously through our son. No fucking thank you.

[cherokeeprogressive]

10. About as likely as Sol winking out tomorrow and leaving us all to freeze.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff DO NOT WANT CONSCRIPTS.

Is it so hard to understand that the REAL way to break the military is to fill it with servicemembers who DO NOT WANT TO BE THERE?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

11. As if the current troops really want to be there.

Or the Joint Chiefs for that matter.

[wuushew]

13. What percentage of the military joined after March 2003?

I think the army has an annual new recruit target of several tens of thousands a year. Since the war never has ended, everybody who joined knew they would be shipped into an active war zone. I mean besides Iraq, the only possible places one would end up are South Korea or Afghanistan.

[pampango]

17. Looks like the Army's goal is 80,000 a year with the other services

totaling another 100,000 roughly. Here's a link that indicates that the military has met recruiting goals in fiscal 2006 and every month since then.

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/military_recruiting_exceedingly_strong_despite_publics_alleged_dissatisfact/

The site in turn links to the DOD and uses their statistics. Does anyone know if these are fabrications or that more substandard recruits are being accepted than usual?

[wuushew]

12. 0%

[zeemike]

14. No chance in hell

But I swear to you that this is no cause for joy, because a privatized military, which is the way things are moving, will put the power of arms in the hands of a few power brokers that can control government.
And this would extend there power to that of kings that rule over us all and thumb there noses at democracy.
So celebrate now the fact that your sons and daughters are safe from the military because in the future you will wish that the kid with the assault rifle that kicks in your door had a familiar face, instead of a paid thug in the Exxon private security force hired to do the job.
Once the military is taken from the democratic pat of government it is all over baby blue.

[Cerridwen]

16. It's already done - it just has new names - Orwell must be spinning

in his grave.

It's now called stop-loss and we have troops being bribed to re-up; multiple tours are the norm rather than the exception; young people with few or no options now enlist just to have a job as our jobs disappear or pay less and less.

To think that history will repeat itself in the exact same way each and every time is a mistake. They've learned from the past and will re-package, re-market and re-name their moves based on what the "market" (read We, the People) will bear. To think that they'll ever use the word "draft" ignores the fact that they've learned their lessons. We're at war with Eurasia, right? Oh, wait, no, we're at war with Oceania. Er, no...now it's Eurasia.

1984, Brave New World and the lessons they learned during many wars have been their guide. We ignore the new packaging at our peril.

[genie_weenie]

19. 0% chance of draft. 0%.

The leading members of the military industrial complex all realize a draft is the quickest way to end their profits and endanger near future theft of TRILLIONS of dollars from Americans as well as control of resources overseas.

[roamer65]

20. If we attack Iran, there will be a draft.

[Beelzebud]

22. With our crop of Fearless Dems, anything is possible.