Selective Brainpower

I cannot believe that I am reading another article about the threat of a draft worrying some people.

Are people really worried that our government, in the face of a shortage of thousands of new recruits, will institute a draft among the two million young men per year who come of age in order to fill that shortage? How is it possible to think that setting up an expensive system that exempts about 99% of the manpower pool is the rational response to what could be a temporary problem? Wouldn't higher compensation, greater efforts at recruiting, and lower enlistment standards not make more sense?

The military will adapt to recruit more. And as an aside, I am a little bewildered at the talk about how recruiters mislead recruits. When I was in, it was darn near a matter of pride as to how much your recruiter lied to get you to sign on the dotted line. At induction, we were all reminded that if you didn't have in writing what your recruiter promised you, you didn't have it so speak now! Heck, I had to fight for my student loan repayment promise when it didn't show up on my final contract (but my own copy had the recruiter's handwriting on it--hah!).

So get a grip, people. We're a long way from a draft.