I see some are envisioning a completely stupid bold new direction in one of our defense policies.
Why yes, the children will be in charge.
UPDATE: Consider that our 500,000 Army recruits 80,000 per year. And the Army met its goal last year. So we don't need a draft to maintain our Army. Also assume we don't draft for the other services. The Air Force is shrinking by choice and under only narrow stress (like in airlift). The Marines aren't going to get bulked up by their nature. And the Navy is unstressed by the mainly ground war. So only the Army gets draftees.
Assume we want to end the practice of relying on the Army Guard and Army Reserve. So let's say we boldly double our active Army. This doubles our need for new Army recruits to 160,000 per year. But rather than try to recruit more, we go to a draft. But retention will suffer with so many draftees, so let's say we would need 200,000 new recruits per year to sustain the million-man army. If we assume 80,000 volunteers as we get now, we would need to draft 120,000 Army recruits per year.
About 4 million Americans turn 18 each year by my rough calculations. So we would be starting up the expensive machinery of a nationwide draft to get 120,000 out of a potential annual class of 4 million. So instead of having a mechanism to share the burden of serving among all our population, we'd have to have a system of excluding the 97% of new adults who we don't need.
I don't care how you do it, even if purely random, a selective draft is no way to spread the burden around. We'd do better to raise recruiting bonuses and ban recruiteer restrictions in our high schools and colleges.
And this ignores the lowering of quality that we get now with volunteers by replacing a large portion of our military with possibly sullen and by definition unwilling recruits.
I mentioned this idea is stupid, right?
ANOTHER UPDATE: I apologize for hastily using the term "stupid" for the idea of a military draft. A draft is truly a bad idea worthy of mockery, but I should never underestimate the ability of the Loony Left to truly come up with an idea worthy of the judgment "stupid."
Behold the Global Orgasm for Peace it in all its wrinkly glory:
The Global Orgasm for Peace was conceived by Donna Sheehan, 76, and Paul Reffell, 55, whose immodest goal is for everyone in the world to have an orgasm Dec. 22 while focusing on world peace.
"The orgasm gives out an incredible feeling of peace during it and after it," Reffell said Sunday. "Your mind is like a blank. It's like a meditative state. And mass meditations have been shown to make a change."
Sometimes the denizens of the Left are just self-mocking.
The two are California activists, as if I need to specify that.
Good God, I hope none of this makes it to YouTube.
ANOTHER UPDATE: No idiocy is complete until Paul Campos weighs in. Tip to Real Clear Politics.
