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.
Strategypage has my six on this with a good post. In Vietnam, with even greater needs for bodies and a smaller overall population than we have today, less than ten percent of eligible young men were drafted.
A draft, much like talk of higher taxes so we all feel the sacrifice, is all about increasing public discontent about the war in order to end it short of victory. Don't ever be fooled into thinking these advocates really want us to win. Get real. Realism is all the kick these days, isn't it?
Maybe we should draft members of Congress instead of electing them.
