The pressure must be taken off the current force and their families who have already sacrificed so much. If the president insists on continuing the current operational tempo and policy, then he should call for a military draft. That is the responsible thing to do.
Calls for a military draft are simply stupid. We are recruiting enough for our military and as our military expands to levels that don't match what we recruited for in the 1980s with a smaller population, we won't need a draft to meet higher end strength.
Even if we have a shortfall, are you really saying we need a draft of the millions of young men who come of age each year to meet the mere hundreds or thousands that would be needed to supplement volunteers? How do we share the sacrifice when about 99% of young men would not be needed?
And even if we banned volunteers and drafted all our manpower needs, a draft would still only need a small fraction of the available manpower pool each year. How do we equitably distribute the sacrifice in this system? We'd have to exclude many--including those who nobly want to serve in order to put those who hate the idea of serving in a uniform.
Or perhaps you just want to draft troops to keep the existing force from having to fight any more as Representative Murtha suggests. So you suggest we not send our existing force and instead send only new draftees? So officers and senior NCOs can't go back? That won't hurt our military at all, eh?
There are problems we must face within our military as we wage a global war, but it is still the best military force we have ever fielded and it is the best in the world even with these problems.
By all means, let us address problems of troop rotations and equipment needs. But calls for a draft are simply daft and have nothing to do with either winning the war or addressing problems with our military.
Can we not end this foolish idea that will not die and actually debate real military readiness issues?
I thought there was no such thing as an ex-Marine. Representative Murtha proves that belief wrong.
