For nobody can tell what real reason – other than, perhaps, as a means of distracting attention further away from his manifold ethics troubles:
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) likely will introduce his controversial legislation to reinstate the draft again this year, but he will wait until after the economic stimulus package is passed.
Asked if he plans to introduce the legislation again in 2009, Rangel last week said, “Probably … yes. I don’t want to do anything this early to distract from the issue of the economic stimulus.”
Not now, not ever – no draft. Of all the mistakes ever made in human history, a military draft ranks up there in the top 10. A military draft produces large numbers of men in uniform, but it doesn’t give you a really good military instrument. And it won’t spread the risk around evenly because in a nation of 300 million people there are about 30 million military-aged males and as we’ll never need 30 million men in uniform there will be ways to game the system so that economically and politically advantaged never shoulder their share of the burden.
While conscripts can be as brave and intrepid as volunteer soldiers, the plain fact of the matter that you’d rather go into battle with 100,000 highly motivated volunteers than with 200,000 men conscripted into the fight and perhaps not motivated so much by victory as by a desire to get out of it alive.
Any nation which cannot raise armies of volunteers sufficient to fight for victory had better not engage in war or, if in war when the volunteers dry up, had better make peace. Men are not stupid – they don’t join failure…they can be conscripted into it, but they don’t join it. If the war is going badly and recruitment is drying up it is because the war is going badly – and if the leadership is bad, it will continue to go badly even if a million men are forced into the fight.
Let our military be made up of professional, volunteer soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines – each of them as good as ten conscripts in enemy armies. Let us be chary of the blood of our magnificent servicemembers and by reason of there not being an endless supply of manpower, let our officer corps continually study the art and science of war to perfect their plans of campaign to win wars swiftly and with the lowest possible cost to both sides.
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