Once we’ve clearly established that stop-loss is coercion, I’m done. You want to show that the US is not like Israel? Consider this:
the US today freely trafficks in coercion whenever it feels it is needed, with minimal public outcry, and what outcry there is is due solely to the affected parties
the infrastructure for the draft is still in place, and dissolving it has been specifically resisted by even Democratic administrations like Clinton
after 9/11, there were several public statements in support of the draft, such as this op-ed by Senator Rangels (“Bring Back the Draft”, who submitted legislation to that effect, as did Senator Hollings
‘But top lawmakers, joined by Pentagon leaders and administration officials, say that there are definitely no plans to resume the draft and that the military is much better off relying on a substantially motivated volunteer force rather than on conscripts.’
‴You have drafts when you can’t get the requisite numbers,″ said the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California. ″There is not now indications that you can’t get the requisite numbers. But we watch those numbers every month.‴
‴I don’t think we’re going to need to reinstitute the draft,″ Mr. Levin said. ″The combination of recruiting and retention is doing fairly well.‴
“Neither Mr. Korb nor Professor Burk believes that compulsory service will be reinstituted without mobilization of a scale far beyond anything now needed.”
And once stop-loss is permissible & precedent, draft is just more of the same, a point so obvious the reporter includes it:
“He and others said this could appear to those people to be nothing less than logical progression, after the military’s resorting to an extension of tours of duty and the recall of former active-duty soldiers.
″I think what is behind the current public discussion is the sense the Defense Department is using coercion to maintain the service of those who might otherwise get out,″ said James Burk, a sociology professor at Texas A&M who studies the intersection of military and public policy issues. ″That kind of coercion has a resonance of what the draft is all about.″”
So, the US is culturally accepting, has the means, has the experience—but it just doesn’t have the need (like Israel does).
To make an inflammatory analogy, if an American were to claim to not be like Israel or France in this respect, I would put as little credence in that as I would the claim of a child molester that he’s not a rapist because he just flies to Thailand and hires a child prostitute.
(As for your claim this isn’t about politics: stop-loss and the draft are politics. What a government should do to/with its citizens is the very heart of politics; I can’t imagine what else politics could be.)
This seems to be a political hobby-horse of yours; clearly you don’t like stop-loss and think it may lead to a draft in the future. But making political points like that is not what this thread is for. I simply pointed out to DanArmak that the U.S. doesn’t currently practice conscription—which is true—and thus it is a hasty claim that military service is “generally understood to be coercive”. DanArmak later acknowledged that a number of countries (not just the U.S., so you can pick another example if you like) have volunteer forces.
Again, stop-loss may be unethical or otherwise bad policy, it may even facilitate some future draft, but not all bad things are the same. Not even if one leads to another. There is no need to obscure the manifest difference between the militaries of Israel and the U.S. by rhetorical posturing about how stop-loss is in the same moral category as outright conscription. It’s an off-topic distraction.
I don’t intend to continue this political discussion further, but since I did happen to say that there was little political will in the U.S. for a draft, and since your latest comment could be read as an attempted refutation of that claim, I will make the following points before withdrawing:
There is no “Senator Rangels”. The op-ed you linked to was written by Representative (not Senator) Charles Rangel, incidentally the same man currently under investigation for tax violations. His call for a draft was widely seen at the time as pure political grandstanding against the war in Iraq (specifically an attempt to make a point about public support of the war—presumably the public would not support it to the point of tolerating a draft).
Members of Congress regularly make all kinds of public statements in support of this or that. You can no doubt find members of the Congressional Black Caucus who have made public statements in favor of reparations for slavery. That doesn’t mean the idea has any actual political traction. You would have to be very naive about American politics to regard mere pronouncements by congressmen as anything more than very weak information about what policies have a chance of being enacted. Most of it is pure signaling.
The fact that the draft was not reinstituted despite being talked about is evidence in my favor. It isn’t a politically popular idea. Yes, if it were ever necessary it would of course be brought back (essentially by definition of “necessary”), but it was not regarded as necessary after 9/11, even with two subsequent wars. By contrast, forty years ago, it was apparently regarded as necessary to draft people into fighting a war in Vietnam which was not prompted directly or indirectly by an attack on the U.S. mainland.
The quotes you cite make my case, not yours. E.g. “”Neither Mr. Korb nor Professor Burk believes that compulsory service will be reinstituted without mobilization of a scale far beyond anything now needed.”″
The infrastructure for the draft is not currently in place. What is still in place is the legal (i.e. statutory) authority, plus a list of people who are eligible to be drafted (the “Selective Service” registry). Actually implementing the draft would require significant organizational changes in the Pentagon bureaucracy, which would resist them like all bureaucracies resist all major changes. (Or so I am told by a DoD employee who should know.)
There is no “Senator Rangels”. The op-ed you linked to was written by Representative (not Senator) Charles Rangel, incidentally the same man currently under investigation for tax violations.
My mistake; I confused him with the Republican senator. (And I’d point out that if the tax violation thing is an attempt to discredit Rangel, that he can still be in office only points to his influence, even if you are unfamiliar with his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means committee.)
You would have to be very naive about American politics to regard mere pronouncements by congressmen as anything more than very weak information about what policies have a chance of being enacted.
Which is why I specifically mentioned the 2 different pieces of submitted legislation.
By contrast, forty years ago, it was apparently regarded as necessary to draft people into fighting a war in Vietnam which was not prompted directly or indirectly by an attack on the U.S. mainland.
I’m not sure what your point is here. They used the draft because that was how they got the troops they wanted: Vietnam peaked at something like 500,000 US troops deployed, while as far as I can tell, Iraq has never hosted even a third of that, peaking at 160,000. And the latter with a more populous America too (180 million in the ’60s to 300 million now).
The fact that the draft was not reinstituted despite being talked about is evidence in my favor. It isn’t a politically popular idea.
Then why has it never been repudiated? Why are the laws still effective & the registry maintained? For such a politically suicidal idea, as you seem to think it, it’s surprisingly present. The Democrats have plenty of time to pander to even tiny constituencies like paying veterans benefits to allied Filipinos from WWII, but they can’t get rid of something that is supposed to be universally despised?
Face it: what the American people opposes is the use of the draft for specific conflicts like bombing Serbia or Afghanistan or Iraq. The general idea is fine by them. And the quotes you think make your case, make mine: not one of them opposes the draft in general—just using it right now. Mere historical contingency. Not principles.
Face it: what the American people opposes is the use of the draft for specific conflicts like bombing Serbia or Afghanistan or Iraq. The general idea is fine by them. And the quotes you think make your case, make mine: not one of them opposes the draft in general—just using it right now. Mere historical contingency. Not principles.
The problem is that, after Vietnam, America will oppose the draft for pretty much any war that isn’t directly defensive, i.e. a retaliation to an attack or overt declaration of war. With the development of modern media, wars have become much, much harder to wage. The only way you’d see a draft in the US is if we waged a massive defensive ground war. This isn’t going to happen, because technology has progressed too much. The only thing you’re really going to need a lot of ground troops for is an occupation, and occupations are not defensive.
It’s not impossible, but it’s extraordinarily unlikely that someone would pick a fight with the US that would require troops in numbers needed to justify a draft. Particularly when you consider that any such attack would hugely boost volunteering and thus reduce the need for a draft; look at what 9/11 did.
So compulsive military service is quite possible in the case of a rather clear national emergency. Compulsive military service in a muddier, vaguely-preventative war seems extremely unlikely, even if it could theoretically be enacted. Damn near anything could theoretically be enacted, though, so this is hardly a useful point.
[I admit I can’t quite find how this thread originated, so I may be slightly off topic; for some reason it does not show in the comments in the original post.]
The problem is that, after Vietnam, America will oppose the draft for pretty much any war that isn’t directly defensive, i.e. a retaliation to an attack or overt declaration of war.
Vietnam didn’t start with a draft either, IIRC.
With the development of modern media, wars have become much, much harder to wage.
They used to be. But institutions adapted. Do you remember the run-up to the Iraq war? You could drive a truck through the arguments for invading (I remember being particularly unimpressed by the aluminum tubes & audio recordings), yet the media was so supine that even arch-liberal papers like the New York Times drank the kool-aid so deeply they would apologize later. And then there are things like embedded reporters, or those Pentagon pundits (forgotten about them? I wouldn’t be surprised.).
No, in this Gotterdammerung for newspapers, we cannot look to them to stop wars & drafts.
So compulsive military service is quite possible in the case of a rather clear national emergency.
So you agree with me, then, that the American people philosophically accepts coercion like the draft, it’s just that we don’t observe any recent drafts because the specific circumstances that would make it useful are, due to historical & technological contingency, rare? :)
I admit I can’t quite find how this thread originated, so I may be slightly off topic; for some reason it does not show in the comments in the original post.
We’re nested too far down to appear on the main page; you’d have to click ‘more comments’.
Once we’ve clearly established that stop-loss is coercion, I’m done. You want to show that the US is not like Israel? Consider this:
the US today freely trafficks in coercion whenever it feels it is needed, with minimal public outcry, and what outcry there is is due solely to the affected parties
the infrastructure for the draft is still in place, and dissolving it has been specifically resisted by even Democratic administrations like Clinton
after 9/11, there were several public statements in support of the draft, such as this op-ed by Senator Rangels (“Bring Back the Draft”, who submitted legislation to that effect, as did Senator Hollings
the sole justification offered by mainstream draft opponents is that it’s not needed, which is obviously not a repudiation of the draft at all (see http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/03/us/military-draft-official-denials-leave-skeptics.html ):
And once stop-loss is permissible & precedent, draft is just more of the same, a point so obvious the reporter includes it:
So, the US is culturally accepting, has the means, has the experience—but it just doesn’t have the need (like Israel does).
To make an inflammatory analogy, if an American were to claim to not be like Israel or France in this respect, I would put as little credence in that as I would the claim of a child molester that he’s not a rapist because he just flies to Thailand and hires a child prostitute.
(As for your claim this isn’t about politics: stop-loss and the draft are politics. What a government should do to/with its citizens is the very heart of politics; I can’t imagine what else politics could be.)
This seems to be a political hobby-horse of yours; clearly you don’t like stop-loss and think it may lead to a draft in the future. But making political points like that is not what this thread is for. I simply pointed out to DanArmak that the U.S. doesn’t currently practice conscription—which is true—and thus it is a hasty claim that military service is “generally understood to be coercive”. DanArmak later acknowledged that a number of countries (not just the U.S., so you can pick another example if you like) have volunteer forces.
Again, stop-loss may be unethical or otherwise bad policy, it may even facilitate some future draft, but not all bad things are the same. Not even if one leads to another. There is no need to obscure the manifest difference between the militaries of Israel and the U.S. by rhetorical posturing about how stop-loss is in the same moral category as outright conscription. It’s an off-topic distraction.
I don’t intend to continue this political discussion further, but since I did happen to say that there was little political will in the U.S. for a draft, and since your latest comment could be read as an attempted refutation of that claim, I will make the following points before withdrawing:
There is no “Senator Rangels”. The op-ed you linked to was written by Representative (not Senator) Charles Rangel, incidentally the same man currently under investigation for tax violations. His call for a draft was widely seen at the time as pure political grandstanding against the war in Iraq (specifically an attempt to make a point about public support of the war—presumably the public would not support it to the point of tolerating a draft).
Members of Congress regularly make all kinds of public statements in support of this or that. You can no doubt find members of the Congressional Black Caucus who have made public statements in favor of reparations for slavery. That doesn’t mean the idea has any actual political traction. You would have to be very naive about American politics to regard mere pronouncements by congressmen as anything more than very weak information about what policies have a chance of being enacted. Most of it is pure signaling.
The fact that the draft was not reinstituted despite being talked about is evidence in my favor. It isn’t a politically popular idea. Yes, if it were ever necessary it would of course be brought back (essentially by definition of “necessary”), but it was not regarded as necessary after 9/11, even with two subsequent wars. By contrast, forty years ago, it was apparently regarded as necessary to draft people into fighting a war in Vietnam which was not prompted directly or indirectly by an attack on the U.S. mainland.
The quotes you cite make my case, not yours. E.g. “”Neither Mr. Korb nor Professor Burk believes that compulsory service will be reinstituted without mobilization of a scale far beyond anything now needed.”″
The infrastructure for the draft is not currently in place. What is still in place is the legal (i.e. statutory) authority, plus a list of people who are eligible to be drafted (the “Selective Service” registry). Actually implementing the draft would require significant organizational changes in the Pentagon bureaucracy, which would resist them like all bureaucracies resist all major changes. (Or so I am told by a DoD employee who should know.)
This is all I have to say on this topic.
My mistake; I confused him with the Republican senator. (And I’d point out that if the tax violation thing is an attempt to discredit Rangel, that he can still be in office only points to his influence, even if you are unfamiliar with his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means committee.)
Which is why I specifically mentioned the 2 different pieces of submitted legislation.
I’m not sure what your point is here. They used the draft because that was how they got the troops they wanted: Vietnam peaked at something like 500,000 US troops deployed, while as far as I can tell, Iraq has never hosted even a third of that, peaking at 160,000. And the latter with a more populous America too (180 million in the ’60s to 300 million now).
Then why has it never been repudiated? Why are the laws still effective & the registry maintained? For such a politically suicidal idea, as you seem to think it, it’s surprisingly present. The Democrats have plenty of time to pander to even tiny constituencies like paying veterans benefits to allied Filipinos from WWII, but they can’t get rid of something that is supposed to be universally despised?
Face it: what the American people opposes is the use of the draft for specific conflicts like bombing Serbia or Afghanistan or Iraq. The general idea is fine by them. And the quotes you think make your case, make mine: not one of them opposes the draft in general—just using it right now. Mere historical contingency. Not principles.
The problem is that, after Vietnam, America will oppose the draft for pretty much any war that isn’t directly defensive, i.e. a retaliation to an attack or overt declaration of war. With the development of modern media, wars have become much, much harder to wage. The only way you’d see a draft in the US is if we waged a massive defensive ground war. This isn’t going to happen, because technology has progressed too much. The only thing you’re really going to need a lot of ground troops for is an occupation, and occupations are not defensive.
It’s not impossible, but it’s extraordinarily unlikely that someone would pick a fight with the US that would require troops in numbers needed to justify a draft. Particularly when you consider that any such attack would hugely boost volunteering and thus reduce the need for a draft; look at what 9/11 did.
So compulsive military service is quite possible in the case of a rather clear national emergency. Compulsive military service in a muddier, vaguely-preventative war seems extremely unlikely, even if it could theoretically be enacted. Damn near anything could theoretically be enacted, though, so this is hardly a useful point.
[I admit I can’t quite find how this thread originated, so I may be slightly off topic; for some reason it does not show in the comments in the original post.]
Vietnam didn’t start with a draft either, IIRC.
They used to be. But institutions adapted. Do you remember the run-up to the Iraq war? You could drive a truck through the arguments for invading (I remember being particularly unimpressed by the aluminum tubes & audio recordings), yet the media was so supine that even arch-liberal papers like the New York Times drank the kool-aid so deeply they would apologize later. And then there are things like embedded reporters, or those Pentagon pundits (forgotten about them? I wouldn’t be surprised.).
No, in this Gotterdammerung for newspapers, we cannot look to them to stop wars & drafts.
So you agree with me, then, that the American people philosophically accepts coercion like the draft, it’s just that we don’t observe any recent drafts because the specific circumstances that would make it useful are, due to historical & technological contingency, rare? :)
We’re nested too far down to appear on the main page; you’d have to click ‘more comments’.
Prediction: no military draft in the United States before 2020 (>= 95% confidence).