New Rules for New Enemies

[marct]

Rob,

First of all it is great to see you posting, keep it up.

Let me definately second that sentiment .

Second, I agree with your thoughts and it is very much a reality: resources must match demands or the demands will not be fulfilled.

At the risk of being shot or branded a heretic, I believe that we have to make a fundamental shift in our approach to manning and training and that shift is not one that the military can do within itself.

It's called a draft. If we are fighting new enemies and we need a new approach, we must approach it in a long war model. We are not dong that. We are approaching it in a constant crisis management model; we hire contractors to provide inherently needed services in any war. We are cycling units faster than we can reset those units. And we are doing this in an atmosphere of magnetic ribbon patriotism that portrays trips to the mall as fighting terrorism.

Tom, while I agree with your reasoning in laying out the needs, I really do have to disagree with you about the proposed "solution". Let me lay out some of the reasoning behind my disagreement.

1. The "draft" is politically divisive. When the rumours of President Bush thinking about a draft started circulating a while back, there was a lot of political fighting going on in reaction to them. Drafts are seen, quite rightly in my view, as forced labour. Historicallly, and by that I mean let's go back to the 1960's, the draft was full of holes - deferments, escape over the border to Canada (and why do WE have to deal with YOUR social reactionaries? ), etc. Even if the legislation was enacted with no deferments, you would still have a leaking sieve over your northern border, and the people flowing over it would be the people who could afford to come and resettle. That will, IMHO, inevitably lead to increasing racial and ethnic tensions which, in turn, just makes the general US society more vulnerable and more cut off from your allies who either don't have a draft (e.g. Canada) or who have a long history of "national service" and view the US as acting out of desperation (i.e. most of the EU).
2. The draft will increase internal social conflict. Regardless of any legislation, the racial and ethnic tensions are already fairly high in the US over both the GWOT and the issue of "illegal aliens" (Damn those pesky Martians anyway, comin' here and stealing our jobs!).
3. The draft is insecure. Okay, supose you do get the legislation through. What is the psycho-social profile of most of the al-Qaida cell members? First or 2nd generation immigrants rediscovering their Islamic identities and living in Western countries. Great! So we now have a situation with heightened tensions and forced labour of young muslims in the US. Tell me you don't think that al-Qaida will see this as a fantastic opportunity to infiltrate! I know that if I was a planner on their side, it is one of the first things I would look at doing.

There is a final point I want to make about this that doesn't go well in a list (or PowerPoint <wry grin>).

Given the symbolic meaning of "The Draft" in the US, the current political concerns about the relationship between the various branches of government, and persistant whisperings about a re-establishment of an "Imperial Presidency", I suspect that the basic nature of US society would shift towards that of a "total society". The US doesn't really have that model as something that is defined as "Good", unlike Britain, Canada and most of Europe. It is, in fact, totally opposed to the spirit the led to the original rebellion of the 13 colonies. It is also the core area of conflict that led to your own civil war (the rights of the individual states vs. the rights of the central government) and has led to the creation of many of the militias today.

Most importantly, I think this would lead inevitably to questioning "why" people are fighting with most of the drafted troops coming to the conclusion that they are doing it because the have to or their own government will hunt them down. Didn't we see enough of that in Vietnam?

Now, I may be being unduly pessimistic about these projections, but I don't think so.

We need a national service draft that does not necessarily draw forces strictly for military use. We need border security. We need our own reconstruction services for disasters. We need a system to draw young people into a sense of middle ground that leaves them with a viewpoint that goes beyond their own needs (seen now as rights versus right to pursue those needs).

Again, I really don't disagree with your needs assessment, just your proposal to re-implement the draft. Let me toss out an alternative solution.

First of all, the military has traditionally been a way for kids to get out of poor backgrounds, get some education, learn some discipline and get some bucks together. Service with the Forces has a great number of "pull factors". What if, in place of a draft, you extend these pull factors? What if you were to create a program called "National Service" or some such, that encompassed all of the areas you are talking about in different streams? And, most importantly, where any service with combat forces may happen this is purely voluntary. Structure it so that there is a "basic training" which concentrates on physical fitness, basic educational skills (including history, Steve!) and basic teamwork followed by stream centered "basics".

Now, free education and experience can certainly help people get a job and will also make it more likely for employers to hire them, so that is one pull factor. Let's add in another one - "money". We have already heard a fair bit about school vouchers in the secondary school system, what if that was expanded into the post-secondary system using the same model as WWII? For each year of "national service" up to, say, a maximimum of four years, give the partcipants a voucher for one year of tuition and then require that that voucher be accepted. The universities would scream, but let them - they can still cherry pick based on SATs and other forms of entrance exams. Expand on this idea somewhat and modify it so that someone who doesn't want to go to university would get a government guarenteed loan to start up a small business, maybe at 10k/year, along with a program to help them start it up.

I suspect that some type of a program based on pull factors like this would be much more successful than the draft. It would also go a long way towards re-inforceing certain core values of American culture, as opposed to re-inforceing ones that are against American culture (e.g. hyper-centralization).

One final point and I'll leave it along. "Conscientious objectors" won't have a leg to stand on and a pull program will do a lot to make national service popular in the long run once people start graduating out of it, going to universities and running their own businesses. And besides that, it would mean that we in Canada don't have to deal with all those pesky American draft dodgers stealing our jobs <grin>.

Marc