End the All-Volunteer Force

[Van]

As I read the back and forth about the merits and ills of conscription, I think we are not discussing a related issue that would sabotage the drive towards a bureaucratic solution (legislating the draft, and telling the DoD "just make it happen").

75+% of the draft age people in the US are unfit for military service; "physically unfit, have not graduated from high school, or have a criminal record".

If this trend continues, we may be forced to initiate conscription, just to make numbers, but the conscription would be focused on the ones who are good enough. Consider the political ramifications of trying to draft the the kids who make all the criteria. Also, many kids would consider a draft incentive to make themselves unfit for service, thereby adding to our problems.

The diligent workers of COMINTERN and their useful idiots in academia, media, and marketing have succeeded. Military service is stigmatized by those who benefit most from it, and the people with the most to gain from service are most likely to be ineligible (look at health, education, and crime statistics broken out by economic strata).

[AmericanPride]

75+% of the draft age people in the US are unfit for military service; "physically unfit, have not graduated from high school, or have a criminal record".

That is a serious issue that you raise -- and it's one of the reasons why the middle class, with generally higher rates of education and lower rates of criminal activity, bears the burden of military service (the rich, obviously, have better opportunities available elsewhere). But I don't think the problem is inherently the reliance on the middle class for military service (and funding, incidentally), but the fact that the military class is shrinking, and with it, the number of eligible recruits. China, for example, while it has legal requirement for conscription, doesn't need it for its military requirements because it has a sufficiently large demographic from which to recruit. So, we can expand the middle class to provide a larger pool of eligible recruits, discard standards to increase recruiting, or institute a draft (based on manpower or skills requirements).

[AmericanPride]

With my freshmen, it usually isn't the kids, it's their parents pressuring them to chase the ROTC scholarship. Close to 20% of my students came to the class because mommy and daddy made it clear that this was their only choice (yes, some are only here for the scholarship and it was their idea, but they are rare).

An interesting side-note is that next to young adults, a great percentage of student debt is held by seniors, presumably because they co-signed for their children and grandchildren who face ridiculous tuition fees. Given that the middle class is shrinking between across-the-board increases in prices and stagnating incomes, it should come as no surprise to anyone that more parents are pushing their kids to seek scholarships, ROTC or otherwise. I think a significant concern here is that military service is becoming increasingly insulated to one class (mostly middle class, and mostly from the south, therefore conservative and Christian).

[AmericanPride]

Oh, Van, one last note: aside from the clear economic advantages gained from health-care reform, the other thing to consider is the impact on the eligibility of young middle class men for military service. This problem received some media attention, last year, making it clear that health and education reform are both essential to maintaining and improving military readiness.

[AmericanPride]

Based on your previous record, I'm not sure if you will.

I'm not really concerned about my reputation on a fairly anonymous online message board.

"In March 1863, the federal government elected to centralize and normalize conscription. The process adopted by the government divided conscription areas by congressional district. If a district failed to reach the quota number of volunteers, a draft lottery was then initiated. Once conscripted, the potential draftee underwent a series of examinations to determine medical fitness and the existence of hardship. Upon passing these requirements, the draftee had ten days to hire a substitute, pay a three-hundred dollar commutation fee, or join the army. Of the 292,441 names drawn during 1863, about 190,000 men were waived due to medical disability or hardship, 52,000 paid the commutation fee, and about 26,000 provided a substitute. In the end, 9,811 men, or three percent of men became conscripts.(emphasis mine)"

Now this is the kind of response that I was expecting from people of this site's caliber. And the figures for 1864?

A cursory search doesn't turn up much regarding this flow of personnel, but that's where you'd have to start to determine if that slice was significant. My take at this stage is that it was not significant.

I agree, which is why I have gone no further than claiming that 8.5% of Union soldiers were conscripts, and on the basis of that figure alone, draftees had a substantial impact on the war's outcome.

A well-researched article on the impact of the draft in two Wisconsin communities can be found here. One line in his concluding paragraph is interesting: "I believe it is important to note again that the purpose of the draft was to stimulate volunteerism through the threat of conscription."

That's an interesting finding, and demonstrates the utility of the draft in more than simply directly fulfilling manpower requirements.

[Steve Blair]

Now this is the kind of response that I was expecting from people of this site's caliber. And the figures for 1864?



I agree, which is why I have gone no further than claiming that 8.5% of Union soldiers were conscripts, and on the basis of that figure alone, draftees had a substantial impact on the war's outcome.

You can dig up 1864 on your own, I expect. And I repeat that 8.5% (at most) does not mean a substantial impact. If you check out the linked article, it goes into much more detail regarding the situation in Wisconsin (a strong Union state, as were most of what were then the Western states).

[AmericanPride]

You can dig up 1864 on your own, I expect

I asked out of curiousity, not because annual numbers are relevant to my argument (they aren't). Bottom-line, up to 8.5% of soldiers were drafted; even if a substantial number were paid substitutes, those are still individuals inducted through the draft system. If we really want to get into the nuts and bolts, we can find out where those draftees (or their paid replacements) ended up during the conflict. But I can see you are just as content with simply assuming they were insignificant to the conflict as I am in assuming they were significant. And that's fine. The most relevant measurement of conscription's benefits is during 1940 - 1973.