Quote Originally Posted by AmericanPride View Post
Conscription is a regular feature of America's military experience; a part of every major war since the War of Independence.
True, but...

In all those wars where it was used -- Civil, WW I, WW II, Korea and Viet Nam, a net of 31 years or so out of 224 or about 14% -- it's been universally unfair in application, gamed and not nearly as effective as one might think. The only benefit is to provide mass and we have no need for that at this time. Au contraire...
Furthermore, non-military conscription remains an accepted feature of American society, including youth education and jury duty.
I'll give you education, which is kinda pathetic and a worse misuse of talent than is military service but comparing a week or so of Jury Duty with a few months of military service is really stretching things...
What is unique to the United States is the maintenance of a small "peace-time" military (not that the US has known many years of peace).
Not so. The British have even more years of doing that than do we. The Continental Europeans have always since the French Revolution pretty much opted for conscription -- but we are far different folks than those good people. Further, it should be noted that just as Europe is dismantling the social democratic welfare state while we are trying to enhance ours, they are also ditching conscription and going to all volunteer forces. Thus like our current administration you seem determined to copy policies that the originators of said policies are now realizing they couldn't afford or that were not effective...
But the inefficient defense economy means that the all-volunteer force cannot be sustained under even limited conditions.
Very much arguable. Boils down to politics -- which in essence is what this thread is degenerating to.

As an aside, the entire US economy, not just the defense portion, is inefficient. The US government is inefficient. Inefficiency isn't all bad. Ineffectiveness OTOH is bad -- but it would be a big mistake to equate the Afghan-Iraq episodes admitted relative ineffectiveness (which had many parents, not all in uniform nor even all human) on the part of the Armed Forces with a generic case of all round ineffectiveness...
By all accounts, the CPA moved fairly quickly in organizing an Iraqi government.
After first disbanding the Iraqi Army and Police, putting a couple of hundred thousand armed men on the street, broke and unemployable. Absolutely flipping brilliant -- and totally political. Caught the US Army by surprise, too.
The question is why did the mission failed because that's the question I've been asking and answering.
As several have pointed out, it did not quickly achieve all objectives due to failures in execution. It's too early to say it failed, let's give it another 10 to 15 years, then we may be able to tell and my suspicion is that it'll be declared a flawed effort with an ultimately generally successful outcome. We'll have to wait and see. It had some strategic merit and it was not a waste but the execution was flawed and both the Army and the politicians erred and did so repeatedly.

You have not been answering your own question, you have been providing your perspective. Very different things.