End the All-Volunteer Force

[AmericanPride]

In order, look at the competence of any of the British Commonwealth all volunteer forces over the years to include in wars and assess their performance . In particular, assess their performance in the early stages of wars and then again later after they resorted to conscription.

Yes -- let's look at that one as well. The British military record is no more spectacular than any other European power, with or without conscription, and its history includes a mix of notable victories and defeats. This is unchanged whether we are talking about pre- or post- Napoleonic Era, or pre- or post- World Wars. I'm not concerned about small unit performance as I am with definitive and favorable terminations of conflict.

Also, trying to equate societal and political changes worldwide and the effects those have on events with the presence or absence of conscription is a little disingenuous.

There's a clear, documented relationship between the US draft 1940 - 1973 and American prosperity in that era. There's also a clear relationship between present US defense spending with the all-volunteer force and the political and economic consequences of military policy.

As for Congress -- is that current shortfall a result of a lack of conscription or of a political climate that discourages truly competent persons from running all too often; is their seeming loss of power actual or perceived and, if real (which I doubt -- abdication is abandonment, not loss...) are other factors at play in that?

It's a lack of political will fueled in part by public apathy, which in turn is a result of the gradual separation of Americans from the policy process and its consequences.

Johnson escalated Viet Nam farbeyond any common sense measure and neith the Voters or Congress made much fuss -- until the Draft started biting kids who had never been told what to do in their lives before they hit the magic age

That's the point of Ricks' argument.....

Compulsory service is a political dream to solve the problems of society (and to insure the connected can avoid it and, ideally, those problems...). Unfortunately, like most socialistic dreams, every time it's been tried, it has failed.

Socialism is the about the social ownership of the means production, which has nothing to do with conscription. Governments of all kinds, most of them not socialist, have used conscription at one point or another. Nice gimmick though.

'Fixing' the armed forces is not the answer to correcting a significant slide and failure in US societal norms.

It's not American society spending trillions of dollars and producing little in the way of favorable and definitive political outcomes for America's conflicts. Since 1973, it's been the all-volunteer force. The AVF has had mixed results in winning America's wars. So yes, it is the military, not American society which the military serves, that needs fixing.