End the All-Volunteer Force

[AmericanPride]

In fact, I think the weight of evidence presented by posters other than yourself in this thread is against the position you hold. (I do give you full marks for tenacity though.)

Let's look at this "weight of evidence".

Ken's position focused on the unethical nature of conscription and the craven nature of politicians (mostly Congress).

[Tom Ricks'] proposed solution that political and ethical failure is to punish as many people -- himself not included -- as possible by reintroducing conscription.

People have choices, if they make poor choices, that becomes their problem and the 'fix' needs to address the target, the politicians and their lack of ethics, not the bystanders.

The American solution to any problem is to throw many at it to avoid making the hard choices to actually fix the things. Congress throws money not at training but at 'things' that are made by people, preferably in multiple districts.

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.

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

I'm not at all sure it 's clear but what is emphatically clear is that Congress not only has abrogated its responsibility with respect to the Armed Forces and wars but to virtually all its fiscal responsibilities as well.

All his suggestion will do is allow the inept Politicians to give inept Commanders more troops to waste on stupid endeavors. We need to fix the Pols and fix the Command competence problesm

I think that sums up rather clearly Ken's objections to conscription. While he made numerous claims that conscription won't fix this or that, he really did not provide any historical or factual evidence to augment his argument nor did he point out how craven politicians and the weak-willed public are at all contradictory to the benefits of mass conscription. In some discussion, he does point out that all-volunteer forces have capable track records, but that does not necessarily demonstrate an inherent effectiveness over conscript forces.

Like some of the other posters, which I will also quote, Ken also attacks the personal motivations of the writer rather to undermine the credibility of the argument.

Confirming my long held opinion of [Tom Ricks'] twittishness (and military ignorance) he states...

Lastly, a large number of Ken's comments are anecdotal:

Having lived and served a good many years when the Draft was operating -- as opposed to Ricks and others -- My observation was that did not occur. Given general US and world societal changes since that time, I would anticipate that to be a very flawed argument.

Speaking as one who was there way back when and has a Son serving today as well as two others who did serve earlier, it did and has produced a "better quality" service member.

While I can recall pre-draft, draft and post draft eras, the disconnection factor has existed more often than not. On balance, I do not find that worrisome.

Can't speak for the Civil war but for the last draft, those that were drafted mostly did their jobs to the best of their ability.

These personal observations may be true insofar that they were perceived at one point by Ken, but that does not make it representative of the whole.

OK, on to Steve.

Steve's position is that conscription would not break or diminish military elitist culture.

Conscription in this country never broke the back of the elitist soldier culture...and it had ample opportunity to do so between 1945 and 1972. I think if anything it had a hand in reinforcing the "useless civilian" idea within certain sectors of the military.

He also objected to my use of Civil War conscripts as an example of the positive effects of conscription. His position was not that there were not positive effects, but that there any positive effects were insignificant:

Take the Civil War out of your ponderings, please. The backbone of the Union Army was state-raised volunteer units, not conscripts.

You continue to avoid the fact that the BACKBONE of the Union Army was state volunteer regiments. I understand that the 8.5% figure fits in with your pro-conscription position, but it still doesn't square with the military facts of that conflict. To reverse the statistics, 91.5% of the Union Army was NOT conscripted.

Whether or not Civil War conscripts statistics are significant is a conversation separate from whether or not conscription has positive effects.

Also, he attacks the author as well:

Ricks is a moron. Pretty simple.

Yes, very weighty evidence...

Let's move on to Fuchs:

Fuchs argues that conscription is worse for the general welfare of a soldier than a volunteer force.

Now if you want a volunteer, you pay him the appropriate price for his motivation. That's fair, that's voluntary. No power advantage is used to coerce (except stop-loss etc).

If you hire a conscript, you don't need to pay him the appropriate price. instead, you can use a mix of inappropriately low price and power advantage, for coercion. This is the part about the loss of freedom through conscription.

I have not disputed his argument.

Before I move on to Entropy's comments, who has along with you, provided the most substantial counter-arguments about the positive outcome of conscription, I will quote a few other ad hominem fallacies:

I find Ricks to be an elitist snob who has used members of the military to push his agenda.

On the other hand, Ricks, who has never served in the military, decides that the right thing for the military is to reinstate the draft, long after he is past the age to serve. So he is quick to decide that young people should be coerced into going into harm's way in a fashion that he was never subjected to. How convenient for Ricks. I'm sure this will help his journalist career.

I think your man, Ricks, is trying to meet his quota of words published...

Ok, so now on to Entropy's comments.

His first objections are to the fairness of conscription:

Unless he's going to greatly expand end strength it will still be 1% bearing the burden and like today, most people won't know anyone who serves.

How, given our political system, will that small portion of the population be chosen fairly considering there's over 4 million men and women who reach military age every single year?

Universal conscription is not really practical since about 4 million young adults reach 18 each year. So the question becomes a political one of who gets drafted and who doesn't.

So, I think a return to the draft would enlarge divisions within America, not diminish them, and I think that is what would be damaging to America.

These are not necessarily counter-arguments since he is only pointing out that conscription has consequences of its own (which I do not dispute). He does not point out these consequences exceed the benefits gained, or or how these consequences are worst than the problems we are facing now. But he does go deeper eventually:

Our current President ran on a platform of escalation in Afghanistan and ending the war in Iraq. He got elected and fulfilled both promises. Explain to me how that is unaccountable? Additionally, both these wars were specifically authorized by acts of Congress and Congress continues to support the remaining war, Afghanistan. Seems to me the accountability is pretty clear here. Ricks' seems to think that conscription would somehow generate more opposition to the war which would force policymakers to change policy. That might be true, but it hasn't historically been the case, as Ken's pointed out.

The source for his evidence is Ken's post, which as I noted above, is usually anecdotal and has an obvious bias against the mental and ethical capacities of political decision-makers.

Entropy does make an alternative suggestion for the problem(s) identified in Ricks' article:

If the problem is to prevent the US from engaging in large, long wars of choice, then the answer, it seems to me, is not conscription, but an overall reduction in the active duty end-strength for both the Army and Air Force.

Later on, Entropy does object to my evidence of the positive outcomes of conscription (especially in the 1940 - 1973 era):

You've established nothing. You repeatedly asserted a connection and then refused to substantiate it. When specifically challenged, you demurred and said you were only pointing out "that these things were better during the most recent draft period than after it with the all-volunteer force." Which is to say that you admited there is nothing to support the connection you say you established!

I then pointed him to my multiple posts where I laid out my arguments for the positive benefits of conscription. Most of his comments were focused on objections to my arguments on the basis of my conclusions or a perceived lack of evidence. He did not, however, provide much in the of counter-evidence.

Then we come to our dialogue, which I don't need to quote for you. So I disagree with you that the other posters provided a substantial "weight of evidence" against my position.