By the time the US got into WWI, the majority of the other combatants had bled themselves white through almost 4 years of conflict. It is little wonder that the US was able to inject success into the Allied side. But even that success came only after significant additional training of the AEF was provided after its arrival in France.
Similarly, in WWII, the US did not have much of a ground force presence until 1943, while again, the rest of the combatants had been slugging it out for some 3-4 years. The American conscripts had a good 2 years to get trained, both in CONUS and, in the European theater, in England beforing being committed. The early US operations in North Africa were a travesty. Guadalcanal was, likewise, not a real good example of effective use of a ground force by the US. The casualty counts in the island hopping campaigns says something negative about the effective use of of US troops as well, in my opinion--might all be a leadership issue, but not every leader wasa member of the "regular" force.
An unrelated criticism of American Pride's line of reasoning is that the appeal to the better state of affairs during the Baby Boom period is really committing the fallacy of denying the antecedent or affirming the consequent (amounts to the same thing). Prosperity was to be had in America after WWII and American had a draft at the same time. That is about all I haver seen supported by American Pride's claim. What is the casual connection between prosperity and conscription?
If I remember my history, the US had an economic boom in the 1880s and
90s without any conscription underway. That would seem to be a counter example to the alleged connection between conscription and prosperity.
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