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WASHINGTON (AP) - Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush's new war adviser said Friday.

``I think it makes sense to certainly consider it,'' Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's ``All Things Considered.''

``And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another,'' Lute added in his first interview since he was confirmed by the Senate in June.

President Nixon abolished the draft in 1973. Restoring it, Lute said, would be a ``major policy shift'' and Bush has made it clear that he doesn't think it's necessary.

The repeated deployments affect not only the troops but their families, who can influence whether a service member decides to stay in the military, Lute said.

``There's both a personal dimension of this, where this kind of stress plays out across dinner tables and in living room conversations within these families,'' he said. ``And ultimately, the health of the all-volunteer force is going to rest on those sorts of personal family decisions.''

The military conducted a draft during the Civil War and both world wars and between 1948 and 1973. The Selective Service System, re-established in 1980, maintains a registry of 18-year-old men.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has called for reinstating the draft as a way to end the Iraq war.

Bush picked Lute in mid-May as a deputy national security adviser with responsibility for ensuring efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are coordinated with policymakers in Washington. Lute, an active-duty general, was chosen after several retired generals turned down the job.

Well, that kills the idea he's sensible, I suspect.

If they even tried, there would be rioting in the streets. Hell, at that point I think we would finally see impeachment proceedings

Do note that even Bush said that this is very unlikely and a fairly bad idea. Makes you wonder though...

But yeah, I read it last night. And in truth, I'm not *TOTALLY* opposed to mandatory service, just not to win this particular war. I think that a mandatory 2 year enlistment like a lot of countries have would be a great benefit to a whole hell of a lot of people. It sure as hell changed me for the better, and a lot of other people too. But again, doing it just to win this war when we have sufficent people to do it with is not what I think should happen.

I tend to think that forced service of any type is morally wrong. But that is just me...

The morality doesn't even enter into it. You cannot, absolutely cannot, have an army the quality of the United States' one with a Draft. Two years isn't enough time to train them and get your moneys worth with the kind of military the US runs.

Oddly enough, the US Army and Navy both currently have 2 year enlistments. Granted none of the jobs that qualify for those jobs have long training schools and are basic low end jobs. However, they do have them.

Time in service isn't the factor for training that you believe it to be. The most important training any military person recieves is in the basic training boot camp. Any training after that is job specific. Hell you can go into services in the Air Force after 7 weeks of basic training, take a 2 week tech school on transportation and be a bus driver. So you have 9 weeks total of training and then you're a full qualified individual in the military. The two year enlistment basically works out that you're enlisting for 15 months, which starts after your military basic training and your tech school, which usually equals out to about 24 months.

However, the 'catch' is that when you do the military this way you're still under the 8 year mandatory service contract, but all this really does is toss you on inactive reserve after your 15 months. You don't go to base, you don't do anything, you're a civilian again for all intents and purposes. It just gives a pre-trained body that the military can call for if the absolute need arises.

However, back to my original point, the military offers individuals a remarkable way to change for the better, especially given the individuals that seem to be coming out of our public schools today. It'll give them sorely needed discipline and the right mental attitude to succeed in the real world. Lets face it, your average high school graduate isn't really prepared to deal with jobs that are going to make the money like we all want.

Here's a fascinating concept: Fix the goddamn school system instead of reinstating an expensive draft that would screw over the current military.

Honestly, this is silly. Let's not get into the fact there are lots of people who are not the sort we should be teaching how to shoot straight and accurately.

Okay, you have a point, I admit. Several. I agree that the schools need to be fixed, and trying to teach your average member of the Bloods or Crips to shoot automatic weapons and intelligently deal in close quarters urban warfare isn't a good idea either.

However, that does not negate the fact that the military does teach people, even your average grunt, skills, ideals and traits that make them a better person and it is something that has done a lot of good for a whole lot of people. And it still doesn't negate the fact that it is something that nearly everyone can benefit from somehow.

I'll just throw out the fact that every military that has a draft besides the Finns and the Dutch (when they had a draft) is a clown college. Just look at the Vietnam era US Military as an example. You'd be seriously diluting the quality of recruits and the general pool of soldiers with this. In exchange you'd get some nebulous return of a "straighten'd out youth", foist them on the Peace Corp for a year instead. The military is no place for the average Western youth let alone the substandard one, which is what you'd be getting.

Vietnam was a clusterfuck to begin with. The draft was used to quickly end a war that most people didn't agree with, with results that were more or less failures.

I stated that I didn't think it would be appropriate for that to happen again just to end this war. It would be the same situation all over again.

If you can suggest a better, realistic(operative word here, mind you) method in which to accomplish this, I'm all for it. Because parents are not likely to change for the better or start giving more of a damn then they did before to alter this situation. Schools aren't going to change either. Schools are only going to get worse, lets face it. Budgeting and undermanning while pushing for more standardized testing, not to mention that bullshit 'No Child Left Behind' schtick that El Fucktard Presidente hit the schools with have reduced our schools to shit.

So give me a realistic achievable way to achieve these results. I'll be more then happy to entertain it because I know the kids that I grew up with, and I've met the friends of my brother when he was around. It's not pretty by any means. We are no longer able to prepare our youth for this world through parenting and school alone.

Copy Canada's education system. Place more emphasis on skilled trades at the high school level with apprenticship preperation programs and institute community service requirements at every level of high school starting at grade 8. Make them work at homeless shelters, soup kitchens, abuse counselling centers, you name it. Start the apprenticeship programs at grade 8 like they do in the Netherlands, you can fulfill your community service requirements by working at a trades company as part of your trades program. They can pay them a fair wage for their age.

All these programs are in place in other countries starting at various ages. In Canada our youth don't appear to be running wild. Effective parenting is still the key. I have seen spectacular failures with teens but I have also seen alot of success. The vast majority of teens are fine save for the usual boneheaded stuff that all teens pull.

Again, changing our education system is going to be a monumental undertaking. One that I'm not sure will ever happen. Don't get me wrong, it needs to. And several of the things you point out that Canada and other countries do are good ideas. However, lets face it, the US is not the most forward thinking in our education.

So this simply isn't a realistic method.

And creating the necessary infrastructure to support a much larger, draft-based military isn't going to be a ridiculously huge undertaking? You're not thinking straight.

It seems(and usually is, given this country's history)easier to get a bigger budget to preform something in the military, then to get a bigger budget for educaiton.

We could maintain most of our current army as an all-volunteer premier Guard Corps, as one example of how to make it work. That would require a massive numerical expansion in the army, however, probably at least increasing its size by 2.5 times.

B4UTRUST wrote:It seems(and usually is, given this country's history)easier to get a bigger budget to preform something in the military, then to get a bigger budget for educaiton.

Oh yes. Easy to get the money for... Big new shiny weapon systems that run over the limit and in some cases, turn out to be against the laws of physics. That's because of something Truman warned against but everyone dismissed. But I'm not exactly seeing the easy-breeze for the GI Bill update that's been promised a veto, for example, and this is even less sexy to a politician. In fact, it's a cyanide capsule.

However, it still stands that it would be easier to convince the increase in military budgeting and get it put through then one for education. Trying to get it budgeted for something that would do any good would be a stretch, but more feasible then getting education...

B4UTRUST wrote:However, it still stands that it would be easier to convince the increase in military budgeting and get it put through then one for education. Trying to get it budgeted for something that would do any good would be a stretch, but more feasible then getting education...

Uh-huh. Re-instating the Draft is going to be popular enough to get through. You're not thinking, just reflexively defending the idea because you think everyone should go through what made you better.

I'm not saying it won't be a difficult change to impliment or to enact. And yes, I am defending the idea that it can, and does, make most people better for the experiance.

B4UTRUST wrote:I'm not saying it won't be a difficult change to impliment or to enact. And yes, I am defending the idea that it can, and does, make most people better for the experiance.

No, you're actually not. Because no one's claiming otherwise, so you'd be defending it against absolutely nothing. You're trying to defend the idea that we should institute a draft, wrecking the armed forces as they stand now, massively increasing expenditures, and that's all presuming you get it enacted. You just think you're defending that, because you are attached to the idea that if it was mandatory, it'd be just as life-improving.

It also makes a large percantage of veterans lives worse. According to a study of the Canadian Forces done by the Ministry of Veterans Affairs in 2002, 7% of CF members suffered from PTSD and 17% suffered from a related mental disability such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse problems or suicidal tendancies. This study was done of course before the large numbers of Afghan Vets started coming home and doesn't reflect our experiance in that enviroment. But from what I've experianced in my volunteering with VA and my Vets Group, things have only gotten worse. Now this is all part and parcel of what you agree to when you volunteer but to inflict this on the greater number of people implied by a draft is simply not on. Even if you don't have a war on your still going to expose people to things via peacekeeping and training accidents like the CF did, which is what the bulk of our numbers reflect. This is going to result in a large number of mentally maladjusted people who the government will be responsible for caring for, providing they don't shaft them like they continue to as born out by Iraq.

B4UTRUST wrote:Okay, you have a point, I admit. Several. I agree that the schools need to be fixed, and trying to teach your average member of the Bloods or Crips to shoot automatic weapons and intelligently deal in close quarters urban warfare isn't a good idea either.

However, that does not negate the fact that the military does teach people, even your average grunt, skills, ideals and traits that make them a better person and it is something that has done a lot of good for a whole lot of people. And it still doesn't negate the fact that it is something that nearly everyone can benefit from somehow.

What about the kids who are ill-suited for military life? What about the kids who ARE decent productive human beings? There is no need to fix those individuals. All you would end up doing is fucking them over.

Indeed, forcing someone into military service against their will is just a good way to screw them up more. A person who joins the military willingly, by definition wants to be there, and their mind is a nice willing template upon which to build the ideals and skills you want to instill. But for someone who is forced into it, you will get resistence and poor morale. Not something you want in a military that functions, and not something you want to do to the general populace.

I'm not saying it won't be a difficult change to impliment or to enact. And yes, I am defending the idea that it can, and does, make most people better for the experiance.

You went in willingly, probably with the expectation that it would better your life, and you worked with that expectation. You willingly submitted to boot camp reshaping your personal identity to one that suited them.

A conscript does not have the benefit of any of these things. All you will be doing is fucking them up for life. The sort of thing required to get past the resistance you will experience with conscripts is the sort of brainwashing seen by POWs in the Korean war. And that had a <50% success rate (In getting our POWS to collaborate in some way) and the rest had to be in therapy for the rest of their lives.

B4 you've been sucking up to many officer fumes. A draft is a horrible idea, especially a 2 year one. As for those 2 year enlistments you're sooo excited about? Bad jokes each and every one of them, seriously most of the people I've seen on 2 years are wastes of space and most of the NCOs I've talked to about it consider it a damn stupid mistake. We call them spastastic, lost in the sauce and never quiet ready and you want to saddle us with more of them?

Also you seem to be confused about the purpose of the military. I understand that, it's an inevitable result of being an airmen constantly day in and day out exposed to the idoitcy that is the air force pilot. The purpose of the military is to fight and win wars, not provide a daycare service. The draft is not a solution to our education woes, nor is it going to magically make the population of shitheads any better. I remind you that hippies appeared during the middle of a high draft age. I remind you that the current shitheads of Rumsfield, Kerry, Murtha and so on are all military vets.

Instead what's it going to do is wreck the military completely. I do not want some damned conscript idiot on my flank or God help me behind me in a firefight with hostiles. That's a situation tailor made for all sorts of tradegey there. Even with volunteers we still get cowards, bullies and criminals that slide through the weeding out process, and we see the results of that splashed all over the news now don't we?

The kind of professionalism and tactical ability you see in the current United States military (which I remind you despite everyone's screaming is still the dominant military force in the world) would be impossible with 2 year draftees making up the vast majority of the force. We would have to fall back to simple meat grinder tactics which may not bother your air force ass but the rest of us would rather not thanks terribly. Hell there are plenty among the powers that be that want enlistments expanded to 6 years and you're talking about cutting them? Do me a favor do not attempt to saddle us long suffering ground pounders with your flashes of brilliance, we aren't able to afford the butcher's bill.

Maybe the Air Force wouldn't suffer from 2 year draftees who don't want to be there and have to be treated like near criminals to keep from deserting or worse but the rest of us would and we don't want it.

Even with volunteers we still get cowards, bullies and criminals that slide through the weeding out process, and we see the results of that splashed all over the news now don't we?

Lets be fair. Given the right conditions, anyone can become a war criminal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

Actually, Comrade, I'm a 4th gen brat. All of them enlisted, no officers. I'm the fucking Lt. Dan of real life, except that my family hasn't died yet... Yes, I have had some family member in every single war in the last century or so.

Yes, I knew what I was getting into. Yes, I knew what this would mean. More importantly, I knew the amount of shit and crap and stupidity that I would have to deal with. I knew the utter hell that my life would become. I had no expectations of a better life because of it. I used the military to get myself out of a hellhole town that I had no other way out of. So I didn't exactly join for mom and apple pie. But in the end it did help me. So *shrugs*