2008 Woodie Awards
We’ve received many very interesting comments, both in agreement and in disagreement, regarding the article I recently published in TAP Online about the military draft. All of it is appreciated; the dialogue is very constructive, and particularly helpful for me. Keep ‘em coming, on this and all topics.
Several of the draft’s progressive defenders have written to us making the argument that by calling for a draft draws attention to the President’s failures to manage the war on terrorism properly, and highlight how little the public actually supports him.
It’s a tempting way of putting it (and, admittedly, one I used to be persuaded by), but I don’t think it’s right. By calling for conscription, you ignore the strategic problem that’s caused the military crisis in the first place. Consider what wouldn’t change with conscription: we’d still be in Iraq (when we shouldn’t have been there in the first place and should be looking for an exit as quickly as possible), and we’d still not be effectively catching and killing terrorists (adding more regular conscripts, who lack the special-ops expertise necessary to fight stateless, transnational terrorist cells, won’t change this). In short, the draft won’t fix the big problems. And it’ll only cause more: it will lower overall troop quality, not to mention damage America’s social fabric.
The progressive political rationale is thus a red herring. It’s bad policy, and it would be pretty dishonest for Democrats to peddle it. It would backfire on, not help, the Democrats politically. The American people aren’t going to like a party that advocates sending their kids into harms way to fight a badly managed war that has unjustifiably and unnecessarily engaged costly fronts. It doesn’t make Democrats look “tough”; it makes them look stupid. They should instead be offering a new foreign policy vision (here’s an excellent start) that uses our military judiciously and honorably.
The problem here is the policy. It’s what has caused this recruitment crisis to begin with. We need a permanent fix to our strategic vision, not stop-gap measures that don’t remedy the diseases ravaging American grand strategy.
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I read your article. Pretty good, for a “progressive.” 
I don’t agree with chunks of it, but that doesn’t make it any less good.
I’ve always thought that the Democrats who call for reinstating the draft are muffing it politically. Everybody who has any contact at all with the military knows that as unpopular as the draft is among average Americans, it is even more unpopular among the military. Politicians who call for a reinstatement of the draft appear disingenuous, not constructive. You make the point well.
I’m not sure you’re correct on some of your factual underpinnings. Or if you are technically correct, you may be substantively wrong. It is my understanding that as of July the only service that is below recruitment targets is the Army. Interestingly, the Marines have essentially hit their targets all along, even though they have taken a tremendously disproportionate share of the casualties in Iraq. Even in the Army, I understand that they have recruited plenty of “trigger pullers,” but that they are coming up short recruiting people who are basically looking for vocational training (which, admittedly, was a reason many people joined the Army during peacetime). I note that the new Army ads on the radio take this into account, and emphasize whacking the enemy and intangible stuff like leadership skills, rather than vocational skills.
Finally, the “overtaxed military” argument, while true, is again limited to the Army. The Marines are getting the men the need, and the Navy and Air Force really aren’t taxed by either Iraq or Afghanistan.
None of this is to diminish your basic point, as much as to suggest that if you write more on the issue you might want to focus on the Army, rather than the Armed Services generally.
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