SD, my view is that an Army’s culture comes from its leadership. If there ever was a nations army in modern history that had tools and resources ($244 billion this year alone) it’s the United States Army! If the Army’s deployment schedule is out of whack and demoralizes its troops whose fault is that? If the Army’s training is not relevant or tough enough to squeeze out the potential problems and prepare their troops for this fantasyland experience in Afghanistan whose fault is that? If the Army can’t provide the number of qualified psychiatric counselors to its troubled soldiers whose fault is that? If the Army can’t figure out how to treat its wounded (mental and physical) after nine years of war whose fault is that? If the Army determination to remain an AVF is such that it can’t recruit the type of individual it needs in its ranks whose fault is that?

In answer to your final question, Lee’s Army lost in the end because they were a historical anachronism skilled at ‘fighting’ but inept at ‘waging war’ particularly for a disreputable cause. They also had an antagonist in Lincoln whose ‘will’ and ‘vision’ exceeded their own.

I love your post...."leaders at every level have to care but they also have to create an enviornment where soldiers FEEL cared about. Caring leads to trust"....leadership, at its core, is a human to human interaction.....at the "tactical" level..... blaming Bush et al for the sucide problem/issues, although "strategically" corrrect, does nothing but make people feel better by venting.....

when PFC John Doe kills himself, blaming Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield etc does not help (even though there is truth here)....Doe's chain of command, family (if he has one), friends, battle buddies - these folks who have had human to human contact with him - need to ask themselves about warning signs, what ifs, what else could I have done, etc.....

this is about CARING - which leads to trust.....which in my mind is "leadership 101"...leadership at its most basic level.....

If Doe's ENTIRE chain of command had NO IDEA that he was "hurting" - is this a leadership failure?

I was simply saying that he occupied a leadership position. I didn't say he did a good job at it. It's the job of the people to keep the bar high for their elected leaders. Of late, though, we've been reduced to picking either the lesser of two evils or the greater of two dimwits. Keep in mind he didn't exactly run against heavyweights in his bids for office. Let's face it, in both elections our choice was either George W. Bush... or a guy who couldn't win an intelligent debate against George W. Bush.

Gore went to Vietnam. He was a successful vice president. He won the Nobel Peace Prize. And an Oscar.

Kerry went to Vietnam. He served in the Riverine Force. He was awarded a Silver Star. He's a serving US Senator.

George W. Bush weenied his war away in the National Guard, under clouded circumstances. His business career was at best spotty. His reaction to the worst terrorist attack ever on US soil - it happened on his watch, remember, after warning - was to continue reading My Little Pet Goat.

Tell me which one of these guys had the potential to be a good national-defense president.

Rubber Ducky, you are running thread among his comments here that bears emphasis! We can't place a monetary value on someone's live without making it of a finite and quantitative value. The AVF concept is designed to do that - to put a dollar value on a life and someone's other than mine to go into harms way so that I can engage in the pursuit of happiness without consequence. So when a AVF member realizes that he or she is the sucker or loser in this deal and what has been set as value for their none recoverable loses is but a small bit of crumbs from the winners. Despair and its consequence may be an appealing end game. Dick Cheney pretty much set the standard by stating that he had other uses for his life during a draft period. Think the Swift Boaters were doing the smears on-behalf avoiding hawks to demonstrate how among those who avoided risk deep contempt existed for the ones who did.

We have no real ethical way to repay the AVF members. It is not just but justice is a rare earth metal not held in the strategic reserves.

We owe our military better leadership and a better strategy than they've had. And our military owes us something more, something better than the AVF - that's a pretty thin reed to support the defense of this nation. A proposal: that we resolve to better bring our nation to the military. And the military to our nation. A draft in time of peril does that.

"We can't place a monetary value on someone's live without making it of a finite and quantitative value."

Absolutely right in that "we can't place a value" or rather, shouldn't, which is what a draft does. It is quite right & proper for individuals to make their own choices on what their own live is worth, which is what individuals do every day. Individuals choose to work in hazardous occupations such as working in the oilfields, mining, logging, farming, etc. They choose to buy or not buy safety features in their cars. They choose levels of life insurance. All are valuation choices, whether or not the individual is explicitly aware of it. On the other hand, a draft subsititutes the choice of the individual for the judgement of the state.

Every day there is a need for police officers, firefighters, construction workers, & fishermen (all occupations with actual or perceived high risk of death or injury). Yet somehow those positions get filled and people show up to work the next day without coercion. If there's a shortage in numbers or quality, no one calls for a draft to "solve" those problems. Yet somehow that's the solution for the military?

...lies in the constraint it puts on political actions by the national leadership.

As I've said elsewhere, if you give an imperial president an army he can use without political cost, well by golly he will use it. We did that with Bush and by golly, he did ... badly in Afghanistan and foolishly in Iraq.

War is serious business. Though quick response in time of crisis is an essential, the decision that follows - whether to commit to full-scale war or not - needs involve the people and not just some megalomaniacal Commander in Chief. The draft (and the political considerations that attend it) ensures the peoples participation in that decision. Had we had that, no Iraq war and no free pass to screw up the Afghanistan in the thoroughgoing way Bush did.

As to volunteers, it is historical fact that the recruiting offices were swamped on 8 December 1941. But we still needed a draft. The point of Peters' article is that the Army has not had sufficient people to properly prosecute two wars. My point is that a draft guarantees support of the war (and withdraws that support if the leadership can't lead or the war is unwinnable; vide Vietnam).

There may be other systems that could work. This one does. It's called The American Democracy. We the People fight our wars, not a standing army, not some band of mercenaries.

Your views on the draft, or perhaps conscription by a better term are well known, and I admit logical. However, I should point-out the pitfall involved in our past draft experience using the example of Project 100,000, better known as McNamara’s 100,00 (the Moron Corps).

You are aware that the program was part of LBJ’s Great Society to give training and opportunity to the uneducated and under privileged by recruiting upward toward over 350,000 which in reality was simply a way of providing the necessary cannon fodder to help the privileged obtain student deferments, and not calling up the reserves or guard, which were in themselves sanctuaries, i.e. for one noted individual you cited earlier.

This is what bothers me about bringing back a draft and my sense that it will never serve as a deterrent to politicians venturing into potential military quagmires in countries we know little about, nor would it ever be fair and equitably administered by a federal government guided by special interests.

My concern (not outright objection) to the draft stated, my observation during the later stages of, and during post Viet-Nam, is similar to what I’m hearing about today, and I am curious if this is really a new phenomena or if this issue has been with us before and is at the forefront as a result of better tracking, documentation, and information sharing, and the senior leadership simply can't ignore it as they once did?

Man, you've really got to read Gabriel and Savage, noted above: Crisis in Command. Blaming draftees for the Army's woes in Vietnam is like blaming the passengers for a train wreck.

I went through boot camp with Navy draftees. The difference between them and volunteer boots: the draftees were a talented and mature crew, the owner of a family bakery, the Detroit lawyer, the school teacher. The draft in WW-II brought in many college graduates, many experts from all walks of life, and they served with honor and valor. The officer corps brought in by the war and the prospect of a draft leavened a military grown stale and stodgy in garrison. And the comment about an earlier program to bring in conscripts not meeting normal standards is not one scrap different from the relaxed recruiting and retention standards that Peters chronicles.

Again: how could an Army of regulars and draftees perform worse than the AVF is now?

Naw, you didn’t find me playing any blame game, having lived and breathed Viet-Nam far more than most, and paying for it now. I don’t need a primer, nor any jonny-come-latelys or revisionist spin on where to place the blame in crises in command during that conflict.

Though I agree that in theory, a conscripted force would or should motivate Congress to better exercise its war powers, Korea and Viet Nam show me otherwise, and I’m skeptical anything would change in the future about sallying forth militarily, driven by special interest and ignorance.

However, what I think you may have not thought about is: making the Army and Corps an even smaller force, but far more professional and competent, while the reserves and guard would be larger and aimed at mobilization. Unfortunately, it's sure bet that this wouldn’t be politically acceptable to either Congress or the senior uniformed leadership, but that's my prescription.

Bluntly, success by spreading the joy of serving around, would only see the upper class using political connections, bogus medical deferments, spending money on legal representation, or whatever else to avoid service if they don't want to serve.

Where as now, we do have people that want to serve, and besides, I get the impression there is far less social pressure to conform today than in the 1950s, and wonder how many would report for induction?

And how do you square a no-draft stance with the deep abhorrence the Founding Fathers had for a standing army? How do you square it with their well-founded reasons? How reconcile with the black-letter phrase in the Constitution: "raise an army." Not maintain. "Raise."

National defense outsourced to an AVF augmented with contractors is a pretty solid definition of a mercenary force substituted for the traditional US military. Were the AVF restricted to purely defensive roles and called into action only on threat and as augmented, it might pass muster - barely. But standing as a permanent and full-scale offensive force used globally - Iraq - makes it the kind of imperial army the Founding Fathers feared. Plus it really sucks at the kind of conflict we've undertaken.

BTW, the distinction between the guard and reserve as it has been abused these past years and a conscript force is largely academic. With repeated calls to active service and stop-loss orders, these folks were dragooned in service as surely as they would be in response to a draft notice.

Success can cover a lot of sins. But the AVF has been an utter failure.

How do I square the deep abhorrence of the Founding Fathers had for a standing army? I recognize Jefferson, as an example, was always concerned with a concentration of governmental power in a centralized government, one that might, among other things, establish a professional army superseding state and country militias.

I didn't research it, but I believe the constitution was written so that it would pay for conscription for only two years when necessary. Events today move much quicker and folks like Jefferson might see the need for an amendment, in light of that.

I wonder what he would think of a draft, and the infringement that would be to the rights of citizens by mandatory conscription in creating a contual standing army, rather than voluntary service, if he were to view the world and America's place in it today?

As you say, academic isn't it?

One thing I’m sure of: There will be no draft—at least not until the US becomes a more authoritarian country. There is absolutely NO current or foreseeable consensus to support such a move. The Civil War and World War I drafts were in response to lack of enthusiasm for enlistment and a waning of public support for the war. The USG has embarked on unpopular wars under both conscription AND the AVF. The 1940-1973 draft was self-evidently no political barrier to US entry into the Vietnam War, as Tyrtaios points out. And, in any event, how could you really crank up the cumbersome draft machinery to meet our conceivable military needs unless you plan on perpetual conscription.

Our founding fathers WERE concerned about standing armies, and quickly did away with the Continental Army after the Revolution—BUT ONLY FOR EIGHT YEARS. After a few notable military disasters in the Ohio Valley at the hands of the Indians, a new standing army was established in 1791. So, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison ALL had standing armies under their presidencies. And, of course, West Point was established on President Jefferson's watch. What was nice in theory didn’t work—even for the theoreticians—in practice.

The mechanism that will restrain our political leadership from embarking on future foolish wars is COST. The economic foundation of our military power is cracking; the dollar as world reserve currency is slowly losing its dominance. The corporate class that owns this country is waking up after a decade of allowing the neocons to lead them down the garden path and looking in horror at what has been wrought. It seemed at first like such a good deal—the bogey man of militant Islam to keep the masses occupied, but with the bills coming due in the context of our financial disasters, the morning after doesn’t look so good to our CEOs. Gradually, they are edging away from the current complex of wars. This awakening will naturally entail the screwing over of veterans and retirees in the process, but the upshot will be a less bellicose American state. I wouldn't spend much time hoping for or worrying about a draft.

Xenophon: "The 1940-1973 draft was self-evidently no political barrier to US entry into the Vietnam." No. But it got us out. And it would have kept us from our current debacle in Iraq.

Tyrtaios: "(a draft:) the infringement that would be to the rights of citizens by mandatory conscription." The legality of a draft has been tested as high as the Supreme Court; no ruling has found it an 'infringement of rights.' Every court has found it legal.

It always bothers me when individuals so knowledgeable of military matters are so ignorant of the basic affairs of democracy. That may be the best reason for leaving military decision to the common people, which a draft does.

BT/AR

The draft was no barrier to getting the U.S. into Viet-Nam as you acknowledge, but abolishing it really played little part in getting us out. LBJ’s peace plan proposal offered to Hanoi was the same as Nixon’s, who had Kissinger sabotage it. It was political maneuvering on Nixon's part in the end that saw us exit conventionally from Viet-Nam, just as it will be in Afghanistan.

We seem to repeat the past. Why would going forward with a draft play-out any differently in the future, were such a far fetched thing to occur, theory aside Rubber Ducky,. I too am always amused when individuals so otherwise worldly show naivety.

I think Xenophon is correct, what will control our military adventures abroad may very well be the costs for such, that even the hard right neocon will see can no longer be borne, or at the least will be weighed much more carefully by our Congress.

Either way it is a fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi (precipice in front, wolves behind).

"But we still needed a draft."

We needed a draft because so many guys showed up to enlist early on there was no place to put them, no uniforms for them to wear and no food for them to eat.

The draft got men into the military at a pace in which the military could assimilate them. In that sense, yes we needed a draft.

I won't open another box to say that Bush was not just a bad president. He violated many U.S. and foreign laws.

No way should he be kicking back in Texas.

Walt

"...having lived and breathed Viet-Nam far more than most...."

Than most of the Vietnamese people? Since you went back for seconds, you must have enjoyed the feast. Finger lickin good!

"To keep our honor clean"

RR, at least you're not bitter about it ;)

Something I'm learning in a very different context is that the caregiver (a caring person that is taking concrete actions to help and be available) needs support, self-care and community, or we become part of the problem, casualties ourselves. It's a lesson life keeps presenting over and over until we start to get it. The first time a friend responded to my woes with 'so what are you doing about it' was an eye opening moment, that oh yeah, it is up to me to track and take action. Unfortunately, I'm a slow learner.

Thx for your service. And empathy/compassion that it's still a moment/day/week/month at a time back here. Nil illigitimi carborundum, time wounds all heals. Breathe, seek dog pets and human hugs when and where we can find them.

Yea, it's me again Rubber Ducky. You are correct, criticism of the Army should have brought a TOT (time-on-target) response from the readership, and this is certainly a worthwhile debate.

Though my past uniformed service was in the Corps, it isn’t lost on me that the AVF is still set-up on a conscripted model, though I would point out that any comparison of the Army (and Corps) of, say 1967or 68, and that of 2003, which originally went into Iraq and onto Baghdad, is no contest - the AVF was better.

It was never my intention to disagree that the AVF was ill-suited for the mission it found itself in after Saddam's statue fell, and it continues to finds itself in now - conflicts designed around changing goals, and operational tactics vice any national strategy, which is as much to blame on military leadership, is it is our national security team (past and present).

However, as a fix I don't see national service even remotely over the horizon, and I am convinced the AVF was "adequate" in 2003, but it isn't now, and hasn't been for too long, and having experienced post Viet-Nam in uniform, as a Viet-Nam veteran, I think things will get worse before they gets better.

In closing, and I'll guess you would disagree, I think the AVF has potential, but we will never realize it as long as our nation utilizes the AVF for specious missions for which it is obviously ill suited - and that is also a debate that should occur at the national level.

The problem with the AVF is that, without serious augmentation (and for that the only source is a draft), it can't ramp up without simultaneously tearing down the Services' abilities in other vital mission areas and without simply shattering the Guard and Reserve (want to see the Guard's gear? Get a ticket to the Middle East, where you will see it rotting in the Iraqi desert and the valleys of Afghanistan).

It's a quantity thing: the AVF is not scalable! And the kind of leadership the propers in a peacetime environment has proven clueless in these two wars, one our longest in history. And against what? We're not fighting the Wehrmacht, not going against the Imperial forces of Japan, not executing the SIOP or defending the Fulda Gap.

Some have noted an order-of-battle problem in dealing with the Iraq insurgency and the mess in Afghanistan. That's because there ain't no order-of-battle, just a shimmering collection of ragtag irregulars: these cats are too fragmented, small, ill-equiped, and disconnected to be worth one good OOB .ppt slide.

If you take our goals as originally stated, all thought to be well within the grasp of the AVF, we have failed as fully and absolutely as if we had signed a surrender document (though to whom is also unclear; just who has defeated us?). I wish I were revealing a subtle and easily missed tiny little detail hidden obscurely in the fog of war. But it's as plain as a casket: the AVF has failed. That's worth a national discussion.

Naw. "...that prospers in..." Geez I miss that correction feature....

Certainly a factor, but as much in a unit and institutional sense, as in terms of a specific family experience. The trend line includes an increase in attempts before/during a first deployment, guys who volunteered for infantry. So the epidemiologists are looking at a complex matrix; the deployments degrading recruitment, training, and morale, which are leadership issues. Trickle-down malaise?

Among the most overdeployed, those who remain in service, there is probably something of a 'survivor effect', guys who've already shed unhappy spouses by tour 2 or 3, and are pretty tough. Never can tell when that sort of 'right stuff' will wear thin, the knees wear out, years take a toll...

Rubber Ducky,

I am waiting for you to make the case that the draft army is as superior as you say it is. I haven’t heard you make more than the assertion that AVF doesn’t work and therefore a draft must be the solution. What, in your view is the difference between our defeat in Vietnam and stalemate in Korea with a draft army and our stalemates in Iraq and Afghanistan with a volunteer army.

Let’s stop the generalizations and get down to empirical cases. BTW, if you want to know the truth about what Joe thought about his officers in the WWII draft army, leaf through Sam Stouffer’s five-volume Studies in Social Psychology in World War II: The American Soldier published in 1949 by Princeton University Press. Stouffer went to Europe and did a half million interviews with soldiers. It’s very ugly reading; the soldier view of officers is VERY negative. The truth is that, in some sense, the Army has ALWAYS been broke. That is to say, the Army tries to take the mass of the US population, officer this huge, disparate group and turn it into some semblance of a cohesive, effective fighting force. Are you expecting this is going to be a work of perfection? Maybe on some other planet.

So what is this imaginary utopian world of a highly effective, caring, ass-kicking draft army that you have in mind? Because I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what you are talking about.

Let me ask you this question: Why did the draft army fail in Vietnam? Or how about this: Why did the draft Red Army fail in Afghanistan? Yeah, that’s right, we have instances of both draft and volunteer armies achieving sub-optimal results in Afghanistan. So what’s the common denominator here? Armies—draft or volunteer—are failing when they are tasked with IMPOSING a new social model on Afghanistan (or Vietnam, Algeria, etc) Stop obsessing about the AVF. The real issue is the idiocy of “counterinsurgency warfare”. People—Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Kurds, Pashtuns, Hazaras, Montagnards, Vietnamese, Iroquois, Shawnees, et al— HATE the yoke of the foreigner whatever “good” intentions that foreigner CLAIMS to have.

Unless you are willing to take a Roman approach—or the Russian approach in Chechnya or the American approach to the Indian tribes—that is, unless you are willing to wage a war of genocide or quasi-genocide, then don’t attempt to fight a “counterinsurgency”. There is once exception to that rule; if you can find a surrogate—one that is the majority or dominant group in the area—then you can win by supporting them. For example, the British won in Malaya by supporting the Malay majority against the hated Chinese minority who formed the core of the Communist insurgency. (That doesn’t work with a minority like the stone-age Montagnards against their hated Vietnamese enemy.)

Draft and volunteer armies both have advantages in certain circumstances. The main advantage of the draft army is to mass huge numbers in attrition warfare. With well under 10K dead after 9 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are not in that mode. So I would say that the AVF is probably the best option going forward. More importantly, it’s the only politically viable option, so let’s not waste our time discussing a draft army that simply WON’T happen.

The real issue here is strategy: When and how to commit US forces—draft or volunteer—so that we can bring our strengths to bear and minimize exposure of our weaknesses. When we supplied the Afghans in their struggle to throw off the yoke of the Soviets, we were fighting the RIGHT war. When we took the role of the Soviets and tried to impose “democracy”, we put ourselves in the same position as the Soviets with similar results. Neither a draft army nor an AVF is a panacea for our strategic incompetence. It remains to be seen whether we can retrieve our position and the extent to which China will be able to benefit strategically from our mistakes.

The AVF was committed by an imperialist twit.

Korea turned out ... OK. South Korea, which we rescued, is a vibrant nation with a thriving population. Vietnam turned out ... sorta OK, after we ended the silliness in '73 and left, after the communist ideology had runs its course and capitalism made its mark.

Wish I could see anything good ahead for either Iraq (where we should never have gone and wouldn't have were there a draft) or Afghanistan (where we could and should have prevailed but now will leave with nothing to show for the effort).

But the argument doesn't hinge on military outcome - it has to do with the other end of the timeline, the start (or non-start) of war. I want a draft to bind the people to war and the decision for it, not for greater military efficacy (though that case can be made: WW-II). War is politics, and the opportunity to bring war without political burden is anathema to our democracy.

Many seem to think that military considerations are paramount (though if they truly were, we'd not be in the fix we are in our two wars). I argue that politics are paramount and that a draft brings those politics to the local level, to dinner tables across America and not just those at Ft Benning or Pendleton or Camp Drum. It's unfortunate that many who write here about military affairs never had a course in civics. It's unfortunate that many think military efficiency matters more than democratic ideals.

When have draft armies EVER emerged from the wellspring of "the people" The draft is ALWAYS imposed by the government. The people may CONCUR with a draft, but it is NOT a product of popular sentiment. In WW I, when the draft was imposed when voluntary enlistments were insufficient. In large swathes of the country--especially the upper midwest--there was NO enthusiasm for the war or the draft. Did the draft in the USSR come "from the people"?

And who are the people anyway? The majority of Americans supported the war effort in Vietnam up to 1968--but NOT the college students. So when we withdrew, was the will of the people fulfilled or thwarted?

RD,

You're the one who needs a civics lesson. If you don't find the notion that our broken economy will restrain our political leadership from embarking on aggressive wars in the future sufficiently appealing, then instead of wasting your time with endless blog posts about the draft that won't happen, get out and organize a third party with a non-intervention, anti-neocom platform.

Xenophon, you're right on target. The the overwhelming majority of the population never served in any war under a draft or AVF. Only 12% served at some time during WW II. 92% of the population was not in uniform at the end of WW II.

I would add that the indifference of the undrafted extended after 1968 to those with high lottery numbers.

Also, not much remembered now is that until the 1972 elections those under 21 were disenfranchised by law in 46 states yet still subject to the draft. Brings to mind that old saw about democracy being two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. Except the sheep doesn't get a vote.