[lbo-talk] The Return of the Draft

[Doug Henwood]

All these draft-is-coming-back arguments ignore at least two 
important points: 1) the conscript army of the Vietnam era was a 
disaster as a fighting force (see the piece quoted below), and 2) the 
risk of political backlash would be enormous, the best recruiting 
assistance the antiwar movement could ever ask for.

Doug

<http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/Vietnam/heinl.html>

THE COLLAPSE OF THE ARMED FORCES

By Col. Robert D. Heinl, Jr.
North American Newspaper Alliance
Armed Forces Journal, 7 June, 1971

[...]

THE MORALE, DISCIPLINE and battleworthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces 
are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at anytime 
in this century and possibly in the history of the United States.

By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam 
is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or 
having _refused_ combat, murdering their officers and non 
commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near 
mutinous.

Elsewhere than Vietnam, the situation is nearly as serious.