|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),
so is today's all volunteer (and lots of mercenaries) military. tillman's unsurprising death by friendly fire surely is the tip of the iceberg. since so much of the military is being privatized, i'm lead to believe today's army of one is useful for cannon fodder and that's about it.
i strongly doubt Hienl's article is representative of all thinking about the vietnam era military. anyone know his background? his opinions contrast mightily with David Hackworth, members of special forces, et al. he does allude to a fact which apparently gets lost in this small quote: political wars are devastating to morale. the drugs and whores intended to placate troops destroyed their character. fragging was largely a reaction to incompetent, arrogant, stupid officers playing war while jeopardizing troops' lives in a pointless war. the problem wasn't the troops; it was the leadership, in vietnam and washington, dc. does Hienl say anything about this?
how many LBOers remember the move toward unionizing the military toward the end of the vietnam war? the result of drafting college and post grad students who decided it would be fun to turn the military inside out. they would have succeeded had the war not ended.
|and 2) the
|risk of political backlash would be enormous, the best recruiting
|assistance the antiwar movement could ever ask for.
i wouldn't be so quick to overestimate today's youth. this may provide a galvanizing force, a hoped for result of a draft. and it may not. as barnam said, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the american public. patriotic fanatasies die hard in this most nationalistic of countries.
in any event, there's no reason to assume our "law makers" ever use reason in their decisions. particularly the empire and religious fanatics of the shrub group. what would be conveyed to the american people, if they have the courage to face it, is one more example of how the powers that be have utterly no respect for them. one thing i believe we can count on is a draft is coming.
one of the interesting rumors about the possible draft is that plans include having Homeland Security, that great oxymoron, close the canadian border as much as possible so draft age men and women cannot get across unless they know wilderness survival, or are part of some kind of underground rail road yet to be developed.
i believe your perspective is too citified and too intellectual, doug.
R
|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. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk