Philip Carter and Owen West write that "[v]olunteers outnumbered conscripts by a 9-1 ratio in the units that saw combat during the [Vietnam] war's early days in 1966" ("Iraq 2004 Looks Like Vietnam 1966," Slate, December 27, 2004). Altogether during the Vietnam War, "1,728,344 men were drafted. Of the forces who actually served in Vietnam, 648,500 (25%) were draftees. Draftees (17,725) accounted for 30.4% of combat deaths in Vietnam" ("The Draft and Historical Amnesia," VFW Magazine, March, 2003). In short, conscripts were a minority during the Vietnam War.
In the Iraq War, "[in] recent months, at any given moment, the stop-loss policy has affected about 7,000 soldiers who had been planning to retire, leave the military or move to a different military job" (Monica Davey, "Eight Soldiers Plan to Sue Over Army's Stop-Loss Policy," New York Times, December 6, 2004), turning a significant minority of regular troops into conscripts in effect. Moreover, National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers, who cannot be expected to perform long and frequent overseas deployments without turning their civilian lives upside down, "now make up nearly 40 percent of the 148,000 troops in Iraq" (Eric Schmitt, "Guard Reports Serious Drop in Enlistment," New York Times, December 18, 2004).
Asked whether they think "the U.S. should keep military troops in Iraq until a stable government is established there" or "the U.S. should bring its troops home as soon as possible," 31% of junior enlisted personnel [ranks E-4 and below] said, "Bring Troops Home," and a whopping 47% of them believe that it is not the proper thing for the Pentagon to order "some people in the military to stay on active duty beyond the time their enlistment expired" (Adam Clymer/Annenberg Public Policy Center, "Service Members, Families Say Pentagon Sent Too Few Troops to Iraq, Stressed National Guard and Reserves, Should Allow Photos of Coffins at Dover, Annenberg Data Show," October 16, 2004, Table B, p. 7).
Cf. <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/01/losing-hearts-and-minds.html> -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>