> But the downside risk of a draft is greater.
> A major reason why the US is bogged down in
> Iraq is because its regular army and reserves
> are stretched too thin. A lot of antwar
> pressure on Congress is coming from military
> families who are objecting to extended and
> repeated tours for their loved ones in a war
> which is perceived as unwinnable because there
> are not enough forces on the ground.
I don't know, Marv. It seems to me that, precisely, the measure of the *opposite* risk (conscript armies making imperialist wars too uphill in modern U.S. society) was given by the decision of the government to set up all-"volunteer"/mercenary armed forces. That's the premium -- so to speak -- the rulers decided to pay to insure against *that* risk.
And that was back then, when Vietnam happened. Now *that* risk must be greater, no? After all, people started to demonstrate against the invasion of Iraq way before it was launched. Not to mention now, after Iraq has proven to be a fiasco in the eyes of a majority of the U.S. people.
> The US political establishment also no
> longer feels it is able to credibly
> intervene, if it needs to, on multiple
> fronts such as North Korea or Latin
> America. Congress will address this
> deficiency by making a bipartisan
> attempt to increase the size of the
> military, but a draft, despite Rangel,
> is not in the cards.
Well, it seems to me that if Rangel says it's in the cards, it's in the cards. He's going to be the chair of powerful House committee. Of course, by definition, the initiatives of a politician start as trial balloons. My concern is how this would split the antiwar camp.
But, no kidding, it wouldn't be easier for Rangel or any other congress person (assuming she/he wanted to) to propose the abolition of everything military now. So, we're necessarily debating different "half-cocked" ideas, and not confronting a "full-cocked" idea versus an idiotic "half-cocked" idea, right?
Having a conscript army is not by default a reform of U.S. foreign policy. It just creates interesting conditions for a radical one -- in consonance with the motto of the League of the Just, a predecessor of Marx and Engels' Communist League: "No rights without responsibilities and no responsibilities without rights."
Or maybe you're right about what flies and what not, and all this could be is a nice agitational device to stress how unequally the costs of the war are distributed among the people.
I say, whatever works.