In the February issue of Armed Forces Journal, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling makes a strong argument for reinstating the draft. To me, his strongest point is that the country is really not involved with deciding to go to war and with supporting the war if the war is fought by others; it is only when citizens realize that a particular war will personaally impact them that they really get involved. We saw the nation fully support WWII and, conversely, force us to pull out of Vietnam. In both those wars we all knew people who had been wounded or killed. In WWII, in particular, even kids knew that we were at war and many kids made sacrifices for the war effort. One has to wonder whether we would have entered Iraq if you knew your son would be drafted. Would we have pressed Congress more to do its duty and not defer to the Executive? Yingling believes that Congress has not done its job.
In the April issue of the same publication, Curtis Gilroy attempts to rebut Yingling's argument. I don't think he does an effective job. In fact, Yingling preempts many of Gilroy's reasons for backing the volunteer army.
I don't like ad-hominem arguments, but I note that Gilroy is a Pentagon employee in charge of recruiting. Yingling seems to be a rebel of a sort; he first became known to the general public with his article, "A Failure of Generalship", which was not exactly a paean of praise for our military leaders.
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