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[Helgoland]

That's too narrow a definition, take a look at this.

Personally I've always been fond of making corruption among civil servants and judges a form of treason. German civil servants (Beamte) are special though, so YMMV.

[Zrk2]

Not terribly relevant, but more relevant here than anywhere else. What do you guys think of this?

[penguinofhonor]

.

[Frumple]

Irrelevant, since as the critter noted amongst all that multi-page babbling, the collective political will to actually instate/go through with a draft is pretty much zero.

Chances of that changing is directionally proportional to us actually needing an army numbered in the multiple millions, which is to say more or less on par with that noted political will. Probably less.

... also you could really kinda' tell that critter was a 'nam vet, or somewhere in that general time frame. Lot of what I skimmed over definitely sounded like ex-military from several decades back. Also fairly irrelevant, but...

[Dutchling]

damn critters and their crittering

[Zrk2]

Irrelevant, since as the critter noted amongst all that multi-page babbling, the collective political will to actually instate/go through with a draft is pretty much zero.

Chances of that changing is directionally proportional to us actually needing an army numbered in the multiple millions, which is to say more or less on par with that noted political will. Probably less.

... also you could really kinda' tell that critter was a 'nam vet, or somewhere in that general time frame. Lot of what I skimmed over definitely sounded like ex-military from several decades back. Also fairly irrelevant, but...

From his Bio he's a West Point grad that when to Nam but was never in combat.

[SirQuiamus]

Not terribly relevant, but more relevant here than anywhere else. What do you guys think of this?

That thing is so poorly formatted I can't even...

Anyway, what particularly struck my eye was this:

our military being dominated by one religious group, currently, Christian fundamentalism

That sounds bad. Like, really bad.

[Angle]

Oh, the dominionists? Yeah, they're trouble.

[Lord Shonus]

I know a LOT of people that either enlisted or (like myself) attempted to enlist and were refused  for medical reasons. NOT ONE went because they were eager to fight or wanted an excuse to kill something. Many chose the military because they felt the country was in danger and decided that somebody had to shoulder the burden of facing that danger. Others went out of family tradition, or because it was an opportunity to gain skills and traineng that are expensive or difficult to acquire on the civilian market. Some decided that a soldier or a sailor had an opportunity to travel that no civilian could equal. Not to mention that the last thing an army (any army) wants to do is had rifles to bloodthirsty psychopaths - they're a liability in combat and lose wars.

The other major point that I got from what I could stomach of that idiotic article is that it has been proven time and again that a volunteer military is more capable and more reliable than a purely conscript force, which is why the active duty component of most modern militaries is made up of folks that freely chose to stay in - even in those nations that have conscription, most people do their two or four years and go home, with only those who choose to stay (no different from a volunteer military) making up the bulk of the service in peacetime. Even those forces which the author claims "prove" the superiority of the draft -the US forces in the ACW, WWI, WWII, and Korea- used the draft only to boost manpower - the core of the military was volunteers.

The only conflict in US history that was fought by a purely conscript force was the Vietnam War - the only war in US history that was an unquestionable defeat (the War of 1812 ended with the US gaining every single one of their stated ambitions, and is considered a defeat only because of the notion that it was all a ploy to get Canada) and that defeat was caused as much by the conduct of the draftees (drug use was extremely common, it was almost impossible in many -even most- units to maintain discipline, and they found it far too easy to let essential but unpleasant tasks such as patrolling or entrenchment slide) as it was the poor strategy and political errors.

I can see good arguments for reinstating the draft, but absolutely none for getting rid of the volunteer military.

[mainiac]

Didn't Korea have more draftees then Vietnam?

[nenjin]

The only conflict in US history that was fought by a purely conscript force was the Vietnam War - the only war in US history that was an unquestionable defeat (the War of 1812 ended with the US gaining every single one of their stated ambitions, and is considered a defeat only because of the notion that it was all a ploy to get Canada) and that defeat was caused as much by the conduct of the draftees (drug use was extremely common, it was almost impossible in many -even most- units to maintain discipline, and they found it far too easy to let essential but unpleasant tasks such as patrolling or entrenchment slide) as it was the poor strategy and political errors.

To be fair, I think if I was drafted against my political will and sent to a place like that, I'd probably be fucked up all the time just trying to cope too. That is why you want a volunteer military force. They may not all actually be up to it, but your odds of finding someone psychologically willing and capable of fighting a disciplined war is much higher. So I don't know if I'd blame the conscripts even half. That's what conscripts to, what did they expect? Performance and endurance like the marines in the Pacific in WWII? They had contempt for conscripts even back then.

Political error was responsible for thinking a ground war in Asia required those methods (not to mention our involvement in Vietnam up to that point.) We went all in for another country to fight the spread of Communism and stop China from gaining another political ally. To me Vietnam seems like the most heartless and coldly political use of our military to date.

The only time I've ever seen the logic of a draft is if an actual military force landed on US soil. And these days, early on at least, I don't think there'd be any shortage of volunteers to fight for that scenario.

[Lord Shonus]

Didn't Korea have more draftees then Vietnam?

There were more men drafted into the Vietnam war than fought in the Korean one, and draftees made up a higher percentage (2 out of every 3 in Vietnam as opposed to roughly 1 out of 2 in Korea).

@nenjin

That's pretty much what I was getting at.

@Ispil
Nobody declares war much nowadays. It's not only a legal formality, but also runs the risk of activating a lot of treaties that most people would prefer stayed dormant.

[SalmonGod]

Don't give a shit about any practical argument.  Forcing people to fight other people to the death is immoral to the point that the potential extinction of the human race due to alien invasion is about the only scenario where I'd find it justifiable.

[FearfulJesuit]

Huckabee is entering. I'll update the OP later since I'm going to head to bed now.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Huckabee is entering. I'll update the OP later since I'm going to head to bed now.

Dear god. Mike Huckabee might be one of the leading examples of why I have become disgusted with the republicans.