Gunpowder Chronicle posted on August 10, 2007 10:49 PM | Rating:
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I ask that question, because Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute -- deputy National Security Advisor and War Czar -- thinks it might be a good idea to consider reinstating the draft.
I think regular urinalysis tests at the National Security Council might be a good idea, too.
Who is General Lute kidding? The draft in any of its forms -- from the Civil War, to World War I, to right before World War II through Vietnam -- has been incredibly divisive. The last thing we need in a war where one-third of the nation thinks Rosie O'Donnell might be right (and the WTC was inside job) and one-half of the country thinks Islamofacists aren't that bad and we are to blame, is another seriously divisive issue like the draft.
The last draft did wonders to the United States Army. Toward the end, junior officers couldn't even walk into an enlisted barracks without an armed escort. That is how shallow the talent pool was -- and keep in mind that less than 1/3 of all draftees between 1964 and 1973 actually served in a combat zone. If you think Scott Thomas Beauchamp was bad-- you ain't seen nothing yet.
Today's soldier/sailor/airman/Marine needs a keener sense of duty, honor, and country. They need to be smarter, faster, and better than your normal "Government Inductee" of yesteryear. Putting poorly motivated (and probably poorly trained, too-- it's a natural consequence of piss poor motivation) troops en masse into the combat situations we are now in would make My Lai look like a spring cotillion at the Elks Club.
In short, General Lute is prescribing a pure clusterfuck. Of course, he hasn't smelled the cordite in some time, so it is not necessarily surprising that a member of the Chairborne Brigade would make such comments. After all, wars may be won on the battlefield, but they are lost in the Pentagon.
I would wonder what General Petraeus thinks about this idea. General Petraeus is probably the smartest counterinsurgency expert we have. What does he think about sending a whole bunch of Lt Calleys into the streets and villages of Iraq?