To say that the U.S. Army is stretched thin is an understatement. To
achieve the current troop level in Iraq, the DOD removed caps on the
amount of active duty time Reserve and Guard units can serve, extend the
length of combat tours for active duty troops by 41.66%, and still
requires additional personel from both the Navy and the Air Force. By the
beginning of next summer at the latest, the Army will have to choose
between either further extending the length of combat tours for active
duty forces, and perhaps also Guard and Reserve troops, reducing time
between combat tours, reducing troop levels in other parts of the world
(Germany, Turkey, Okinawa, ...), or reducing troop numbers in Iraq
regardless of the situation in Iraq, or the political situation in D.C.
A draft would not get new troops in service fast enough, even if it
started yesterday. It could take up to six months for the Selective
Service System to get up an running, 'select' conscripts, and get those
conscripts to the M.E.P. Stations to be ****pped out for basic training
(legally, SSS can take up to 193 days, ~6.433 months). And that time
line assumes no delays due to legal challenges. Then legal restriction
require 3 months of training before a newly inducted soldier can be
deployed overseas, and it is generally believed that at least 6 months of
training is required to turn a person into a basic, modern soldier with
the minimum skills expected. Anything more than the bare minimum skill
set will require more training. It cold easily take 18-24 months between
Congress and the President reinstating a draft, and the first conscripts
of the draft being ready to deploy.
Despite that, some people think a draft might be viable solution.
From the 10 August 2007 edition of NPR's All Things Considered:
"The man who is widely known as the "war czar" also says that from a
military standpoint, a return to a draft should be part of the
discussion."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12688693
When asked it a draft made sense militarily, Gen. Lute responded with
this:
"I think it makes sense to certainly consider it, and I can tell you, this
has always been an option on the table, but ultimately, this is a policy
matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means
or another. ...
come the spring, some variables will have to change"
And from Chapter 2 of a book by a former U.S. Marine Corp. Officer:
"There is, in American public life, a process by which the unthinkable
becomes the inevitable. An idea is floated. It is quickly derided,
denigrated, dismissed, sneered off as impossible, impractical, absurd.
Those with the power to enact or implement the idea deny that they have
any intention of so doing, or ever will. The dismissals and denials keep
coming.
But the idea does not go away. The media and the think tanks, the
political spin machines and advocates, don't let it. Neither, in our
enlightened era, do the bloggers and the Net. Strange alliances form,
dissolve, them coalesce again, rather like companies that go bankrupt,
only to start business anew under other names. In time, the idea enters
the realm of the known, and therefore the potentially acceptable. This is
how mass communication works. Gradually, the burden of proof ****fts from
those who would do something over to those who oppose it. The problem
gets redefined as a crisis. Sometimes it is. Then suddenly, or so it
seems, the impossible becomes the new reality. We wonder how it came to
pass. Then we wonder how the initial cost projections could have been so
ludicrously low, and why the crisis doesn't go away, or why the solution
to the crisis has generated other, maybe even worse dilemmas than those it
was meant to alleviate.
This is how we got into Vietnam. This is how we got into Iraq. We may
end up leaving the same way, as the idea of a quickie "declare honor and
leave" exit takes hold and the burden of proof ****fts to those who would
have us stay. And this is how the Great Draft Panic of 2004 came and went
.... and remains.
....
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a vague uneasiness over
our national lack of uneasiness over who fights the wars we keep getting
into."
--From "The Coming Draft" by Philip Gold (ISBN 0891418954) Chapter 2 "The
Panic that Wasn't...or Was It?", pages 61-62
We have gone from the President saying in no uncertain terms there would
be no draft, to a senior White House aid saying it has always been an
option on the table and should be discussed.
Many are looking to Vietnam not only for lessons about the draft, but also
about how to cope with the Iraq Conflict, how to end it :
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12668623
Many of the people advising the current President were also advising the
President as the Vietnam Conflict came to a close for the U.S.
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