Let's *not* bring back the draft, OK?

I've had discussions with several people recently about bringing back the draft. I see it as just a small example of how much damage the whiny (read Howard Dean) wing of the Dems did during the last election. One of the sleazier tactics they used to try to energize the youth vote was scaring the bejeezus out of college kids with the promise that the bad Republicans had a secret plan to reinstate the draft as soon as the polls closed on November 2nd. Other anti-war types wrote editorials or even introduced bills in Congress calling for a draft to "spread the burden." (It seems that only the "working and poor classes" are fighting in this war. My participation was apparently a regrettable error - when we were inprocessing to go over, the colonel in charge of the mobilization effort (the MUIC, for the cognescenti) asked if there were any upper or middle class people in the audience who had inadvertantly been mobilized. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my country club membership card, and never did get it straightened out.)

The election's over, but everyone I run into who's under thirty is still jumpy. While it might be fun to tell them that "yes, there is a secret plan - they're announcing it in January," the reality is that a draft just isn't on the table - and shouldn't be. Rumsfeld was dead on when he pegged draftees as more trouble than they're worth. I'll go ahead and say it now so nobody misunderstands - in the past, almost all draftee soldiers did their duty honorably, many heroically, and their performance was, on the whole, just as good as volunteer soldiers. But, what today's army needs are highly trained, highly skilled specialists led by highly experienced NCOs and officers. Developing that requires motivation and time, and a higher percentage of career soldiers than was necessary in the past. None of that is available from an army composed of short term draftees counting the days until they're done.

Nobody, civilian or military, currently involved in running the military has either expressed support for the draft or done anything but explain why the draft is a bad idea when it was proposed from the left. So, all you college students out there fretting can stop worrying and get back to your perfect self-absorption. Its OK to let the grown-ups do the work of defending the country. But you should understand that some of those grown-ups are your age or younger.