Another Call for a Draft by the Left

Kennedy starts out with calling our present military "Mercenary."

THE United States now has a mercenary army. To be sure, our soldiers are hired from within the citizenry, unlike the hated Hessians whom George III recruited to fight against the American Revolutionaries. But like those Hessians, today's volunteers sign up for some mighty dangerous work largely for wages and benefits - a compensation package that may not always be commensurate with the dangers in store, as current recruiting problems testify.

And he ends with the call for a comprehensive draft to ensure that the military is "fair" to all the citizenry.

The life of a robust democratic society should be strenuous; it should make demands on its citizens when they are asked to engage with issues of life and death. The "revolution in military affairs" has made obsolete the kind of huge army that fought World War II, but a universal duty to service - perhaps in the form of a lottery, or of compulsory national service with military duty as one option among several - would at least ensure that the civilian and military sectors do not become dangerously separate spheres. War is too important to be left either to the generals or the politicians. It must be the people's business.

This individual, beyond being completely clueless, should be forced into service and put in Iraq to ensure he understands what he's stating. He completely misses the point of the modern volunteer military and the professional requirements for those in service.

I wonder how he would justify the higher numbers of deaths that would be seen from a military whose members are forced into service and don't have a professional attitude.