Chapomatic

The draft pops up every couple of years, just like the “Bring Back The Battleships” and “Buy Diesel Boats” arguments. I mentioned it during the Charlie Rangel election year draft fiasco.

So the Washington Monthly has a front page article on the draft, and COL Austin Bay has some points to bring up about it. Good discussion in the comments, and yours truly does put two cents in. Lots of good ideas floating around.

A Modest Proposal

Here’s one additional rant about this national service thing. It’s always the high school kids that get picked on for this kind of national life tax (that’s what you’re doing, taking a piece of the kid’s lifetime, right?). But who as a dempographic gets all the money from Uncle Sugar? Retirees. Why not pass a “national service” bill for the AARP set? If people are living on average over a dozen years after their Social Security checks kick in, why not have them teaching schools or clerking in REMF-land? Hell, half the O-6′s in the Navy are in the medical field, so it’s not as if health care won’t be a draw.

I can hear the screaming now!

And I should mention it’s terrible that a kid can die for his country but not have a beer, you neoprohibitionist screeds.

Update: And let’s also talk about how much more inefficient an involuntary personnel force can get. Oh, the submariners will do fine–we got lots of enlisted guys with master’s degrees from MIT escaping the Vietnam-era Army infantry in the sixties, grousing their way through their hitch–but what about the systemic inefficiencies of a conscription force? I am not saying the people will be lesser folks; what I’m saying is there’s a reason my service is calling on its leadership to “drive out the conscription mentality”, and that reason is that volunteer forces are more efficient uses of manpower (so therefore Navy leadership needs to be less wasteful of those expensive people).