Via Atrios, this Yahoo story says Republican Senator Chuck Hagel says we may need the draft again.
The main problem with the idea of a draft for the Iraqi conflict is simple: Those who don't believe that Iraq was a part of our War on Terrorism, often believe that Iraq is a war of choice. Especially now that we have not found any WMDs closer than a turkey farm in Libya. Yes, toppling Saddam Hussein was a great thing - we have rid the world of a murderous thug, and that can never be regarded as a bad thing. As Get Your War On opined once, its nice to see our tax dollars going towards removing evil dictators rather than proping them up.
The problem is, if we went to Iraq to destroy an evil dictatorship (ie, the Hitchens argument...he's funny when he ignores reality), then while the war with Iraq was for a good and just and noble cause (lets ignore all of the other brutal dictatorships we ignore or are even pals with), it was still an elective war.
If you are going to draft people, uproot them from their lives and force them to risk their survival on a war like that (especially one where people were lied to about the existence of WMDs, and the establishment of a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda has still proved to be virtually non-existent, pre-war), what is going to happen when we face a real threat?
Lets leave the idea of the draft in the dustbin of history. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in the early 90's, people lined up to join the military at the local recruiting stations. The reason being, of course, was that Iraq at the time had an enormous army, Kuwait was our ally, and since this wasn't too long after Israel bombed the nuclear reactor, they seemed like a bona fide threat.
Now, we need more soldiers to put down an insurgency that doesn't want us there? Sorry, people aren't going to line up for that.
When America comes under real threat, don't worry. People will line up at the military recruiters, they will get their own weapons, etc. They will do whatever needs to be done to win the war. And had al Qaeda had a little more success, thats exactly what would have happened.
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