Lou Dobbs, Montel Williams and a draft
After recently seeing Lou Dobbs on Montel speaking about a draft, or National Service as he referred to it, I realized he is nuts. If we changed out military to a non-volunteer service the quality of our armed forces would drop drastically. Truthfully the United States does need a larger military, but we also need a better military. We have one of the best in the world, but we don't give our troops the best we have to offer. During World War II all nations involved in the war tried to get their best and newest technology to the front as fast as possible, while now we hold back. We have no F-22s in active service, no Comanche helicopters in active service, no urban combat units using metamorphic camouflage or our new urban combat uniforms. We are engaging in urban warfare constantly in Iraq, yet we don't deploy the new equipment we have to use in such situations. People talk about sending more people into the military while we don't even have enough of the very best equipment we have for them. We should be giving contracts for production of the new urban warfare equipment and aerospace companies for the production of more of our most advanced fighters and helicopters and tax incentives to companies willing to take those contracts. We also should be paying soldiers much much more. Enlisted personnel in combat should be making at least $90,000 per year and outside of combat they should be making around $50,000 a year. With a $40,000 per soldier per year increase in spending maybe the government would at least consider keeping a war as short as possible. This would also act as a great incentive for people to join up during wartime. Join up, do your year tour in combat, go back to the states, go to school on the GI bill, stay another few years and retire with a Bachelor's Degree, a big savings, and enough for a nice down payment on a home. The government could also do many other things to entice people to join up, clearing criminal records, pressuring credit reporting bureaus to repair credit of enlistees, and many other possible scenarios.
A draft is a terrible idea, and a draft or activation of selective service should only be used if the United States is actually invaded. An increase in pay for soldiers and expedited production and use of new military technologies would give us all we need currently militarily without forcing anyone into military service.
posted by Wakim @ 11:15 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I agree with you whole heartedly that a draft is a HUGE mistake. I also agree with your statement that military personnel should be making more money. I don't think it would shorten a war however because, wars are two-sided. Just because we stop fighting doesn't mean the enemy will give up coming after us.
You should know, however that college is paid for my the military. My husband completed his bachelors degree on the "company dollar" as long as he completes 8 years of service with them. Not a bad trade off considering we don't have any college debt, PLUS he gets paid for everything he does with them. And soldiers in Iraq are being compensated VERY well.
Oh of course, we can't just leave. That would never work, it would lead to another Afghanistan or Somolia. A war could be sped up by increasing pay, which may increase recruitment. Also equiping troops with the best we have, not keeping the best equipment we have in "test phases" for 10 years so that it is obsolete once the troops finally get the equipment, could shorten the war. That was what helped us in previous wars, in WWII as we found our equipment was not exactly what we needed, we brought new technology to the front. We forget in this day and age that military technology is essential even though our foes may not have anything close to ours technology any advantage we can create would be useful.
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