Stanley McChrystal: The U.S. should reinstitute the draft
“America suffers right now from the fact that many Americans don’t meet or deal with anybody outside their social or cultural circle,” retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal tells Foreign Affairs in a lengthy interview. “I think mandatory national service would have a huge effect to help us in that direction.”
It’s not a fundamentally new argument to say that the U.S., if it had a draft military, might be more careful about using military force and more restrained in deploying its service members. Still, it’s interesting to see McChrystal, who led the international force in Afghanistan before resigning in disgrace in 2010, making that case himself.
The “reinstate the draft” argument is typically associated with liberal Democrats and with opponents of U.S. military action, not with the generals who lead that action.
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Yes, EXACTLY, there’s no “military need” for it…it’s all about the ‘social experience.” How about we just say “No.”
JFKY on February 20, 2013 at 11:24 AM
Yeah, let’s load the military up with people that don’t want to be there. Worked so well in Vietnam.
Bitter Clinger on February 20, 2013 at 11:25 AM
We’re in a huge drawdown of forces, where volunteers who want to stay are being discharged, and this dumbass want a draft?
Rebar on February 20, 2013 at 11:25 AM
I disagree. Right now the US military is by and large full of technically demanding jobs. We’ll never have a shortage of truck drivers and infantry types. But the inter-war military that is powered by intelligence, signal, and other such jobs is hard enough to maintain readiness when it’s full of volunteers. I can’t imagine trying to ram an unwilling, non-volunteer through an intelligence-related AIT. And yes, I’m an instructor at Ft. Huachuca.
Sgt Steve on February 20, 2013 at 11:27 AM
So we need to institute the draft as a social club….?
Is joining the military about meeting people or defending your country?
The last thing the military needs is a bunch of involuntary slackers with arrest records and bad attitudes joining the military.
His call to re-institute the draft is not to increase combat readiness but to change the way people think and behave.
NeoKong on February 20, 2013 at 11:29 AM
My friends who are Grunts would want me to say, “F*ck You REMF @rse-hole. The S-2 shop is good at telling what the weather is going to be and when the sun rises and sets, and that’s about it. Certainly no useful intelligence on enemy numbers, equipment or intentions.”
Huachuca would have a fine selection of DRAFTEES, they’d gravitate there….
I’m glad that the “Grunts” will not have a shortage, because Hey anyone can do that, right!?!?
JFKY on February 20, 2013 at 11:31 AM
In isolation, the suggestion makes sense. In practice, its a bad idea. Thus, its a bad idea. While the individual may benefit, the military as a whole suffers.
ted c on February 20, 2013 at 11:34 AM
Yeah, somebody isn’t connecting the dots.
conservative pilgrim on February 20, 2013 at 11:34 AM
I’m not reading the WaPo piece, but these two statements are not equal. Conscription is not the draft, though both are leftist ideology and neither would be good for out military or the country.
BKeyser on February 20, 2013 at 11:37 AM
Furthermore, why is it that military brass are automatically afforded the hawkish moniker. A great number are leftists and most are dovish.
BKeyser on February 20, 2013 at 11:39 AM
So, when did McChrystal lose his mind?
Blake on February 20, 2013 at 11:40 AM
Finally, if I could spell and use proper punctuation, I might not simply be a commenter.
BKeyser on February 20, 2013 at 11:41 AM
I’m thinking McChrystal is the one who doesn’t meet or deal with anyone outside his social or cultural circle.
Dusty on February 20, 2013 at 11:41 AM
It’ll never happen politically, but I certainly get the point. It’s far easier to support military intervention when you know that you or your kid won’t be tossed into the line of fire. But then the presence of the draft didn’t stop Vietnam, so this idea might be based on a false assumption.
LukeinNE on February 20, 2013 at 11:42 AM
Spent my first 5 years in the Army as a 14R (Bradley Linebacker crewmember), and while not everyone can do that job (functionally identical to 11M work), most of them could not do the job I do now (MI Sys. Maintenance). It’s not an insult to them, since most 35Ts could not do their job either. But we’re entertaining an interwar phase where intelligence, detection and prevention is coming to the fore, and where reaction by force is waning. Put simply, we need fewer shooters now than we’ve needed in the past decade.
Sgt Steve on February 20, 2013 at 11:42 AM
An appalling lack of discipline by both the parents and society of the young men of that generation was responsible for a large part of the chaos.
If some pot-addled, bongo-thumping hippie had tried publicly burning his draft card or his nation’s flag at the outbreak of world war two, he’d have gotten EXACTLY what he deserved. As it was it took a National Guard unit being pelted by riotous ‘college students’ until they were fed up enough to fire to disinterest the soap-deprived from their ways.
MelonCollie on February 20, 2013 at 11:42 AM
Well Sgt Steve it was the implicit ANYONE can be a grunt attitude to which I objected to, on behalf of my Grunt friends….
JFKY on February 20, 2013 at 11:44 AM
“America suffers right now from the fact that many Americans don’t meet or deal with anybody outside their social or cultural circle,” retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal tells Foreign Affairs in a lengthy interview.
I’m thinking McChrystal is the one who doesn’t meet or deal with anyone outside his social or cultural circle.
Dusty on February 20, 2013 at 11:41 AM
~~~~~
Exactly…McChrystal is projecting…just because he doesn’t venture outside his “cultural circle”, doesn’t mean no one does. Especially younger people, in my experience.
ellifint on February 20, 2013 at 11:48 AM
Exactly. We are long past the point of “grunts with guns” being the mainstay of our armed forces.
It is entirely possible to berate and bludgeon an unwilling recruit into competently knowing which way to point a rifle or rocket launcher, using a grenade without fragging himself and/or his squad, and hitting the broad side of a barn with an automatic weapon.
But we do not NEED those kinds of people right now, nor will we for the forseeable future. And we cannot shoehorn Private SNAFUs through spook school or to be nuclear techies or to be SEALs or pilot a multi-million-dollar airplane.
MelonCollie on February 20, 2013 at 11:49 AM
Well, if you want folks to meet people outside their own social circle, why don’t we force everyone to go to church, instead? After all, the atheists will meet people outside *their* circle, and the Christians will meet people outside *their* circle, and if we insist they be conservative Christian churches, all the Obama voters are bound to meet folk they never dreamed existed except as parodies in the liberal media. Oh, and there’s all kinds of charitable good that could be done with that level of new manpower, too! Woohoo! Win!
/s (do I need to say it?)
GWB on February 20, 2013 at 11:50 AM
.
For those of us who actually spend time outside the wire, a draft would not be a direct issue (all our folks volunteer to get in), but do we really want a bunch of Bradley Manning types running around with a giant chip on their shoulder and weeping in their bunk at night because they were drafted and just want to go home to mommy?
Being somewhere stressful only because you don’t want to go to jail is not a way to inspire peak performance in people.
LincolntheHun on February 20, 2013 at 11:50 AM
Oh, I’m not about to impugn the intelligence of the combat arms of the military. However, the shooting brances of the military have gotten teaching 11Bs, willing or unwilling, down to a much more refined art than successfully finding someone capable of being even a mediocre intelligence analyst. Adding an unwillingness to learn said systems of intelligence collection and analysis would only make getting decent S-2s out into the field that much more problematic. And I agree, the Army has enough crappy S-2s out there as it is.
Sgt Steve on February 20, 2013 at 11:54 AM
Exactly. And being weepy wrecks is not the worst thing they could do, which you aptly hinted at by name-dropping Manning.
Imagine a general being told that there’s a bunch of draftees who can’t be trusted around any kind of live ordinance or put in the driver’s seat of anything down to a Jeep…because they’ll use either to make a break for home the first chance they get.
MelonCollie on February 20, 2013 at 11:56 AM
Douche with Stars said:
So? That is their right as free and independent individuals. It’s not the governments job to involve themselves with such issues. While no judge would admit it, the 13th Amendment specifically forbids salivary, as well as INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE. Tyrants
MoreLiberty on February 20, 2013 at 11:56 AM
Maybe to fill the needs of Obama’s Civilian Force (brown shirts). Better hurry because I believe the SHTF is coming pretty quick.
trs on February 20, 2013 at 11:58 AM
How does the individual benefit? The government basically puts a gun to some individuals head and forces them to do things they didn’t volunteer to do, or fight people they don’t want to fight all in the interest of the state. Thats DOES NOT benefit any individual.
MoreLiberty on February 20, 2013 at 11:59 AM
I smell a straw man, but you aren’t entirely wrong.
Drafting is a last-ditch measure for any nation that has a modicum of freedom, because the only three ways to overcome people’s reluctance to be state-sponsored killers and property-wreckers are the following:
1. Appeal to their sense of patriotism. (results can vary widely)
2. Outright brainwashing/propaganda. (grimly effective)
3. Survival motive. (ie; “they just bombed Pearl Harbor, private, we don’t have any **** choice.”
MelonCollie on February 20, 2013 at 12:02 PM
It is individual liberty, and personal freedom that is most important in this country – not the government. We are not slaves or serfs but free and independent individuals. I love America, but not the US government.
MoreLiberty on February 20, 2013 at 12:07 PM
The draft was already under way before Pearl Harbor, just an fyi.
LukeinNE on February 20, 2013 at 12:07 PM
Not a random draft. If you’re going to do it, do it right. Use all those college entrance exams everyone takes these days. And make sure 50% of draftees are women. It’s what the people want, they voted for the nanny state, time to live with it. If that includes the government assigning you to work in a civilian corp as powerful and well funded as the military, then so be it. What could go wrong?
Fenris on February 20, 2013 at 12:10 PM
Having never been in the military I won’t comment on grade levels. However I would suggest a major problem with the military is how they have been treated by politicians in past years. You get treated like dirt and see your superiors have no say in it what else are you going to do.
I have friends who were drafted into Vietnam liked the service and retired Lt. Colonel’s. Its how you are treated.
CW20 on February 20, 2013 at 12:12 PM
I know, I’m just using that as an example for motivating people to get over their reluctance to being drafted.
MelonCollie on February 20, 2013 at 12:13 PM
.
I guess that also means no one could ever be compelled to serve on a jury.
LincolntheHun on February 20, 2013 at 12:17 PM
Because the young aren’t getting screwed enough by their geriatric slave masters? Why don’t we put together an army of senior citizens instead?
besser tot als rot on February 20, 2013 at 12:22 PM
IMHO we need a better system for that anyhow.
The idea of a dozen random people who don’t know me and would rather be doing any of 100 things deciding whether I’m innocent or guilty on a serious charge scares me sick. The chances of all twelve being flaming athiest liberal fruitloops, just to name one example, is disturbingly high.
MelonCollie on February 20, 2013 at 12:23 PM
Or be compelled to bear the crippling burden of the welfare state, in particular the senior welfare state (SS, medicare, etc.).
besser tot als rot on February 20, 2013 at 12:23 PM
Ya because being in a jury is the same as grabbing some kid off the street, giving him a rifle and telling him to go die/kill for his country. Over 93% of all jurors serve less than two days.
MoreLiberty on February 20, 2013 at 12:38 PM
We need to require all dual citizens to be drafted into the military. Otherwise they have no obligation to this country and can just take during the good times and hit the road during the tough times.
Buddahpundit on February 20, 2013 at 12:39 PM
For all his deselection of duty, McChrystal should be in Leavenworth for life at hard labor.
VorDaj on February 20, 2013 at 12:43 PM
I’ll go but we have to be deployed on our southern border where we could actually do some good for America, not in useless to America Afcrapistan.
VorDaj on February 20, 2013 at 12:46 PM
This is stupid. The purpose of reinstituting the draft is to destroy the military’s ability to resist the government. Right now the military can pretty much do as it pleases in policy solely for the military because no one is forced by law to join. This is why those pushing the so called gay rights issue in the military had to insure those lawsuits never reached SCOTUS because they know dang well precedent is clear that the military is not subject to the same rules as everyone else. The draft, in making service involuntary, would allow the courts to nitpick every single thing in the military.
Rocks on February 20, 2013 at 12:52 PM
The USA hasn’t been invaded since the war of 1812.
To quote USMC General S. Butler: “There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.”
MoreLiberty on February 20, 2013 at 12:53 PM
Mandatory study abroad would check the diversity box. Just sayin’.
Christien on February 20, 2013 at 12:55 PM
Well, he’s right. Except for, y’know, everything he said.
Shump on February 20, 2013 at 1:10 PM
Forced national service, without the ability to be a conscientious objector, is just one of the many things we warned liberals that Obamacare was going to bring. If they govt can force you to pay for anything they want, the govt can force you to do anything they want.
txhsmom on February 20, 2013 at 1:13 PM
We already have mandatory social service, it’s called the income tax.
clearbluesky on February 20, 2013 at 1:13 PM
He didn’t lose it.
He traded it for his second star.
They ALL have to trade them to get that second star.
…………………………………
I served at the last of the draft era. Since I was a beanie wearing type, I didn’t normally associate with draftees, but generally when I did interact with them, it was a bad experience. Maybe one out of five were somewhat cooperative and competent… Even many of the NCOs who began as draftees, but then re-upped because Uncle Sugar took good care of them were about worthless.
Wanna screw up the military even worse?
Then yeah, by all means, reinstate the draft.
LegendHasIt on February 20, 2013 at 1:15 PM
I was in the Marines at the tail end of the Vietnam Draft. Let me say that the quality of the Marines we got after the draft was over was much higher than the quality we had while the draft was in effect. Do we really want a less effective armed forces?
I hate idiots who use the military for social experiments.
Having said that, should the draft be reinstated by our moron congress critters, I hope they make it an “equal opportunity” draft; women as well as men. (maybe I’m just getting old and cranky)
Duncan Khuver on February 20, 2013 at 1:16 PM
May not ALL of them. Some one them? I can see that.
Christien on February 20, 2013 at 1:26 PM
s/b some of
Christien on February 20, 2013 at 1:26 PM
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