Well, let's just say
it's been better.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Pentagon experts worry that some of the military's most experienced pilots might quit after prolonged deployments to dangerous hot spots like Afghanistan and Iraq. At least 14 US helicopters have crashed in Iraq since President Bush declared major combat over last May, claiming some 58 lives and underscoring the vulnerability of an essential cog in US military operations there. Retention of pilots is a major concern because of the time, and the cost, of training them. Analysts say the situation with pilots is just one more example that the US military is stretched too thin.
"There is no question that the force is stretched too thin," said David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland. "We have stopped treating the reserves as a force in reserve. Our volunteer army is closer to being broken today than ever before in its 30-year history."
This needs to be made into an election issue, as based on the current situation it looks quite reasonable to suppose that a Bush victory in 04 could easily result in a draft in 05. They won't dare to do it before the election, of course, but the infrastructure is being put into place. And the threat of a draft is definitely an issue that will get youth to the polls, people who normally wouldn't vote but who tend to vote Democratic. This election will be decided by turnout, both among the youth and the disadvantaged and other typical Democratic demographics with usually poor turnout.
Of course, campaigning on this issue will instantly result in one being branded "unpatriotic" by the GOP, but I've done a little bit of thinking about this whole thing and I think that such a branding is inevitable. Even if Clark was nominated he would be branded unpatriotic (ultra-conservative sites like NewsMax seem fond of calling him "Clinton's general" and so forth, which from them is obviously quite a condemnation). Furthermore, it's not something that we should be phobic about, as if we campaign well then the only people who will buy the "unpatriotic" garbage are people who aren't voting Democratic anyway. This "electability canard", as Kos has referred to it, really must be put to rest: I'm not looking forward to the $200 million in slam ads that are coming, but it's something that we're just going to have to take in stride. That's the only way we'll survive it.