Earlier this week leaning left wrote a diary titled "Off the hook (why the all-volunteer Army is bad for America)". As you might imagine, I have some feelings on this issue, but I feel the more pressing issue is that leaning left attacked a symptom, but didn't address the root. I hope to do so below, follow on for pro-military propaganda machine in action!!
The Part About The Army
If your sarcasm meter is broken, relax just a little bit. I'm not on DK to beat the war drums, merely to offer personal observations or the occasional fact-based educational outreach.
First things first, war is politics, simply carried out with rifles instead of rhetoric. I've touched on this before, but if you don't want to take my word for it start reading up on military history. That's what we do, carry out the political will of the nation with violent means.
What's politics about? Power. Maybe not personal power, but all political action is about moving that limited amount of power and authority to the people you think it should go to.
Finally, we're a capitalistic country and the most obvious source of power is money.
So how does the military fit into all this? We're trying to maximize our combat power per dollar spent. We want to spend the least amount possible to achieve the necessary political goals. That's why we have a budget, and also why Jeff Bacon's "Greenside"can be so spot-on hilarious.
As a country we have decided that a standing military is what we want. This makes sense, as training an army takes time and given the fast pace and unexpected escalation of most conflicts, raising an army only when necessary is rather impractical. So we'll start there, with the assumption we are going to have a standing army.
To man this, we need full-time soldiers, that's what "standing army" implies. From a leadership standpoint you absolutely want people who want to be in the army. Shrinking budgets mean shrinking personnel rosters; with every position important, there's no room for someone who doesn't want to be there.
A draft works for increasing the "fairness" of service, but only if it's 100% compulsory, and even then you're crazy if you think the rich kids won't get safe stateside jobs. If we do a lottery like with the Vietnam War we will once again find that those with political connections or large amounts of money can easily evade the draft, while those without are marched off to the front lines with nary a thought.
Volunteering fixes the "motivation" problem and somewhat simplifies the "who gets what jobs" problem. You're going to get a force made up of (generally) well-motivated people who have a desire to do their job, reducing personnel numbers, training costs, and generally keep the ratio of combat-power-to-dollars as large as possible.
The Part About Fighting
So great, the volunteer army is good for the army, but what about the country? Well, it's probably good for the country, too, as fewer resources are allocated to the military and more can be allocated to the people. But, as noted by many (including myself), the gap between those who serve and those who don't is very detrimental to the country. So what do we do about that?
We could have everyone serve in the army, but that raises a host of problems. Drafts are imprecise and without an imminent threat they tend to create many more problems than they solve. Even with the imminent threat, drafts are avoidable. We could also try other mandatory government service (see "Troopers, Starship"). Good luck with that expansion of government.
During previous we've taxed the population like crazy to pay for it. It also ensures everyone "feels the pain". Just for fun, how long do you think the current wars would have lasted if all income above, say, $500,000 was taxed at a 90% or higher rate? We'd pay for the war, the army would have everything they would need, and the people with money (and therefore power) would end that sucker as quickly as they could. Nobody likes losing power.
So who's to blame when the country doesn't fairly share the burden of fighting? Not the army, we're under civilian control. The people in power (both elected and not) are responsible. Yes, even the ones from the party you like. Erik Erikson from RedState had a nice blurb during the SOPA hubbub. "They hold protests, we hold primaries." That's the key, and that's the only check on elected power, it's elected.
All-out purity checks don't work long-term, but imagine that a party's voters got together and said "If you send in ground troops without formally declaring war you will not stand another term." At first that threat would be met with laughter, and that laughter would continue unless that party had an all-freshman slate for the next general election. After that, there would be no more laughter, only votes against undeclared fighting.
So that's a ramblomatic way of saying the all-volunteer army is necessary if we want a standing army, and if you don't like the way the pain of war is felt all around you have to remove those in power. Nothing scares a politician more than the threat of losing an election, and that's true no matter what parenthetical letter is next to their name. If they're not doing what is best for the country, they should be removed electorally. If that means you have to primary out your most senior rep, so be it. To do anything else simply affirms the status quo.