Draft

Says Jack Cafferty on CNN:

Now if it's not possible to meet the goals only using the volunteers, then down the road, I assume, it could raise the question of having to resort to a draft.

False. There is no chance of a draft under the current situation (meaning, our current political situation, and being engaged in our current conflicts). And I mean that literally. There is no possible way to get a draft here. It is, literally, impossible.

The few politicians who want a draft mostly want it only to prevent the use of force, and even they are in such a small number that they could not effect change in policy. The overwhelming majority of politicians, including the President, are against a draft. I don't know if Gates is against a draft, though Rummy was, but the military as a whole is against it.

And most importantly, the American public is absolutely against a draft. This may be why most of the politicians are against it, of course. But even if public support for a draft is not a sufficient condition for the politicians to support it, it's a necessary one. And it doesn't exist.

So the only way we could get a draft is if the situation we're in changes significantly. And I don't mean Bush invading another country, like Syria or Libya or probably even North Korea, because obviously, that won't get him more public support for his military actions, which means necessarily that there won't be increased support for a draft, which is what is necessary to have a draft.

So for us to get a draft, we would likely have to be attacked. And not just one attack, even September 11-sized, but a series of attacks, a large-scale threat, one that makes the American people flip around and favor a new front in whatever "war" you happen to think we're in.

I don't even know if increased attacks on us by al Qaeda would do it. We need an enemy of sufficient size that requires an increase in the size of the military to get public support for a draft. Maybe you can have a plan to drastically increase the size of special forces to have them fan out across the globe etc., but you don't get such forces through a draft anyway.

I think it might require war with an actual national government, like China or Russia, to get the public to support a draft. And again, not a war that we start.

And if that happens, we wouldn't need a draft to get recruits anyway. As public support increases to the levels required for us to make a draft a political possibility, voluntary enlistment will also increase.

I don't think we will ever have a draft again in this country, at least, not in the forseeable future, because there is no scenario I can see where it would be both politically possible, and practically necessary or desirable.