National Debt & Deficit Spending Iraq, the Global War on Terror, and a Draft
In an editorial board interview in my 2006 campaign I was asked pointedly and repeatedly how this nation will provide enough servicemen and women to carry on the fight in Iraq. My inference was that this organization clearly desired that I respond that a draft was needed.
I do not feel a draft is good for this nation. I recall the draft well. Had I not been attending the US Naval Academy I clearly would have been called. A draft would drive the thinking of our young people at a critical time in their lives just as it did mine once.
There is a much larger issue for this nation to consider: A draft eventually produces a less professional military leadership corps. Leaders just don't have to lead if they can always get more people to fill up the ranks.
There is another large issue that is directly part of this discussion: The failure in planning of the first years of the occupation of Iraq has lead to a situation where young people looking in at military service see it as a ticket to multiple deployments in harms way with little likelihood of ultimate victory.
I am seriously concerned that our premature departure from Iraq will be viewed by the community of nations as a failure of courage.
At the same time parents were not happy about simply "Staying the Course" as prevailed for several years. I am not either. One son is a Marine and has already served in Iraq with another deployment on the horizon.
For the first few years of the occupation the Pentagon thought we could fight this war "efficiently." Nonsense. When decisive force is needed to control the street corners it must be employed.
In Iraq just after Baghdad fell the United States needed to have "presence" on the street corners. We did not. It would not have been "efficient." Financial auditors would have been asking why we needed three or four soldiers on a given street corner when nothing was happening.
And that might have been precisely the point, but it was not, and we now suffer.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff are foursquare against reinitiating a draft. Precisely because it does produce a leadership that doesn't have to care. I am similarly against a draft for the same reasons.
So what is to be done?
This nation must face the following:
- Our future place among nations may well lie in the establishment of a stable and viable government in Iraq. One that does not rely on our forces.
- In order to deliver a stable and viable government in Iraq we must put decisive forces on the ground there, technology does not substitute for forces in counter-insurgency.
- To do this not only must this nation recruit the necessary servicemen and women. Technology alone just won’t get us there.
- Our young people understand this. That is why there is a quietly growing problem with recruitment.
In the editorial board interview members did not recognize the connection described above. That is fair since it involves military leadership and broad concepts of effective national administration.
My antipathy for a draft goes back well over three decades. As a junior officer I observed and dealt with the truly negative effects of a draft that extended into the early 70s. These effects lasted for nearly a decade after the draft ended in 1973. I learned much from leaders of that era by observing what not to do as a future leader.
Any person who would advocate a draft just does not understand the benefits of a truly professional military. Neither do they understand the discipline a professional military imposes on the senior civilian leaders of this nation.
Wars are never efficient. They will always involve expending assets and funds far beyond that which, in retrospect, was really needed. The problem to be dealt with is that one can only see the required cost in retrospect while the cost of an "illusion of efficiency" is measured in the lives of our youth.
This nation’s frustration with the War in Iraq is rooted in two things:
First: American’s do not like protracted wars where we do not fight to win, from the beginning. Had we planned the occupation properly and put the resources to it that were needed, we might well be done with Iraq today.
Second: We embarked on this without sufficient reflection by our Congress. Congress had a responsibility to form its own opinion. The American people perceive that Congress did not do that.