and that its return was iminent. do they know something i dont know? are we really THAT stretched out and have no way of increasing incentives for recruiting. these guys spoke like the plans for a draft were already underway and said many of us would probobly have to worry about it in the next few years. it was also a little off topic coming from economics chemistry and history professors.

i remember george bush saYING

"i hear there are rumors on the internets that we are gonna have a draft. WE ARE NOT GONNA HAVE A DRAFT"

but then again, that was an election debate

1/11/2006 6:29:28 PM

To my knowledge, there is no draft coming, and certainly the Republicans are not going to institute it. They've got so many political problems right now that if they implimented something that unpopular, it would be guaranteed political suicide. They MIGHT have been able to pull it off at the beginning of 2005 and at the height of their political power but not today.

1/11/2006 6:34:08 PM

A history professor I can understand (sort of). But a chemistry professor? Economics?

How did they work it into the lecture?

"So, you see the polar bonds between the Hydrogen atoms and the--hey, by the way, you kids are probably going to be drafted soon. Just a heads up. So anyway, about polar bonds..."

1/11/2006 6:41:29 PM

cya in canada if so

1/11/2006 6:41:52 PM

just curious, which history prof was it?

1/11/2006 6:49:33 PM

socrates, welcome to the liberal dominated academic world

enjoy your stay

1/11/2006 6:51:59 PM

We will never have another draft. The days of hand to hand (or gun to gun) combat are over. Now we bomb the area heavily before anything else then use satelites to see if any major enemy forces remain before we go in. The bottom line is this (no matter what someone might tell you), we kill more enemies and loose far less soliders than any other time period. Match that with an increasing population and do the math. It wont hurt us even if we do have less recruits percentage wise.

1/11/2006 6:52:14 PM

^ he's right. if we were ever in a major conflict like WWII that required a draft, we'd do everything else before we drafted.

furthermore, to all of you getting ready to bring up urban combat, consider the point that our nation would far sooner bomb the shit out of an arab city than accept a draft of men to go in there on foot and minimize the casualties to those "innocents" who are sheltering our enemies.

[Edited on January 11, 2006 at 7:00 PM. Reason : s]

1/11/2006 7:00:39 PM

but when it comes to occupying or liberating you have no choice but to send people. its not as dangerous today but ground troops are still needed.

^thats not gonna be possible in most cases. what if there was a situation like baghdad with 10 thousand insurgants in a city of 10 million. if we wipied out a whole city like that then there really would be need for draft because the world would be against us.

it was lavopa for hi
hyman for econ
wahls sub for chem

[Edited on January 11, 2006 at 7:27 PM. Reason : ^]

1/11/2006 7:25:20 PM

yall ever challenge your professors' claims? usually they're so used to talking (down) to students/kids that they get taken aback when you contradict something they always preach...fuckin liberals

1/11/2006 7:37:21 PM

Quote :

"thats not gonna be possible in most cases. what if there was a situation like baghdad with 10 thousand insurgants in a city of 10 million. if we wipied out a whole city like that then there really would be need for draft because the world would be against us."

you're an idiot. if there was a need to draft, there would be a greater desire to wipe out an entire city. and if we were in that situation, we'd already be in a WORLD WAR and our allies would probably join our sortie of destruction.

[Edited on January 11, 2006 at 7:50 PM. Reason : s]

1/11/2006 7:49:57 PM

The last thing today's military needs is a draft, and everyone in charge knows it. The US military today is highly motivated and skilled, so dumping in a bunch of untrained people who don't want to be there would be the proverbial wrench in the cog.

[Edited on January 11, 2006 at 9:49 PM. Reason : ...]

1/11/2006 9:49:32 PM

^^saw that happen in my ps 201 class freshman year...the head of the college republicans got all defiant about some issue

he ended up looking like a fool. maybe they should send a better representative next time.

1/11/2006 9:58:54 PM

Proof the public doest support the war in iraq;

A draft would destroy all support for it.

1/11/2006 10:10:54 PM

its also not strategically feasible whatsoever since they are finally planning a slow withdrawl of troops

1/11/2006 11:26:29 PM

GOD DAMNED FUCKING LIBERALS

1/11/2006 11:29:01 PM

Quote :

"^thats not gonna be possible in most cases. what if there was a situation like baghdad with 10 thousand insurgants in a city of 10 million. if we wipied out a whole city like that then there really would be need for draft because the world would be against us."

Well, look at it another way. In Iraq, we can send in troops to liberate a city of 10 million from 10 thousand insurgants because we already have the troops to do it. If we did not, we simply would not liberate the city. The military we have is suficient to smash/conquer any country, the fact that we couldn't weed out the insurgents is a problem only for the local population. If we feel the need to solve it for them so be it, but if we truely are stretched too thin, we will simply opt to bypass more urban areas in favor of regions we can more sensibly bomb the shit out of everything.

1/11/2006 11:36:05 PM

^

on a long enough timeline every problem solves itself

but for people of your logic, i love how there is a net zero value for the human pain felt in the process

1/12/2006 12:31:13 AM

well, if the locals aint gonna do anything to stop what is happening, then can we really feel all that sorry for them?

1/12/2006 12:43:50 AM

Quote :

"its also not strategically feasible whatsoever since they are finally planning a slow withdrawl of troops "

HAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH

if you believe that, i feel sorry for you. the draw down is for the 06 elections. the violence and instability is the same as it was.

1/12/2006 12:53:18 AM

Quote :

"The days of hand to hand (or gun to gun) combat are over. Now we bomb the area heavily before anything else then use satellites to see if any major enemy forces remain before we go in"

Unfortunately, this is not true. I could understand why you would be led to believe this. However, the reality is very different. Please reference the Army's Center for Lessons Learned; this is the link to their invasion of Iraq write up http://call.army.mil/products/on-point/toc.asp. Warfare is still a very personal, dirty business and satellites are only used by people in echelons above reality.

Quote :

"what if there was a situation like baghdad with 10 thousand insurgents in a city of 10 million. if we wiped out a whole city like that then there really would be need for draft because the world would be against us."

Once again, history helps. Grozny anybody????? The U.S. doesn't believe in simply leveling cities. We have learned, much like the Russians did the hard way that doing so creates even more problems then it solves militarily. If you want to seize a city or clear it, you must do it block by block with infantry, in a close fight. The satellite theory is all but useless in that situation.

Quote :

"The military we have is sufficient to smash/conquer any country, the fact that we couldn't weed out the insurgents is a problem only for the local population."

What??? You can go to war with China by yourself, because it scares me shitless to get in a fight with them. The American casualties in that fight would be an ungodly large sum. I would also say that an insurgency affects more then just the local population. It is kiind of hard to get bubble gum and toilet paper when some Jawas keep blowing the supply trucks up.

Quote :

"and that its return was iminent. do they know something i dont know?"

Know, they just have a louder opinion and a larger audience. If they did know what they were talking about they'd know that the Army was the one with a recruiting shortfall. That would be but 1 branch of the 4. Then there is the little matter of the Army actually reaching its target size anyways. The little publicized fact is that more veterans chose to remain in the Army. This means the older more experienced guys who stayed on, made up for the shortfall in recruiting of privates.

1/12/2006 2:20:06 AM

Josh you may be right on the reasoning but my main point is that a draft is not gonna happen...I was brainstorming but they are not gonna implement a draft

1/12/2006 2:22:12 AM

Quote :

"i remember george bush saYING "i hear there are rumors on the internets that we are gonna have a draft. WE ARE NOT GONNA HAVE A DRAFT" but then again, that was an election debate "

HA HA HA HA AHA AHA....apparently you havent caught onto how many other lies our great president bush has fed to us. HAHAHHAHAHHAHA

"I hear on the internet that there are weapons of mass destruction...we are gonna find them....HAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHA"

1/12/2006 3:28:01 AM

Quote :

"it would be guaranteed political suicide"

like our national debt hasnt been suicide enough

1/12/2006 3:28:55 AM

there's a ton of bullshit flying around in this thread, about the military, nature of warfare, and politics in general


but the one thing that is for certain is that 3 of your professors were wrong today

1/12/2006 5:09:51 AM

Quote :

"cya in canada if so"

you can't hide anywhere in north america now. there's been a law for several years that says mexico or canada will send your ass back here

To those of you who say that the government "doesn't want a draft," ok, fair enough, I don't doubt that right now nobody is planning to reinstate the draft. Not the dems, not the repubs, not anybody, because it's essentially political suicide.

However, the draft wasn't supposed to be reinstated during WWII, but when it became necessary for us to fight, it happened anyway. neither Roosevelt nor Truman wanted a draft, but Roosevelt went ahead and reinstated it anyway because if he hadn't, WWII might have been lost to the axis powers (supposedly)

Regardless of what anyone tells you, if we need more military forces to defend our country (or to do something we're calling "defense") and don't have them, no President would decide against reinstating the draft if it meant that the country would be destroyed without one. I don't doubt that we'll have a draft if it's necessary. What I hope is that we never get to the point that it is.

However, I want to add something. None of you who say there won't ever be a draft have yet come up with any sort of evidence for that. All you've given as evidence so far is that:

1.) There isn't a draft yet.
2.) Politicians say there won't be a draft.

#1 is like saying "I'm not dead yet, so I won't die." Pure logical fallacy.
#2 is almost worse, because you're actually BELIEVING the words of politicians, which anyone with half a brain knows is a horrible idea.

Now, I want you to realize that if you went on HARD evidence, you'd see that the only HARD evidence involving a draft is the simple fact that we've had drafts before, the selective service still exists, and the draft boards still run. You still can't get financial aid without registering for the draft, and not registering for the draft is illegal.

Unless you can give me harder evidence than that, I will acknowledge that a draft is UNLIKELY, but nowhere near impossible. We've had drafts before and, as I stated above, if we "needed" more military personnel to defend this country or "defend" this country, there is absolutely no reason why any politician worth his salt wouldn't "flip flop" on the draft issue.

[Edited on January 12, 2006 at 7:11 AM. Reason : 3]

1/12/2006 7:08:19 AM

i don't care if we have a draft. i'm almost old enough so i won't be drafted.

1/12/2006 8:08:40 AM

^Once upon a time I thought that. Then I rememberd that I don't want my children or their children, etc. to be drafted either. That is concern #1 right now. Our children.

Conditions for a draft don't exist right now but you better believe that they could by the time you have children and they are old enough.

^^Re: 2.) Politicians say there won't be a draft

The thing that should really scare you about that is that they even brought it up at all. Them saying that there won't be a draft indicates to me that they have considered it and decided against it. If there really wasn't going to be a draft then no one would have mentioned it. That said I'm pretty sure they were just responding to a baseless attack from the liberal camp.

The minority party (currently the democrats) will try to seize on anything and everything that they think might set the people against the majority party. They took a stab with the draft, which was a non issue. It really makes them look worse in the long run because they come out looking like people that are only out to attack rather than people trying to fix the problems. That's the problem. Each party wants to find favor with the public by painting the other party as evil rather than trying to establish a good reputation by doing things that are good for people (it's that simple )

If they do want to stick to attacks, and trust me, they wouldn't be politicians if they didn't then this is really baffling considering the democrats have more ammunition than they need to get some republicans out of office. Why focus on the draft considering all things?

1/12/2006 8:43:01 AM

^ A draft has been proposed in congress. The bills were introduced in congress, by Democrats. The democrats are in the minority in congress, the republicans are not going to pass a bill proposed by the opposition! That would be political suicide.

You seem to have missed a fundamental point of democracy. With enough people talking, and we have a LOT of people in congress, everything gets considered. It has been suggested that we should deport all muslims, abort all black babies, use nukes against the taliban. Everything under the sun has been suggested at some point! It doesn't mean shit to say "they've thought about it!" Hell, it doesn't mean shit to say "They've submitted a bill about it!" It STILL doesn't mean shit to say "They've voted on a bill about it!" It doesn't mean shit until you can say "more than 10% of congress voted in favor of it." Only then could you get me to worry about it.

As for DirtyGreek, I'm sure if it was truely necessary they would introduce a draft. I don't think anyone is arguing that a draft will never take place in the future. What we are arguing is that "giving the situation as it is, barring unforseen events, a draft is rediculously unlikely." If China invades Taiwan tomorrow, sure, a draft could make sense (even then probably not). But the fact remains that we have plenty of troops for the current tasks, whether or not you believe the tasks are right just and proper.

1/12/2006 10:15:18 AM

Quote :

"A draft has been proposed in congress. The bills were introduced in congress, by Democrats. The democrats are in the minority in congress, the republicans are not going to pass a bill proposed by the opposition! That would be political suicide. "

People regularly reintroduce a bill to reactivate the draft, whether they feel that the military experience would be good for our soft youth or that it will level out the allegedly disproportionate number of poor individuals and minorities in the service. I don't think either side has the political will or influence to implement it however. It's more political grandstanding than anything else.

As for whether or not a draft is happening soon, I think that the current events are saying that it will not. The United States is drawing down its troop levels in Iraq, not increasing it, and we're closing and consolidating bases overseas. If they are planning a draft, then what are they planning to use those conscripts for? If the situation in Iraq justified more boots, then why are we reducing numbers of deployed, trained units overseas? If the number of American forces in Iraq was continuing to increase then yes, I would say that the chances of a draft being reinstated are good, but the current actions state otherwise.

1/12/2006 11:24:07 AM

The draft that was proposed last year was defeated 402-2 in the house. WHAMMY!

1/12/2006 12:54:26 PM