help me here...
Telewinz,
telewinz said:
The reality IS: We won't have anymore troops a year from now or even six months from now. In FACT we will have fewer troops a year from now. Where have you been? We haven't met our recruiting goals for months and that's with the standards reduced!
I don't have a bag of references handy, so i spent 20 minutes with Google trying to corroborate these claims. Do you have any links to reports that state how far recruitment is down, and which goals we are falling short of? I could fall 50% short of my goal of doubling my salary and still be doing just fine...
Regarding recruitment being down, i would believe it, and it wouldn't surprise me down during times of war, at least not in this day and age when the romanticism of war is long gone and see the smoking corpses and scrambling troops on the front lines with ever increasing clarity. However, that doesn't mean that our military is dwindling to nothing.
telewinz said:
It is a matter of record, our military leadership has already warned that we only have the resources to maintain our current effort until next summer.
What kind of resources? People? Equipment? Supplies? You don't build your military budget around wartime spending...so the extra money it takes to fund a specific war must be budgeted on a demand basis. If the military leadership needs another $100B to keep things moving in Iraq, don't you think they are going to need to make a case, even a dramatic case, to allow those that sign the check to do so without upsetting their constituency?
telewinz said:
It's not a simple question of right or wrong and the solution is not "faith-based", it's a question based on time and numbers, both are against us.
I completely agree that the question of how to succeed in Iraq, or the GWOT, is not simple. But 'faith', to the extent that it relates to a belief in things that you cannot see (yet), i think has everything to do with it. This is the number one thing that i believe our mainstream media does a disservice to. Even with the perceived 'slant', just talking about some of the positive things that are happening (and are regularly discussed in milblogs around the world) would do a lot.
telewinz said:
Start the draft soon or we WILL loose control of Iraq.
We will lose control of Iraq when we walk away from a job half done.
telewinz said:
If their isn't enough commitment in America to support a draft, then cut our losses NOW!
And create another Afghanistan?
telewinz said:
The majority of Americans are against the war in Iraq. How many more would be against the war if we had a draft?
This was the statement that motivated me to hit reply. I have three questions:
1 - Where is this majority? Are they all in the closet or something??? I live in the same red state you do, and while i do know people that do not vocally support the war, they do not represent anything close to a 'majority' of the people i know. I will admit that the people that do vocally oppose the war are, in general, people that have sufficiently different perspectives on everything else in life that i don't really socialize with them. So, maybe it's me that's in the closet, and maybe over half of the people i bump into on a regular basis really ARE against the war...but i don't believe it.
2 - What are they against? Are they against us starting the war? Are they against us continuing the war? Are they against the way we are prosecuting the war?
3 - This may be a little tougher to sell, but who cares? I didn't vote this mystery majority into office, and i do not entrust my freedom to them. Why, then, do i even care what they have to say? I am interested in what my faith has to say, and what those who are directly involved in the war have to say, both US and Iraqi citizens. I'm even able to muster a bit of interest in what those involved with the war from other countries have to say... but i really don't care one iota what Joe three doors down has to say.
I honestly believe that a draft is the last option that anyone , including the leadership of the US military, wants to consider. There are other ways to address any potential personnel shortages. What do you think a $500 million dollar marketing campaign plus a $25K signing bonus plus a $50K 'hazardous duty' raise would do for recruiting numbers and current morale? It might cost $5-10B (or ~$25 per man, woman and child in the country), but it would get the job done.
Edited to add: BTW, i didn't vote, because as many have already noted, the question asked, like every other poll i see in the media, slaps too many things together into one statement. I believe we CAN successfully complete our mission in Iraq, but the 'WIN' is up to the Iraqi people that dig in and work hard and build a nation.
