I understand that it would effect citizens' feelings in that way. I may have phrased unclearly what my main statement was; apologies, if thats the case. What I was going more for is that I doubt the government would particularly care about the public's worry about their Kim in the service, should it decide to get involved in war. It seems that when the gov. is dead set on war, it'll go for it, regardless of the public's approval or non-approval, draft or no draft. It seems that public opposition can only do so much to, well, oppose a war, and seems to usually only really result in a pulling out after dome many years of involvement, or the involvement ends as a result of the war itself reaching a conclusive outcome. Not to say involvement in war is always bad, nor that public opposition to war is always right, of course. Apologies ahead of time, if that ramble strayed too far off topic.
All of that is based off the current political climate, with a relatively small but highly mechanized and elite volunteer army. The actual size of the US military is actually
very small when you consider the total population of the nation. The US can afford to have a volunteer-only army for a number of reasons, but most notably:
1)Lack of any real land threats on it's home continent
and:
2)Maintaining the cutting edge in military technology and mechanized warfare limits the need for large numbers of able bodied field troops
When you have a volunteer military that is highly mechanized, combined with a geographical positioning wherein the vast majority on conflicts will take place far away from your home soil, the vast majority of the populace has little to no conception of the realities of war. There has not been a major conflict fought on the North American continent in about a century and a half, so for much of the American population, war is something that happens only in far away place and has very little impact on their daily lives.
This situation gives politicians a lot of lassitude with their aggressive foreign agendas, and for the past few decades it has been rather easy to goad the American people into accepting war on a foreign power, made all the more simple by the ignorance most Americans have of the wider world. Having an elite volunteer army removes much of the direct emotional connection much of the American populace would have to a potential conflict. Vietnam was the last time vast numbers of American troops were thrust into battle in a foreign land in a conflict which, really, was of little consequence to the average American, and it was a domestic disaster.
Post-1975, the US military has gone to great lengths to maximize automation within combat while simultaneously minimizing the number of actually human beings needed in a conflicts, as well as shielding those soldiers from direct combat as much as possible. With so few Americans actually involved in the war itself, the vast majority of the population can carry on with their football and reality TV, and thus war becomes little more then another thing to watch on the news or Youtube, with minimal emotional impact on the viewing populace. If a greater part of the American people were directly involved in the military, or related to someone who is, the politicians would loose this relative freedom to wage war at a whim. They don't want that, so they keep the population as disconnected from war as possible by minimizing it's human involvement.
Topic: Should We Reinstate the Draft? (Read 4677 times)
