Draft is for Beer

Why we need to resurrect draft in America

But the nation also needs a draft because it is one proven mechanism to bring unity to our rapidly separating parts. It needs a draft to provide that common civic grammar that encompasses those who have served and their families and friends.

If there wasn't a war on, I might see the point of using a draft to advance some social goal.

I could think of a lot of far less expensive ways of introducing people. Give scholarships to the needy and they will rub shoulders with the best and brightest. And best of all the Pell Grant program runs less than five percent of the defense budget, because it's a lot cheaper to buy books instead of tanks.

But we are in a war and it is the most dangerous war America has ever been in.

The Axis powers were stopped before they could develop weapons of greater destruction than nerve gas.

The Cold War always had a return address. Perhaps the USSR and the PRC didn't always make the wisest choices, but they always knew that we knew where they were.

And now we face a shadowy enemy who finds virtue in any murder of innocents and the bigger the scale of the carnage the better.

There is no retreat with honor or even our skins from this fight.

If this war is over by 2020, we will have lost and America won't be here anymore.

Iraq is only today's battleground and we must win the hearts and minds of all of the islamic states.

If we just throw bodies at this problem they will return as corpses and on the way to their body bags they will leave a trail of destruction that hardens hearts against us.

We must put our best and brightest forwards into the line of fire so that they can find a way through to the other side.

This requires a slimed down professional transformed military that strikes for effect, not mass.

-HJC