The United States was unprepared for her enemies in WWII in regards to both material and personnel, and she quickly rose to the challenge through efficient manufacturing and volunteers.

Conscription as a national policy did not prevent either the Korean or Vietnam wars, as Dan pointed out.

Living in the South, I can tell you that if there was a serious threat to American security, folks would volunteer. 9-11 proved that theory.

I am willing to contend there is zero evidence of a state without an explicitly neutral foreign policy that has ever been halted in its warmongering by the need for conscription.

Or flying in the Air National Guard locally instead of for the Air Force in theatre.

What’s wrong with the citizens questioning the war? Don’t we run this country? I think you just hit upon why the framers didn’t want a standing army. So we wouldn’t go off having wars of convenience.

‘As I recall, the so-called conservative supporters of the war in Iraq (like Blankley) had balked against any suggestion of bringing back the draft because they knew, as the Democratic advocates of conscription did at the time, the war would have about a 20-second lifespan if we had asked every man — and possibly woman — to stop shopping and head down to the draft board.’

Do you mean because we (the people) wouldn’t have been so in favor of the war if we actually had to fight instead of the volunteers, or that we would have won so fast there wouldn’t have been as much profit made for the defense contractors?

Of course as you point out, the more immigrants that used as cannon fodder with the carrot stick of citizenship drawing them in, the more the U.S. military does represent the Foreign Legion, or the Roman military near the end of the empire.

Sean’s mention of boredom may strike a chord in those of you with a copy of Robert Nisbet’s Prejudices handy; Nisbet devotes one of his stimulating alphabetical essays to boredom, and since I gave my most recent copy away some years ago, I rely for the moment on the summary provided by George Will in 2007:

“Among the cures of boredom that Nisbet listed are war, murder, revolution, suicide, alcohol, narcotics and pornography. He might have added presidential politics. Memo to the Clinton campaign: Inevitability is boring.”

I think behind this debate is another question. What do we think of our Republic and at what point do we wish to have the option of withdrawing our participation. I suspect that some who object to the draft would not object if the draft served to defend what we would call a virtuous republic. As our Government comes to embody and enforce the norms of a society most of us find increasingly alien and disreputable it’s natural that our willingness to serve falls away. My opinion is that as our common culture dissolves our allegiance to societies institutions dissolves with it.

As usual, the poison spread by neocons haunts the argument. What was most disgusting about Max Boot’s call for an American Foreign Legion was not his call for the use of mercenaries, but his assumption that those we pay to kill for us should automatically join our ranks as citizens. This tells us more about what being an Americian means to neocons than it does about how to man our military.

However, the U.S. has not conducted a war like World War II despite the country in armed conflict many times since 1945. This is because we are an empire, and empires need professional armies that serve around the globe and can be organized to fight quickly and not disrupt the civilian population lest they start to question why we are fighting. The U.S. shifted from a conscripted to a volunteer military for this very reason and Vietnam was what forced the change. Our military may be overstretched but better an overstretched military serving around the globe, according to the policy makers, then one filled with tons of civilians that don’t want to be doing what the policy makers want and making trouble. Iraq is no different than the Boer War and the army is no different than the French Foreign Legion.

A profession military is a nice thing to have but make it too big and spend too much money on it and it feels like it has to be used for no other reason than to prevent boredom and lack of retention. This is not to say soldiers actively want war, most don’t. But at the same time one cannot believe they just want to be an army that just trains. This is true for the policy makers as well. “What’s the use of having this magnificent miltary if we can’t use it?” As Madeline Albright said. The neocons would concurr.

It’s also open to question just how much the backlash against conscription contributed to ending the Vietnam War. What we got out of the Vietnam experience may have been the worst of both worlds: a prolonged and unsuccessful military campaign coupled with massive social upheavals at home, as anti-draft sentiment (much of it purely self-interested) fed into all of the other discontents of the era. I suspect that if the Iraq War had been fought with a draft, we would not be getting out of Mesopotamia any sooner, but we would have had a much greater hard Left movement developing over the past four years. Ironically, a ’60s-style hard Left might have prevented someone like Barack Obama from defeating McCain. The public dislikes prolonged wars, but the public dislikes left-wing unrest at home even more.

What next? Propose that Homeland Security take out everyone’s children once a year and slam their fingers in a car door to toughen them up? Set up gibbets on every street corner and start hanging their puppies and kittens and bunnies to begin steeling their little minds?

Buffoonish idea-grabbing masquerading as deep thinking; yeah, that’s the stigmata the Republicans still want to be wearing.

I was drafted in 1968 for Vietnam. Being white and middle class and coming out of an elite university, having to mix with the hoi polloi was a frequently painful experience. Though I hated the regimentation and conformity, I think my military service made me a better person, more able to understand my own country and its people. Nevertheless, when the draft ended I considered it a good thing.

On a practical level, a citizen army might discourage politicians from initiating wars unnecessarily, though it has not often done so in fact. I would note the large level of dissent within the ranks during Vietnam, which surely was a factor in the eventual shift in public sentiment against the fighting. I recently attended my college’s fortieth reunion and served on a panel discussing Vietnam and the protest movement. The hard core anti war activists on the panel all agreed that they had only opposed the war because they and their friends were at risk. None of them were doing anything at all to oppose Iraq, where the professional army drawn predominantly from the working class is seen as somewhat divorced from their own concerns. Admittedly, having a large, constript army also gives the politicians more cannon fodder to play with. I note the calls of leading democrats and republicans alike for a larger army, presumably so they can interfere in new and exciting places like Darfur.