And here we go again with the draft talk…

Restarting the military draft after more than four decades of an ­all-volunteer force would be complicated.

But it could be done.

One plan calls for young conscripts to have a choice: two years on active duty or six years in the reserves.

Either way, they’d first have to ­undergo basic training and job training.

If draftees want to go to college first, they must participate in a Reserve Officer Training Corps program and then serve.

If they fail or quit ROTC, they must then enlist.

Whichever option they choose, their obligation is fulfilled with a single combat deployment.

Those are some of the details ­proposed by retired Army Maj. Gen. Dennis Laich, one of the nation’s most aggressive advocates of abandoning the all-volunteer force in favor of a return to the draft.

…

He and others believe that current wars have stretched the military to its breaking point. More than a decade’s worth of bonuses and expanding benefits has brought personnel funding to its limits. Civilians are more disconnected from the military than at any time in history.

— Bringing back the draft By: Todd South  

And so it goes again

draft nonsense and a smear about military benefits.

Some “f-you I got mine” retired officer moans about civility and somehow a draft will make the military ready and “give the young civic duty[TM]”.

“Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination– devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues — which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.”

― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

As this article points out, it’s getting harder to find young men who are fit and legally able to serve.

Here are the thoughts of real active duty soldiers, the takeaway from this reddit thread? Old farts disconnected from reality should stick to the early bird special.

Society has moved on.

History has moved on.

And Salon Jumps the Shark

A WTF from Salon.com as they exceed their own parody:

Put a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as “heroes.” The rhetorical sloppiness and intellectual shallowness of affixing such a reverent label to everyone in the military or law enforcement betrays a frightening cultural streak of nationalism, chauvinism, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, but it also makes honest and serious conversations necessary for the maintenance and enhancement of a fragile democracy nearly impossible.
— David Masciotra, quotes at This Ain’t Hell.

Yeah, douchenugget, it’s not the uniform that makes folks worthy of respect and a measure of adulation, it’s what the uniform says about the person wearing it and their commitment to the ideals that they are defending. Anyone can buy a uniform and put it on – our Stolen Valor page is chocked full of people who do that. Those spazwads do it because the uniformed services are the last government institutions which accomplish that for which they were created.
— Jonn Lilyea’s response.

Of course the left hates the military. After Vietnam, many leftists seethed. They almost got what they wanted. From the 70’s to the early 90’s the psycho veteran and military conspiracy was a stock trope of Hollywood movies. Phrases like “permanent war economy” and “military industrial complex” were twisted into knots until the men and women of the armed forces were seen as villains.

But there was always a group of people who did the right thing. From Welcome Home parties for Vietnam vets, service organizations that helped military families and those who say “thank you for your service.”

On my blog I have many former soldiers leaving comments about their time in the Army. They don’t talk about the garbage David Masciotra spews. Their comments are fond memories of their time in green.

David Masciotra, I don’t see your panty waist helping military families who’ve lost a loved one. No leftie has ever said “welcome home” nor have they tired to offer job placement for returning vets. Ditto their never helping police families or crime victims.

Nope, they love the stolen valor losers, posers and pot smoking hippies rail about the poor and imperialism. They praise murderers, dictators, criminals and hold signs that support terrorism.

David Masciotra does not support or help anyone but himself. Better men and women have died to protect his right to be a jerkass, for that at least he should be thankful.

“a hands off, leading from behind approach”

The U.S. has made the case as strongly as they can to regional countries, including Kuwait. But ultimately when you take a hands off, leading from behind approach to things, people don’t take you seriously and they take matters into their own hands.
— America’s Allies Are Funding ISIS, Josh Rogin, The Daily Beast.com

“The elephant in the room, unmentioned by Obama, is what happens if Iraq’s leaders — or the rebels — turn out to be uninterested in compromise. In particular, the president never said anything approaching this: “We will under no circumstances permit the terrorists to take control of Iraq.”

Barack Obama is a man who knows how to use words. It’s possible, then, that this omission was intended to prepare us for the worst.”
— What Obama Didn’t Say About Iraq, Stephen L. Carter, Bloombergview.com

America didn’t lose Iraq, it was given away by a party and an Administration bound and determined to “get out of Bush’s War.” The left cares not for foreign affairs, it distracts from the domestic agenda of taxing and spending*. When they do show interest, it’s to kiss the ass of oil sucking dictators or to kow-tow to any foreign tyrant. Or simply parrot the current thinking of Europe’s intellectual class.

Iraq could have used American troops. ISIS is an Al-Qaeda spin-off. A failed Iraq spells trouble for the US. Sadly, we American’s don’t care about foreign wars, but foreign wars do care about us.

The left likes to say that they ended Vietnam and now Iraq. That somehow the Democrats brought us troops home. Lies. George Bush signed the agreement to withdraw from Iraq when their coalition government didn’t want a Status Of Forces Agreement.

But if you see Tumblr, Reddit or other hives of lefty scum and villainy, the Democrats are treated like royalty for “bringing the troops home” (not really, we’re still gonna be in Afghanistan until 2017). Don’t forget the drone strikes. Clinton has his cruise missiles, this Whitehouse has kill lists and drones. Hands off and leading from behind.

So as the media has sown, so shall the American public be forced to reap the bitter harvest.

*: I’m not kidding about that. See TheOtherMcCain for our “reality based community’s” take on Iraq:

Yes, the most urgent business facing the United States Senate is a newspaper columnist’s thoughts about sex on college campuses.
— R.S. McCain

And the “racist military” smear continues.

All thorough out Hollywood and the media’s depiction of the military, we’re shown a bunch of mooks beacuse the military is teh evilz!

Part of this meme is that the US military is/has/trains/recruits rabid racists. They become “veterans” who are planning to/training to/stocking up guns for/working for INSERTSINISTERPLANSHERE.

Jackasses like Timothy McVeigh get branded about every so often (a SF washout and marginal soldier who was demoted from E-5 to E-1).

“Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Frazier Glenn Miller, is accused of killing three people outside a Jewish community center and Jewish retirement community on April 13, according to media reports. The Fayetteville Observer reported that Miller is a former Ku Klux Klan leader as well as a retired master sergeant who served in Army Special Forces. He was forced to retire in 1979 for distributing racist materials.”
— Veterans slam New York Times piece linking vets to hate groups, Militarytimes.com

Yep, another “veteran”. And here is the MSM stock narrative:

“The number of Vietnam veterans in that movement was small — a tiny proportion of those who served — but Vietnam veterans forged the first links between Klansmen and Nazis since World War II. They were central in leading Klan and neo-Nazi groups past the anti-civil rights backlash of the 1960s and toward paramilitary violence. The white power movement they forged had strongholds not only in the South, but also in the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, California and Pennsylvania. Its members carried weapons like those they had used in Vietnam, and used boot-camp rhetoric to frame their pursuit of domestic enemies. They condoned violence against innocent people and, eventually, the state itself.”
— Veterans and White Supremacy, By KATHLEEN BELEW, NYT.com

Plenty of “weasle words” there, I’ve highlighted them. She goes on to say:

Mr. Miller obviously represents an extreme, both in his politics and in his violence. A vast majority of veterans are neither violent nor mentally ill. When they turn violent, they often harm themselves, by committing suicide.

And here is the epic smack down:

“Make no mistake—if there were extremists in the ranks, commanders would be quick to give them the boot; the Army’s regulations give them plenty of latitude to do so. In fact, that actually happened in the case of Frazier Miller,
…
Finally, understand that Mr. Miller represents just one of over 20 million veterans in America—roughly the entire population of the state of New York. One person does not make a trend.”
—
Racists in the ranks? Not in this Army., Crispin J. Burke, Medium.com

As both XBradTC, the Military Times and the Department Of Defense are quick to point out, being a racist nutjob gets a soldier back on the street with a quickness.

Tattoos are inspected, background checks are done. Sure there are some idiots who fall through the cracks. But contrary to what liberals, progressives and places like the Southern “Poverty” Law Center think, there is no mass movement of racist “vets”.

Extremist groups try, they send pamphlets, use the internets and attempt to use social media. And the IG, the DoD’s special law enforcement agencies and the FBI are quick to find them.

I suspect that this “meme” is more battlespace prep for 2014 and backlash over the fail of progressive causes. Expect to see Tea Party rallies peppered with “racist milita” and veterans running for office smeared with this.

The left hates the military and this is one way they have to swipe at recruitment and the treatment of vets.

Boeing, Boeing

So this happened:

SEATTLE (KING) – Boeing machinists have voted to approve Boeing’s latest eight-year contract proposal, securing assembly of the company’s new 777X airplane in Washington state.

Thousands of union members cast their ballots – some waiting in line for hours outside of the union hall in Everett – in Friday’s crucial vote.
— “Seattle machinists approve Boeing 777X production contract“, Ksdk.com

So Kshama Sawant must be spinning, she called for Boeing workers to “Take Over” their plant if Boeing left. Yeah, talking like a Batman villain makes all kinds of sense…

Boeing’s workers have working brains. Their Union doubled down and lost. Boeing could move to those “right to work” states. The voted to keep their jobs. Hopefully they will vote new union leadership.

And yet again the media doesn’t get “military”…

And now how!

Here we see a call for peace in Asia:

The clock starts ticking for the next crisis. With China’s announcement of the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea and the strong response from Japan, the United States and several other countries, tensions in East Asia are mounting. Since the crisis over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in September 2012, both China and Japan have begun to conduct frequent air and marine patrols in the Diaoyu/Senkakus area. With the flyby of the American B-52s, the area around these tiny islands has become a zone of tension with high probability of an accident and subsequent conflict.
…
To overcome this, Chinese and Japanese leaders first need to demonstrate their vision, courage, and determination to make peace. The establishment of the zone of peace is a crisis prevention tactic. It will not change any legal claims or the status of the territorial claims. If they want to avoid conflict, especially one arising from a small incident, they should take measures to decrease the likelihood of such accidents through using tools such as the zone of peace.
–“How to Prevent Accidental Conflict in the East China Sea:China and Japan could avoid conflict in the East China Sea by setting up a “peace zone.”,By Zheng Wang,thediplomat.com “

Alright, this would be a good idea, trouble is the hate China and Japan have for each other. The “zone” and “islands” in question are worthless (except for undersea deposits of oil, minerals and fishing rights). Yet they might start shooting over it.

Japan did horrible, horrible things to China in World War II. The Chinese Community Party needs a win to cement the idea it’s a superpower. Japan just wants it’s territory respected (and yes some of their right wing isn’t too keep on China). Peace? Hardly. If the U.S. intervenes we’ll be seen as on Japan’s side. Or worse the diplomats of our current party will be so wishy-washy that any deal will be crap.

So smart diplomacy isn’t their thing.

Neither is defense:

“Want a better U.S. military? Make it smaller. The bigger the military, the more time it must spend taking care of itself and maintaining its structure as it is, instead of changing with the times. And changing is what the U.S. military must begin to do as it recovers from the past decade’s two wars.”
—
“Want a better U.S. military? Make it smaller”

Tom, you’re an idiot. The Louisiana Maneuvers exposed an Army ill-equipped for war. Jeeps with wooden signs that said “tank”, wooden guns, four “bombs” dropped from air planes. The cycle repeated just before Vietnam. The USAF sold off thousands of iron bombs as scrap to prep for the nuclear mission. Cue 1965 and TAC was in country, a flight of 4 jets would have 1 bomb each. The old bombs? Sold to West Germany for pennies on the dollar and bought back in haste for much more.

Tom Ricks wants to repeat that. A downsized military loses thousands of junior enlisted, NCO’s and officers with experience. No we can’t draft it, recruit it or get it from the moon. Aircraft, tanks, ships and wheeled vehicles put in “storage” rot unless kept up, something a “smaller” military won’t be able to do. All lefites hate carriers and now China’s new anti-ship ballistic missile is there new excuse to get rid of them.

Yeah, take away the carriers, downsize the air fleet and shrink the ground troops and we have no leverage to force China or any one to the negotiation table. A frigate navy is what Tom Clancy predicted if we lost our carriers, something his latter pie in the sky novels got right.

While the fall of Communism and the post-Cold War era wasn’t kind to Clancy, Tom Ricks and Zheng Wang seem to think it’s 1939. They want Peace In Our Time.

Given how well that went back in ’39, I saw we ignore them and their MSM ilk.

VA ID cards can lead to ID theft

via This Ain’t Hell:

This is an insult to veterans. Given the govenment’s track record on PII (personal identification information), this is not a surprise.

Walk carefully, guard your info.

Funny comment of the day on Hot Air.com

From ths post slamming Dana “This Brain for Rent” Milbank’s calls for a draft comes this gem:

It’s a squirrel.

When in doubt
Run in circles
Scream and shout.

claudius on December 1, 2013 at 2:14 PM

Given the performance (or lack thereof) of Healthcare.gov…all this talk of gun control, a daft, racism..it all makes sense!

“The worst argument in favor of the draft ever”

Dana Milbank beclowns himself in the never-ending leftie quest to call for a draft. While some in government cling to the lie that military pay will “destroy the DoD”. Milbank, Tom Ricks, disgraced former general Stanley McChrystal. All trying to make good and “help” America.

Well, if they though that the right and those of us in the military would join them they were wrong.  In fact many have begun to dogpile on this forward into the past approach to the so called “civil-military divide”.

Outsidethebeltway.com’s James Joyner has some choice words for them:

That few in Congress have served in the military is lamentable for many reasons, the most obvious of which is that it not only makes them less intimately familiar with the demands of combat but also tends to undermine civil-military relations by making our civilian leaders afraid to challenge our military brass. But the notion that having worn a military uniform somehow makes one immune from partisanship and foolishness is absurd.

Milbank provides no evidence for this assertion, by the way, other than the fact that Congress seems to be more dysfunctional that it used to be.

Jonn Lilyea pulls no punches in calling a draft a horrible idea. How will we get a spoiled rotten generation through boot camp? Can we punish the “gold sticker participation trophy” kids?

No. We’ll just end up with a repeat of McNamara’s 100,000. An ill fated attempt to “educate” the young (mostly men unless the left wants to re-write the law). And given that their time in service would be two years, not much will be gotten from draftees with no sense of commitment or pride in country. And as Lilyea points out, an education, sense of civic pride are the jobs of the public education system.  If that doesn’t work boot camp won’t save the little darlings.  In today’s military Forest Gump is roadkill.

Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw follows up:

But I’m equally positive that prior service not only doesn’t need to be a requirement, but that it shouldn’t be. We keep the leadership of the civilian and military worlds separate for a reason, and we keep a very close eye on the one place where they overlap. (That being the dual nature of the President of the United States also being the Commander in Chief of the armed forces.)

Some in the left are horrified that voluntary military service is a tradition. GASP! they say. Hogwash. Either we have a first class military and honor our promise to those in uniform or we surrender the US to being a 3rd world country.

I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don’t think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can’t save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say : Let the damned thing go down the drain!

— Robert A. Heinlein Guest of Honor Speech at the 29th World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, Washington (1961

A word about benefits and costs in the Military

Gee seems personnel costs aren’t eating the DOD alive. That the DOD’s senior leadership was lying and cost are up elswhere in larger ammounts than ”’personnel”’!.

Okay, lemmie ‘splain:

In the 90’s, weapons tech was teh smexy, but the budget was low. Pay, the housing allowance and other bennies ”barely” kept up with inflation. Soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines were on food stamps. Units were cut right and left (look at a map of pre-1989 West Germany, 1995 Germany and now). Many qualified troops left as flying hours were cut, 2 aircraft were cannibalized to keep one flying and the whole being military on food stamps thing.

Slick Willie agreed to the Future Combat System, JSF and a few other weapons programs, that were delayed. He punted and was more interested in oval sex in the oral office.

So 9/11 happened, BAH and pay were on the upswing. While recruitment was up before OIF, ~2004 the numbers went down. I was there, headlines like “empty seats at Benning” were in the Army times. Then some brain dead git addicted to power point came up with the “moral waiver”. Promotion points dipped and many idiots got in. So to preserve the proggies and hardware (and fat contracts) This Aint Hell gives us the money quote:

“Congress is deeply resistant to cutting pay and benefits. So the Pentagon leadership’s rhetorical focus on soaring personnel costs may help reduce pressure on the broader military budget.

“If you focus on the least doable thing, what you gain is leverage to bring the whole budget up,” Adams said. “By pointing to the hardest thing to change, they hope that the whole budget will continue to be high.”
—Stars & Stripes: “Report: Pentagon emphasizing personnel, but budget costs up across the board”

Well, not only is it the “hardest thing to change”, it impacts fewer voters, because cutting actual defense spending impacts contracting and manufacturing jobs and entire local economies. Whereas, cutting the number and pay of troops affects far fewer people – people who wouldn’t ordinarily vote for the current administration and it’s less likely to have any real impact on elections.
— Jonn Lilyea slams the DoD

Yup, because having good troops leave because they can’t feed their families, pilots leave because of poor maintenance and low flying hours and a garrison military nitpicking every little behavior worked so well in the Clinton Era.

If the Bush era was one of fat waste and flushing money down the toilet, the Clinto era was one of dry rot. It was Clinton’s DOD that came up with contractors and no-bid contacts to DynCorp, KBR et al. Bush just went over the top. Far from saving money, the new soldiers of fortune cost much, much more:

“We know that sergeants in the military generally cost the Government between $50,000 to $70,000 per year. We also know that a comparable position at Blackwater costs the Federal Government over $400,000, six times as much.”

The left wants to go back to a draft so they can take money from readiness, going back to the era of a small army/navy swelling with draftees. We have members of Congress saying that we need to “slash” future bennies.

Bollocks.

What is needed is to fire the contractors, replace them with Reservists/National Guard, enlarge the Guard and Reserve and slash the DoD Civlians, O-5 and up, E-7 and up armchair warriors who’ve never deployed. End the draft.

When an Active duty US Vice Adm. Bill Moran has to “dispell rumors”, things are bad (go click on that link).

The 90’s sucked. As troops leave for better pay elsewhere, the military rots from within. I suspect that’s what some want, but do we really want a return to the 30’s Army?