Is it time for the US to reinstate the draft?

[Pekka]

gives a whole new meaning to the word mob doesn't it..

Oh well. I ate a kebab burger 10 minutes ago that I had bought from a store, you know one of those heat'em up things.. it sucked .. BUT it was most likely made by middle aged ugly Finnish people!

[Mr. Harley]

Ramo - you and Whaleboy have nice posts. I disagree, but I enjoy being disagreed with intelligently, and with well thought out ideas.

Imran and GePap, I feel sort of strange saying this, but I think Berserker in his libetarian and original constitutional arguments has a point. This kind of abuse is inevitable given our large, standing army. It's happened multiple times since WW2, the only way to deal with this is to go back to a professional Navy but an army Cadre/Reserve system, or...

We can change the constitution. The dynamics of the constitution, and the division of powers between the President as CIC versus Congress and it's sole perogative to declare war are totally unbalanced by this large standing professional army. Of course it is going to get used, and abused! I don't know what the changes would have to be, I've never really thought about it that way before. They would have to be either elegantly simple, or fiendishly tricky.

[Mr. Harley]

From Ted's link - Ms. Hatice Sendil, Miss Turkey 2001 Runner-up, Miss Europe 2001 2nd Runner-up. :melt:

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by GePap
Oh, I fully agree. I don;t for a second buy the notion that the President's power as commander in Chief allows him to start a war with the simples and most pathetic of congressional approvals.

Given that the US was not fulfilling any treaty obligations by going to war as it did, that full Congressional approval for war (Ie. Congress declaring war) should have been done.

I am sick of the imperial presidency and I think Congress has become a house filled with cowards.

The Congress is the most important branch of government, and they are slowly giving away their powers to an office not even elected by the people.

They have been for decades and unfortunetly it's led to this. The original contemplation of a President was not such an imperial executive. We need to go back to the old way of declaring war. We have to have a full Congressional approval with specific reasons. But that's going to require Congress to get its act together. Congressmen have to think about the power and integrity of Congress over their own parties.

[Drake Tungsten]

Originally posted by Ramo

1. Re-examing our RoE. Frankly, it's heavy-handed and totally unjustified in an urban environment. If we see an RPG coming from an apartment building, don't bomb the apartment building! Not only do we kill innocent civilians, Iraq's clan based society means that all the victims' brothers and cousins are gonna join the insurgency. The Brits have had more realistic RoE, and it's a terrible blow to the occupation that several thousand of them are leaving next year. As I asking, why oh why can't Blair be in charge?

2. Take another look at our detention policies. There's no better recruiting poster for Iraq than Gitmo. This whole business is still mindboggling to me. According to various studies, such as Red Cross, a lot of the people the vast majority of people we're detaining there and (less prominently, but no less importantly) at Iraqi facilities are being held unjustifiably. There's no transparency, contact with relatives, etc. A large scale prisoner release program is needed ASAP. Luckily we are going in that direction (there were some prisoners released from Abu Ghraib today), if at an anemic pace.

Given some of the reporting I've been reading, neither of these seems to be a pressing issue. Our soldiers' ROE are more restrictive than I imagined and terrorists are being released from Abu Ghraib to return to fighting American troops...

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

http://michaelyon.blogspot.com

Cool site.

America's finest.

[Ramo]

Given some of the reporting I've been reading, neither of these seems to be a pressing issue. Our soldiers' ROE are more restrictive than I imagined and terrorists are being released from Abu Ghraib to return to fighting American troops...

I don't see what your link has to do with RoE. The Brits (and the Iraqis) have been highly critical of our RoE, and I think there's something to that:

According to senior British officers, US military operations are typified by "force protection" - the protection of troops at all costs - that allows American troops to open fire, using whatever means available, if they believe that their lives are under threat.

By contrast, the British military has a graduated response to a threat and its rules of engagement are based on the principle of minimum force. Troops also have to justify their actions in post-operation reports that are reviewed by the Royal Military Police, and any discrepancy can lead to charges including murder.

A British officer said that some of the tactics employed by American forces would not be approved by British commanders.

The officer said: "US troops have the attitude of shoot first and ask questions later. They simply won't take any risk.

"It has been explained to US commanders that we made mistakes in Northern Ireland, namely Bloody Sunday, and paid the price.

"I explained that their tactics were alienating the civil population and could lengthen the insurgency by a decade. Unfortunately, when we ex-plained our rules of engagement which are based around the principle of minimum force, the US troops just laughed."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/15/wirq15.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/15/ixworld.html

And your link cites the release of a single terrorist, rather than multiple terrorists, as far as I can tell. On the other hand, a systematic study (albeit dated) done by the Red Cross estimated that 70-90% of Iraqi detainees were held in error, so Nohe (incidentally, I can't find a reference to him outside of that blog post and those who linked to it) seems like the exception rather than rule. Yon mentioned that he was told of other such cases, but failed to provide any specifics.

[Ted Striker]

That's true. It's a fine link about an extraordinary group of guys, doing a damn fine job.

But Yon has a microscopic view of the situation, and there are indeed many reports, as Ramo mentioned, of innocent people being held, and without having any means to contact their family.

[Drake Tungsten]

I don't see what your link has to do with RoE.

You didn't read the part where they tried to search three suspicious guys? The terrorist who pulled a pistol got shot, but the US troops weren't allowed to fire on his fleeing partners. I never would've thought our troops' ROE were so restrictive.

[Ted Striker]

The other 2 never pulled a weapon.

[Drake Tungsten]

I know.

[Mr. Harley]

Drake - do you really want to give Al Quaeda any more recruiting opporunties? Guilt by association, shooting people in the back fleeing who may be innocent (and stupid, it is a VERY bad idea to disobey military types with weapons who just shot someone pulling a weapon on them), do they need any more help via Al Jazeera? Unless our PR is so f*cked that frankly it's moot, and we have more to gain by shoot/detention orders.

[Ramo]

You didn't read the part where they tried to search three suspicious guys? The terrorist who pulled a pistol got shot, but the US troops weren't allowed to fire on his fleeing partners. I never would've thought our troops' ROE were so restrictive.

Why's that too restrictive? If they don't pose a threat to your life and and are running away from you, the prudent thing to do is exactly what these soldiers did - run after the suspects and tackle them. Seems totally reasonable to me. And that way you might actually get intel instead of just a bodybag.

[Drake Tungsten]

Drake - do you really want to give Al Quaeda any more recruiting opporunties? Guilt by association, shooting people in the back fleeing who may be innocent (and stupid, it is a VERY bad idea to disobey military types with weapons who just shot someone pulling a weapon on them), do they need any more help via Al Jazeera? Unless our PR is so f*cked that frankly it's moot, and we have more to gain by shoot/detention orders.

I think the fact that a terrorist can openly walk the streets, have one of his associates open fire on US forces and then flee, knowing full well that US soldiers can't fire on him at any point as long as he doesn't attack them does a hell of a lot more to encourage would be jihadists than a more lax ROE would. The threat of death seems a lot less imminent that way.

I guess the fear of capture is still there, but odds are good you'll eventually be back on the streets. The Americans can't do much to you if you're smart.

[Drake Tungsten]

Originally posted by Ramo
Why's that too restrictive? If they don't pose a threat to your life and and are running away from you, the prudent thing to do is exactly what these soldiers did - run after the suspects and tackle them. Seems totally reasonable to me. And that way you might actually get intel instead of just a bodybag.

Oh, I agree that tackling the insurgents was the smart course of action, mainly because of the intel they could provide. But what if they hadn't been able to catch up to the terrorists? Why are US troops never allowed to shoot a fleeing opponent? You might kill the guy, but you might also simply wound him and allow American troops to capture and interrogate him. Either way, you won't be letting him get away to possibly kill one of your buddies later on.

I don't think firing on fleeing opponents is the best course of action in most cases, but it's a little surprising to me that the option isn't there. Most cops in America have it.