Is it time for the US to reinstate the draft?

[Mr. Harley]

Since I have a friend in law enforcement Drake - not really, since sometime in the 70's or 80's. The imminent danger bit. Quite a few police have lost their careers, or spent time in prison, for doing exactly that. If the police shoot an unknown person who runs after they shoot somone they are walking with because that person posed a threat, they will be VERY lucky to dodge a manslaughter conviction. Now if they shoot a known fleeing terrorist in the back, they stand an excellent chance of it being called a good shoot. That's the problem with your scenario, it mixes both.

[Ted Striker]

If the community finds out about a cop shooting someone in the back, it will be a scandal that makes news for over a year.

[Drake Tungsten]

It wasn't in Nebraska, even though the OPD shot an ex-Husker football player in the back.

[Ted Striker]

He deserved it.

[Drake Tungsten]

He did. He was mentally disturbed and had beaten the **** out of a woman walking her dog the week before (while running around Lincoln naked).

I looked it up though and he didn't get shot in the back while fleeing. He got shot in the back while resisting arrest. Was unarmed, though. My bad.

[Wraith]

I haven't read the entire thread, nor do I intend to. I will say I think drafts are always a stupid idea; if people don't want to fight for something, forcing them to is hardly a good thing.

But mainly, I want to ask something. Why is someone with the nick Rufus T Firefly advocating the draft? I think someone needs to go watch Duck Soup again.

Wraith
"Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here!"
-- Groucho Marx

[GePap]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/weekinreview/28smith.html

Big Guns For Iraq? Not So Fast.

By CRAIG S. SMITH
Published: August 28, 2005

EVEN though President Bush keeps saying American forces won't leave Iraq until its forces can fight on their own, the United States isn't rushing to give the Iraqi military heavy weapons.

There is an official explanation for that - that such things take time.

But there is also another reason to go slow, one that illustrates how tightly American military success is intertwined with the political prospects of Iraq itself. This reason is little discussed in public by military officers, but it was evident last week on the explosion-scarred streets of Baghdad, in the skirmishes between rival Shiite forces in Najaf, and in the confusion of Iraq's struggle to complete a new constitution.

Simply put, Iraq remains too fragile for any planner to know what shape the country will be in six months or a year from now - whether it will reach compromises and hold together or split apart in a civil war.

And that presents a conundrum for American military planners. With those questions up in the air, they have to fear that any heavy arms distributed now could end up aimed at American forces or feeding a growing civil conflict. And the longer Iraq's army has to wait for sophisticated weapons, the longer American forces are likely to be needed in Iraq as a bulwark against chaos.

In public, the commanders cite many reasons for the slow pace of equipping the Iraqis: the supply chain is long, Iraq's soldiers are barely trained and largely untested, and the rebels they face are better fought with rifles than tanks.

In private, some officers acknowledge other concerns, too. "We're worried about civil war or a coup," said a senior American officer in Baghdad charged with outfitting Iraq's new army. He would not agree to be identified because the concerns he was discussing are so sensitive.

Indeed, Iraqi commanders are growing restive, saying their troops are dying at three times the rate of American soldiers because they lack basic equipment.

"Soldiers with Kalashnikovs and pickup trucks is not an army," said Gen. Abdulqader Mohammed Jassim, commander of the Iraqi ground forces, during a recent interview at his office in Baghdad. "To make the Iraqi Army stand on its own without American or coalition forces, we need command and control equipment, transport vehicles and training." He wants helicopters and artillery, more powerful guns and bigger tanks - weapons the Americans say he doesn't need now.

At the same time, the Americans are building at least four semi-permanent military bases that could hold 18,000 troops each. These are usually described as way stations on the eventual route home for the Americans, places where they will stay while ever-more-capable Iraqi troops engage the insurgents on their own. But that will clearly take time. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top military commander in Iraq, when asked this month about how the bases would be used, dismissed the question: "You're talking years away." And if Iraq's politics remain unstable, the bases could offer a continuing rationale for not providing heavier weaponry, since the Americans would still be close by for the Iraqis to rely on.

"We're trying to build an army to fight the current fight," one American officer said when asked about the Iraqi complaints. "It's too early to start talking about M1A1 tanks, and they don't need helicopters when they have American military support." The officer couldn't be identified by name under military rules that restrict attribution without clearance from higher up the chain of command.

These days, with the possibility of civil war in the air, the Americans emphasize diversity when organizing Iraqi units. Still, the officer corps draws heavily from Sunnis, troops in the south are largely Shiites and troops in the north are largely Kurds.

"Just as there isn't one Iraqi people, there isn't one Iraqi army," said Peter Galbraith, a former United States ambassador to Croatia who is now in Iraq and has worked closely with the Kurds. "We won't be arming a national army, but armies that are loyal to three different groups."

The current draft constitution would also let each region maintain its own guard force, making the Kurdish pesh merga the military force in the north and the Shiite Badr Corps the likely force in the south. "But the Badr Corps is very heavily influenced by Iran," Mr. Galbraith noted. "Are we going to be in the business of arming them?"

"There might be a certain logic to postponing much of this arming until you've resolved the issues that might in fact trigger a civil war," he said. "The other peril," he added, "is that we may be arming people that may be at best only temporarily our friends."

American officers say that isn't what worries them now. They say they try to balance "speed and need" in equipping the Iraqis, and in some cases they blame logistics for slow delivery. For example, they are trying to get the Iraqi infantry armored personnel carriers and armored Humvees to replace unarmored Ashkok Leyland flatbed trucks and Nissan pickup trucks. But the first 100 of 2,073 Humvees ordered aren't expected until November, and orders for the rest are competing with urgent demands from the United States Army and the Marines.

The American military also notes that it takes time to train mechanics and gunners and drivers to use new vehicles, communications equipment and weapons.

"The pace is as rapid as we can handle right now," the senior officer said.

Meanwhile, the American military and Iraq's Ministry of Defense have been scouring former Soviet bloc countries for equipment that can arrive faster. Pakistan is supplying six Vietnam War-era M113 armored personnel carriers and 20 armored jeeps, and the American military hopes to deliver 468 wheeled armor vehicles late next year. Iraq's Defense ministry has ordered 600 Polish Dzik-3 armored personnel carriers and 115 BTR-80 mechanized combat vehicles for a total of $150 million. And Hungary has donated 77 Soviet-era T-72 tanks.

General Jassem wants more. The AK-47 assault rifles his troops use, he notes, cannot be fitted with laser aiming devices and night-vision sights. "The Russians stopped using this weapon in the 1980's," he said. He wants the more modern and powerful American M4 or Russian AK-105.

He also complained that the United States wants to supply his troops with RPG-7's, the Soviet-era rocket-propelled grenade launcher. "Why are they always giving us the oldest models?" he asked, saying he likes the more modern, larger caliber RPG-29, which penetrates armor better.

But such weapons could raise a threat against the United States if they fell into the wrong hands, a concern that General Jassem acknowledges. "They are thinking they will only give new weapons to the Army when everything has calmed down," he said.

American officers insist that the old Soviet equipment is easier to maintain, that Iraqi troops are familiar with it and that a huge amount of ammunition for it is stockpiled in Iraq. "The RPG-7 is more versatile than other antitank weapons, which really only have one use - destroying armor," the senior American officer said. The insurgents, he noted, have no armor.

"We don't want it to become overly complicated," the American officer said, adding that the day will come when a stable and secure Iraq needs a fully equipped military, but that day is still years away.

General Jassem isn't mollified.

"We want helicopters," he said. "We need them because we don't know what the war is going to look like."

Not surprised by ther fact the uS is unwilling to start dumping serious weaponry in Iraq. Only problem is, until we do, the US can't possibly withdraw in any real measure.

[Ted Striker]

Yuck.

I'm starting to see this issue trickle out into the public forum. Great article.

It is indeed a Catch 22. I think it would be safe to arm the Kurds but then again they need that equipment the least, and I don't know if that would piss off the other 2 groups when they hear about what's going on.

It is good that at least they are trying to get some vehicles out of the other Soviet bloc countries, hell, I'm sure Russia itself has loads and loads of weapons and APC's they aren't using.

Also getting them the non armor piercing RPG is great, especially since there is enough available ammo just laying around for it anyway.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
It is indeed a Catch 22. I think it would be safe to arm the Kurds but then again they need that equipment the least, and I don't know if that would piss off the other 2 groups when they hear about what's going on.

Not to mention Turkey...

[Ted Striker]

Yeah good point.

That's why the Kurds love us so much, since we took out Saddam and protect them from Turkey. (Though I always heard about Turkish excursions into Kurdistan during the No Fly Zone years).

But now that Turkey refused to let the US invade from their territory, the US wont' let them do their little expeditions into Iraq. Sortof the one good thing about Bush taking everything personally.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Wraith
I haven't read the entire thread, nor do I intend to. I will say I think drafts are always a stupid idea; if people don't want to fight for something, forcing them to is hardly a good thing.

But mainly, I want to ask something. Why is someone with the nick Rufus T Firefly advocating the draft? I think someone needs to go watch Duck Soup again.

You need to read the thread, Wraith. I'm not advocating it. I was asking an open question about whether we could "see Iraq through" without one and, if so, how.

And, trust me, I've memorized Duck Soup.

/me heads off singing "Freedonia's Going to War."

[MOBIUS]

That is the point as far as I'm concerned too.

If the US have to keep huge numbers of men in Iraq for say the next five years at say 600 dead and 5,000 wounded per year whilst public opinion continues to wane what's to say the military isn't going to run out of volunteers...?

More and more US citizens are waking up to the fact that they have been lied to about Iraq - why would any thinking American voluntarily put his/her life in harm's way for a lie?

Recruitment is already way down on target and if that continues for the next few years, the US is not going to be able to replace the personnel that have completed their tours of duty - and that to me spells "Draft"...

[Ted Striker]

On top of that, the injury number is unknown, but has been estimated at 20,000. That means all those guys are out of combat and have to replaced.

It's straining the Army big time, and it's straining our country financially big time. The economic impact hasn't been felt yet, but it will.

[MOBIUS]

Here is a good article...

Apparently they're lowering the bar on who they take in now...

It's from a couple of months back - so the situation is probably worse now...

US lowers standards in army numbers crisis

Jamie Wilson in Washington
Saturday June 4, 2005
The Guardian

The US military has stopped battalion commanders from dismissing new recruits for drug abuse, alcohol, poor fitness and pregnancy in an attempt to halt the rising attrition rate in an army under growing strain as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

An internal memo sent to senior commanders said the growing dropout rate was "a matter of great concern" in an army at war. It told officers: "We need your concerted effort to reverse the negative trend. By reducing attrition 1%, we can save up to 3,000 initial-term soldiers. That's 3,000 more soldiers in our formations."

Article continues
Officially, the memo, reported in the Wall Street Journal and posted on Slate.com, ordered battalion commanders to refer cases of problem soldiers up to brigade level. Military experts warned that the move would make it more difficult to remove poor soldiers and would lower quality in the ranks.

A military spokesman told the Guardian yesterday: "It was merely a question of an additional set of eyes looking at an issue before we release potential recruits."

The Wall Street Journal quoted a battalion commander as saying: "It is the guys on weight control ... school no-shows, drug users, etc, who eat up my time and cause my hair to grey prematurely ... Often they have more than one of these issues simultaneously."

Asked what the new policy meant, John Pike from the thinktank Globalsecurity.org said: "It means there is a war on. They need all the soldiers they can get. But it is a dilemma. You need good soldiers more in wartime than peacetime."

The latest controversy comes amid a growing recruitment and retention crisis in the US military. Last month the army announced that it was 6,659 soldiers short of its recruitment targets for the year so far. On Wednesday, the department of defence withheld the latest figures, a move seen by most commentators as heralding more bad news.

The military's target is 80,000 new recruits this year, but the army only managed 73% of its target in February, 68% in March and 57% in April, forcing the expansion of a pilot programme offering 15-month active duty enlistments, rather than the usual four years.

The crisis has even led to fears - despite repeated denials by President George Bush - of a return to the draft system that conscripted 1.8 million Americans during the Vietnam war.

Major General Michael Rochelle, the head of army recruitment, said this was the "toughest recruiting climate ever faced by the all-volunteer army", with the war raising concern among potential recruits and their families.

"Recruiters have been given greater leeway," said Mr Pike. "By doing things to increase quantity you are also doing things to decrease quality, but they have made the judgment that that is the way to go."

One recruiting standard that was about to be lowered was a rule governing tattoos in the navy and marines. "If you have excessively prominent and vulgar tattoos they will not take you right now, but that is about to change," he said.

A commander quoted in the Wall Street Journal linked the growing attrition rate among new recruits to a slipping of standards by recruiters, who were under pressure to meet their monthly quotas.

An army spokeswoman said: "We are doing our best to decrease attrition level, but we have not and will not lower our standards for recruiting and retaining soldiers."

Yet in March 17.4% of all new army recruits failed to complete training, while another 7.3% did not finish the first three years with their unit.

Last month it emerged that one recruiter gave advice on how to cheat a mandatory drug test to a potential would-be soldier who said he had a drug problem.

In another incident in Texas, a recruiter threatened a 20-year-old man with arrest if he did not turn up to an interview. As a result all military recruiters stopped work for one day to attend retraining classes on acceptable practices.

That is some pretty scary reading in there if you're relying 100% on volunteers...!

[MOBIUS]

Another interesting article from Army Magazine - so a bit more palatable to the Neo-cons than the Grauniad...

"When there is a visible enemy to fight in open combat, many serve, all applaud, and the tide of patriotism runs high. But when there is a long, slow struggle, with no immediate, visible foe, your choice will seem hard indeed."

President John F. Kennedy
U.S. Naval Academy graduation address, June 6, 1961