Time to bring back the draft?

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mtlucas0311

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Nope. And if you look back near the beginning of the thread you will see that I am completely against any type of draft. That said, what happened back then and the way the military was run, back then, has no bearing on this discussion. The question is about the military today, and if a draft should be brought back today. The military is very different than is was, in no small part to the service members who went through all the garbage. There is a clear concerted effort not to repeat the same mistakes that were made back then and it is taken very seriously. I absolutely take your word and all the others that served (you didn't say you were in the military but I assume you were from your post) that things were very badly run and a whole lot of bad stuff went down; and I don't expect anyone to forgive that, but I do expect people not slander the people who are in today by broad brushing service members as poor and incapable of higher education; it's just not the case.

P.S. If your unit is deployed today and you're in college, you still go with your unit; no more free pass.

"War is hell, but being stuck in a peactime USMC makes hell look good." - I missed that at first, but seriously, I can't even comment. Clearly you need to have someone take you on a Marine Corps base and give you a tour of hell.
 
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johnwilliamson062

Moderator
I keep reading posts that insist that our military is the "only choice" for the "poor" and people who aren't smart enough to go to college.
Click to expand...

The military is now and always has been a fast track for the under-privileged. Someone who was from a lifetime welfare family and joined the Marines following 9/11 and worked hard could at this point be on his way to OCS. I know this b/c I know of two people who have done it. They will probably never come close to making General, but if they stay in for Career they will almost certainly make captain, probably major, and maybe even colonel.
Teacher: "Students, what does your dad do for a living"
Student 1: "My dad sits at home eating nachos and watching TV all day."
Student 2: "My Dad is a captain in the United States Marine Corps deployed to Iraq."

Which student has more respect for themselves? At a young age almost all my self respect was drawn from the achievements of my father.
Despite the fact that student 1 sees his father every day and student 2 sees their father very little, who is more likely to do well in life?
Almost every upper middle to upper class family in the US is descended from someone who made the sacrifice and gave the service. Some families just did it 233, 149, 102,68, or 49 years ago. Most had someone who did it in all those cases.
Right now far less than 1% of the nation is deployed. There is not a single resource that is rationed. There is not a single industry under government control in order to facilitate production of goods for the war. Less than 4,500 dead in the entire foreign coalition. Gettysburg, a single battle in the civil war spanning 4 days claimed 60,000 US soldiers and the US population was 1/10th what it is today. There were advances in WWI where a few hundred yards were bought at the cost of tens of thousands of men in the span of a few hours. In both cases there was rationing, government control of industries, and everything else that goes with a war. In a mere fifty years the Barbary Pirates will eclipse Al Quaida and return to their position as the greatest foreign non-state threat the US has ever faced. By a long shot.
 
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mtlucas0311

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Don't cut your friend short, a large part of an officers promotion process is evaluation by their peers. There is no reason they couldn't wear stars on their collar.
 
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dipper

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Numbers, lots and lots of numbers and stats.

Now, I'll admit I'm a simple oaf, but I can't seem to get ANY good information out of them.
I'm no genius in statistics, but aren't these studies leaving out important information--I mean to make a concrete argument??

45% here are..... 65% had....
Means nothing.

What I need to know are:
GRADES
GPAs
Average SAT scores
Results of Aptitude Tests
High School Courses---Academic Schedule? Business Schedule? General Schedule??
Average Class Ranking--- What Percentile??

These things would tell you how "educated" our armed forces are or were.
To say that this or that percent is a high school graduate means nothing!!

Consider that through the years many of our schools have been chastised for "pushing" kids through---what are they going to do??
Graduate 25 year olds?
Some high school graduates can't read--some can't pass a basic math test but they "graduated"---big deal.

I'd like to know how many of these enlisted men turned down an acceptance by a college to join the military. How many even took the SAT would be a good start and what was the average score.
AND, don't lump officers in the stats either, MANY of them have degrees and already attended college---I'm talking the " grunts".
Someone may have graduated with a D- average---what's that say??

Can anyone give me a link to a study that has all the info??


Dipper
 
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mtlucas0311

New member
I think the reason that they left out a lot of the numbers you want to see is because it's too subjective to be of value, or with tests like the ACT/SAT it's not required that it be taken, so they wouldn't have complete data.
 
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