I'm a 20+ year Army veteran, and I have a son who is a senior airman currently on active duty. I entered active service in 1977, so while I served with quite a few draftees, mostly I'm a product of the "All Volunteer" force.
I'm support Wes Clark and believe no one is as qualified, by ability experience or character to lead this country. But Wes Clark does NOT support a return to the draft. This is one area where I disagree with him.
My reasons for supporting the draft are basically these:
1) A nation should never go to war unless it's willing to commit all its resources to the endeavor. If it ain't important enough for everyone to sacrifice, it ain't worth fighting. A small professional military makes it far too easy for the government to engage in military adventurism without the civilian population giving a damn. Pretty much what we have now.
I strongly believe that if we had a draft, there would be a lot more pressure on the administration to get out of Iraq, a greater demand to hold them accountable for their incompetence there, and probably a lot more public discussion and thoughtfulness before we went there in the first place. And yeah, I know it took many years and far too many deaths for sentiment against the Vietnam War to formulate, but this is a different time, with different attitudes and much better communications about what's really going on in distant lands.
2) The US military should be a citizens' military. The people in the military should reflect the values and demographics of the larger population, and the civilians should appreciate and understand something about what it means to be in the military. I didn't use to feel this way, but over the course of my Army career, I saw the military grow culturally farther and farther away from society at large. I strongly suspect it's gotten worse since I got out in 1997. That's not a good thing.
3) I still believe that military service is a good experience for almost any young person. Even though the Bushies have badly damaged the military as an institution, for the vast majority, it's still a very good way to mature a little, gain some confidence, and see some of the world and the variety of people in it, before making decisions about what one wants to do with his or her life.
4) Not only does the individual benefit from military experience, the community he or she goes back to benefits. One reason red states, and rural areas in general, are so red is because the vast majority of people there have not been exposed to people different from themselves, as well as ideas and opinions different from the ones they grew up with. Most military people are far less racist than their civilian counterparts. In units where women serve, the men tend to be much less sexist. If gays were allowed to serve openly, I think they'd come to be much accepted as well. You also find less extreme religious views among most military personnel, and a greater openness to people who believe differently. When people endure hardship together, and depend upon each other to get thru it, they usually put minor differences in the proper perspective.
One caveat: I would only support a draft that included everyone who was physically and mentally capable of serving, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, and most importantly economic class. If that means inducting more people than the military (as it is organized now) can handle, then we create some sort of civil service corps, with the same basic requirements as far as length of service, pay, living conditions, training etc, and set them to civic tasks that need accomplishment. Lord knows there's a lot that could be done.
Again, I know the draft was not fair in the Vietnam era, but that system was designed back before WWII. I find it hard to believe that in this day and age we could not design a draft where essentially everyone would be required to serve in fundamentally equal measure.
