[Gen.] Stanley McChrystal, (Ret.) has urged that the draft be reinstated to spread the burden of fighting and to instill a sense of shared civic duty among young Americans....Apart from the strain on troops and their families after repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, only a small fraction of the population was affected by the conflicts, the general said.
“I’m becoming a little bit more extreme on this each year. I think we need national service and I think you need it either at the conclusion of high school or university. I don’t think young people would really fight it if it was fair, if everybody did it. I’m not talking about military, I’m talking about all kinds of things...It’s not whether they go build roads and parks or that sort of thing. It’s what you put inside them, because once you have contributed to something, you have a slightly different view of it.”
Agree or disagree with his stance on ending a professional, all-volunteer military, it's quite enlightening to read the comments after the article. There are some sadly uninformed people in the world, many of whom are utterly clueless about the wars their country has been engaged in for the last decade.
It's doubtful that selective service is the answer, but you can't argue with the fact that we're creating a small, insular "warrior caste" in a time when just a small fraction of the country's population fights, much less is involved with the military at all.
