Military Expert Says No Draft Necessary; Bush Should Call for Volunteers
by Chad Groening
April 30, 2004
(AgapePress) - A military readiness watchdog says despite recent suggestions by a Senate Foreign Relations Committee member, America has not yet reached the point where it is necessary to reinstate the draft.Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel reopened the draft debate last week. Though he stopped short of actually calling for resumption of the draft, the Republican told NBC's Today Show that the war on terrorism could last 20 years and some kind of mandatory service for all citizens should be considered.
However, Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness thinks there is a better option. "The president has not yet called for more volunteers for the armed forces. I'm convinced that if he did, people would step forward. But you don't go to a draft before you even ask for volunteers," she says.
And Donnelly fears a draft would have a negative effect on all volunteer military personnel. "They are very special people. Bringing in great numbers of people who don't want to be there -- that would make the lives of the volunteer soldiers much harder."
The military expert says the only way the U.S. would need a draft is if America's casualty rates became so high that troops could not be replaced with volunteers, and that has not yet occurred.
"The word 'replacement' is a clinical term; it means to replace soldiers who have fallen," Donnelly explains. "I would only be in favor of a draft if we really had a national emergency requiring great numbers of soldiers to be replacements in combat. If we had that kind of a critical need," she says, "then we might need to re-institute the draft. But that is not the situation today."
The CMR's president feels Senator Hagel's suggestion is premature, and she says President Bush should call for more volunteers before even considering a reinstatement of the draft.
