The Draft And The War With Iraq

3 Pages 733 Words

The United States of America is currently at a prospective war status. With war in the air, the apprehension of who will serve in the armed forces is expressed by many. Today's all-volunteer forces are more efficient and professional than that of any other epoch before hand. With the technology that is available, wars are capable of being fought, to a certain degree, on the premise of mechanical apparatuses. As a result the need for bodily warfare is exceptionally minimal. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has gone further, asserting that draftees added no value and no advantage to the military because they served for such brief periods. In this pioneering era of automated warfare, draft has become irrelevant.
The draft, or conscription, began in the 1940s and ended in 1973, with the conclusion of the Vietnam War (Ambrose, paragraph 3). "When you talk to generals and admirals today, you won't run into one who wants to bring back the draft" states Eliot Cohen, a professor of strategic studies at John Hopkins' Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (Sands, paragraph 10-11). Bringing back the draft is a heretical thought nowadays. It use to be that everyone had an uncle or father who served in the arm forces. However those days are over (Omicinski, paragraph 3-6). Like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell opposes the draft. He contended that, the all-volunteer military has been able to meet manpower needs and has worked exceptionally well (Secretary of State, paragraph 1). Throughout the years, the quality of enlistees has risen, leaving the United States with its best military, in its history. More extraordinary is that it is assembled fully by volunteers (Ambrose, paragraph 2).
Engineers and scientist in Iraq are in a race with time. It is believed that they are trying to develop biological, nuclear, and chemical weapons. Not only are they trying to improve the functions of such weapons, but als...