{"id":27466,"date":"2017-10-31T06:01:06","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T11:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27466"},"modified":"2017-10-31T06:01:06","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T11:01:06","slug":"bringing-back-the-draft-wont-stop-unnecessary-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27466","title":{"rendered":"Bringing Back the Draft Won\u2019t Stop Unnecessary Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bringing Back the Draft Won\u2019t Stop Unnecessary Wars<\/a><\/h3>\n
Conscripting soldiers neither stops unnecessary wars nor makes the death toll more egalitarian.<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Every now and then the old argument that the draft should be reinstated pops back up. Most recently it\u00a0appeared here at\u00a0The American Conservative<\/em><\/a>\u00a0in a piece by Dennis Laich and Lawrence Wilkerson that contended America\u2019s all-volunteer force is deeply unfair. Without directly stating it, they implied that the draft should be brought back.<\/p>\n

\u201cSaid more explicitly,\u201d they write, \u201cif the sons and daughters of members of Congress, of the corporate leadership, of the billionaire class, of the Ivy Leagues, of the elite in general, were exposed to the possibility of combat, would we have less war?\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems like a reasonable question. Fortunately, history gives us the answer:\u00a0No, we would not have less war.\u00a0In fact, when we\u2019ve had a draft we\u2019ve actually had\u00a0more\u00a0<\/em>war and more Americans killed in battle by several orders of magnitude.<\/p>\n

Conscription Leads to More Death<\/strong><\/p>\n

In one 33-year period from 1940 to 1973 when conscription was in effect, we had three of the largest wars in American history, resulting in 497,271 Americans killed. In the 44 years since the end of the draft, we\u2019ve engaged in a series of small overseas conflicts and three undeclared wars with about 7,000 Americans killed. About as many of our countrymen were killed in the Normandy landings than in all the wars since the end of the draft.<\/p>\n

America has never fought a war with volunteers in which more than 10,000 Americans were killed in action. America has never fought a war with draftees in which there were fewer than 30,000 KIAs. There is no question about it: our biggest and highest-casualty wars have been fought with drafted troops.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bringing Back the Draft Won\u2019t Stop Unnecessary Wars Conscripting soldiers neither stops unnecessary wars nor makes the death toll more egalitarian. Every now and then the old argument that the draft should be reinstated pops back up. Most recently it\u00a0appeared here at\u00a0The American Conservative\u00a0in a piece by Dennis Laich and Lawrence Wilkerson that contended America\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16794,5000,6859,9248,3404,14991,6763,8736,525,10739,6766,16793],"class_list":["post-27466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-brian-obrien","tag-casualties","tag-conscription","tag-death","tag-draft","tag-foundation-for-economic-education","tag-iraq-war","tag-korean-war","tag-military","tag-policy","tag-vietnam-war","tag-volunteer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27467,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27466\/revisions\/27467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}