With military recruitment numbers down, it was probably only a matter of time before someone from the Washington swamp bruited the idea of restoring the military draft.
Joe Plenzler, whose biography here suggests he's more than a little familiar with the swamp, wrote an op-ed for Military.com, via Tom Knighton, calling for this:
It's time to change how our country fills the ranks of our military.
…
The fastest and most effective way to resolve this recruiting crisis is to change how we recruit.
Instead of an "either an all-volunteer force or a fully conscripted force" model, I propose a both-and solution.
We should have our military recruiters sign up new troops for 11 months out of the year, and then have the Selective Service draft the delta between the military's needs and the total number recruited.
This model would alleviate the incredible pressure on our recruiters, lower the cost of finding new troops, and significantly reduce the much decried civilian-military gap by subjecting all of America's youth -- rich and poor -- to the possibility of military service via the draft.
Which, no matter how seemingly palatable the modified proposal, is still a restoration of the military draft and all its unpopular aspects, done to boost military recruitment numbers.
We have a history in this country of the military draft not working out as well as they thought it would work out -- in Vietnam, but also in the Civil War, both of which saw rebellion and riots as a result, but no matter.
Drafts the world over are sources of problems -- in Russia, we are hearing news of recruitment centers being burned down. We are also hearing of mass immigration, which we are seeing in Russia and Ukraine right now. That's also is why many of our ancestors came here to the states, including my own -- my Mennonite ancestors on the Swiss side were pacifists who had no intention of participating in war, while my Prussian ancestors really, really, really didn't want to serve in the inhuman conditions of Frederick the Great army and all its military exploits.
They lead to strange problems with age mis-matches, too, as we have seen in Singapore, where marriage rates are low because all men there are called to compulsory military service while women go to college, graduating two years earlier than men, which many in Singapore say contributes to fewer marriages and families forming. That may not affect us the same way here in the states, but the point here is that they are unpopular, Ron Paul has called them a type of slavery, and they are full of unintended consequences.
Which is no solution.
Plenzler is right that military recruitment numbers are down.
According to the information from this excellent slideshow from the Wall Street Journal (which appears to be free to view without a subscription), the Army expects to fall 15,000 short of its 65,000 recruitment target. The Navy forecasts a 10,000 recruitment shortfall from its goal of 38,000 recruits. The Air Force is expected to be 3,000 recruits short of its 27,000 recruitment goals, and only the Marines have reached their 33,000 recruitment goal target -- with difficulty.
Only nine percent of young people aged 16-21 said they would even consider serving in the military, down from 13% in the pre-pandemic year of (presumably) 2019.
In addition, some 77% of young people couldn't get into military service even if they wanted to, owing to obesity, drug use, lack of physical fitness, health problems, or criminal records, up from 71% in 2013.
Most recruits now who sign on come from military family backgrounds, meaning, recruits from new sources are not being reached, or else are rejecting the idea.
And what a coincidence that one is: Joe Biden's new Secretary of the Army, Christine Wormuth, said she wanted to discourage this pool of recruits from military service in order to prevent a "warrior caste" from forming, a horse that left that barn a long time ago. It's an ominous statement, though, given that it sends the message to children of military servicemen that they may be discriminated against if they sign up as less favored than others. Who needs that? The children of servicemembers seem to be taking her up on her dis-invitation. She has no business discouraging anyone from enlisting in the military for her wokester purposes, given the Army's recruiting deficit which is the worst in the military.
The Journal attributes these recruiting shortfalls to the pandemic (read: lockdowns), the extended and failed military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the scandals over shoddy military housing and health care, lousy pay for service members in the lower ranks, forcing those with families to survive on food stamps, and the soaring rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and military suicides.
Sound like a nice place to be?
That probably isn't all of it, either. A couple of things they could have added to their list were the COVID vax mandates that saw thousands of productive military members expelled from service -- a horrible thing, given the problems the vaxes are causing for young people who did take the vaccine these days, and the wokester practices now permeating military life, making young white male recruits always the bad guys with something to apologize for, along with the promotion of drag shows on military bases, plus the series of carveouts for always-medically-needy transgender service members which other members are not exempted from, along with the "free surgery" incentive that serve to draw those mentally ill people into the service, which is severely disruptive to military order. Who needs that?
Instead of fix those problems, starting with bringing back the expelled military members who rejected the vaccine mandate, (which was rejected by Democrats in Congress the other day), they now want to dragoon the unwilling into military service to meet recruitment goals. Nobody's talking about reforming the service to make it the kind of outfit young people might see as beneficial to serve in. Wormuth attributes it to bad press, but she and characters like Gen. Mark Milley, the lion of Afghanistan and caller of the Chinese, are where the bad press comes from. All the potential recruits can see is that they'll live on starvation wages if they have families, while the military consultant and contractor class wallows in wealth and cost-overruns, be subject to corrupt contractors on military housing, have no choice in schools, have possibly substandard health care that they can't get out of, and be forced to fight useless wars that fatten the Washington swamp which has a vested interest in their continuation.
Sound like an organization that might just need a few reforms? The military needs to reform itself first before any talk of a draft should come up. Scrap the draft talk altogether because that's a full plate.
Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit
Image: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, via Picryl // Public Domain Dedication