"(US) Army to Recall Retired, Discharged Soldiers "

xpost and selective service will rumoredly go up to 34 this time, men & women.

Technically, the draft was already in place. Selective Service and the draft had been operating constantly from 1948 to 1973 with the numbers selected varying depending on troop level needs. The main change was the switch to a lottery system in December 1969

The agency already has a special system to register and draft health care personnel ages 20 to 44 in more than 60 specialties if necessary in a crisis. According to Flahavan, the agency will expand this system to be able to rapidly register and draft computer specialists and linguists, should the need ever arise. But he stressed that the agency has received no request from the Pentagon to do so.

:(

my aero/electrical degrees might just prove useful after all!

There's some homeless guys on Market St. that would be stoked to be called up... a tent in Iraq and three squares a day is better than they're getting now.

Well, it's bad only in the sense that the people in this contingent have gone through life not really expecting to see action. And at this late juncture, they're sort of the equivalent of the Volksturm,
the middle-aged and old man call-up Germany employed when the war was clearly lost. Hint.

In truth, the US has been trying to wage its war on terror on the cheap, without exposing too many of the voters at home to genuine hardship. In terms of serious war, a 133,000 man deployment in Iraq isn't -- serious. Heck, in World War II the US Army put 70,000 men ashore at Anzio in Italy, a beachhead that the Germans essentially turned into the largest prisoner-of-war camp in the western theatre. President Bush, of course, has been known to invoke World War II in comparisons with the present conflict.

I believe we have to face more widespread pain so that there will be a decision on whether we want a war like the war on drugs -- an ideology and philosophy, something that goes on forever because the government and military complex are allowed to entirely determine the pursuit of it -- or a war with an end.

A jolt of reality, like more people having to serve, more family agony in the states, would perhaps galvanize people to the point where they want a war prosecuted briskly, with goals and real leadership. And a certain finishing point at which the military is withdrawn from the field, not left around to free-lance its own thing and randomly annihilate the Middle Eastern locals it's in contact with.

This is FUCKED.

That strikes me as no good, George, the support of a draft for reasons of "I told ya so". I'm not for increased tension or dead bodies for the purpose of being galvanized.

I'm really hopin' the mentally ill defense will fly since I'm not out of the weeds on the age thing if they raise it up to 34. I know I've got the doctors to sign the papers (and it wouldn't be bullshit). I just hope it's a viable illness to the army.

Yes, it certainly does. It is just frustrating that it had to come to this, I guess.

I can only imagine what the logistical non-combat personnel needs are going to be as the war continues.

It's not only this administration. Many Americans believe a great deal of the hooey that passes for discussions on the nature of US military might. They believe in gadgets and the neverending funding for the development of war devices and mechanisms said to be needed to fight the battle against terror. But none of this crap is of any use in Iraq. And limited use elsewhere.

For example, JDAMs -- the revolutionizing precision computer-guided bomb package --is not useful at when all the intelligence programming its targeting is rotten to the core. The US has hit NO leadership targets with such things. The bombs, of course, land with pinpoint precision on things of little value or civilians painted by bad intelligence or even fortification which are thought to exist, but which do not.

No army or insurgency anywhere can take the field head-on against a detachment of M1 tanks. But it doesn't matter, now. The depleted uranium ammo, the poison-gas proof fighting compartment, the computerized gun layer, none are of any particular merit against
a segment of armed populace that doesn't care if you have superior firepower.

The detachment can flatten a block in any city in Iraq without suffering casualties and all this does is get on every foreign news channel in the region and inflame more people. So it is possible to win every small engagement with your techno-might, suffer trivial casualties, and lose the war strategically.

The US military is an overwhelming blunt force instrument. If it's all that's needed, we always win. But if it cannot meet an enemy head-on, the current American way of doings things, or doctrine, gets it into trouble and does not field a war-winning strategy.

And I'm not talking about an "I told ya so" thing. The burden of conflict must be shared more evenly as must the decision-making regarding war. The citizenry has largely ceded the role to "experts"
within the complex and if this doesn't change, there will never be and end to it. The complex is very good at extending things and identifying new enemies, even where none exist.

So weight what is going on. Is it more a pointless "sitzkrieg" in which political leaders and military men go on TV to announce periodic events, news of new enemies no one imagined, and the need for strength in the face of long, maybe never-ending slog against evil by the forces of light? Or is it a war in which the existence of this country is threatened and everyone is at risk?

I don't feel at risk. I'm not worried about family in Pennsylvania.
I did feel that a friend who went on a one-year tour to Iraq was in danger.

And so I don't think it's much of a war as it is something that's been self-created out of overreaction to 9/11 and something that has a very solid chance of being self-perpetuating.

http://www.sfreviews.com/graphics/Joe%20Haldeman_1974_The%20Forever%20War.gif

Yes he was. As I recall he was drafted and spent a year in Vietnam.