[krschultz]

One of the 'advantages' of national service is that it spreads the cost of war more equitably to the country. For that reason I support it. I was of the right age to have gone to Iraq or Afghanistan. Many of my friends did. I actually considered joining at a couple points.

My parents were very much in favor of the wars. They also were 100% adamant that I could not join the military.

With national service, that choice doesn't really get to get made. I feel that over the last 10+ years, the wars were out of sight and out of mind for a lot of people because their kids weren't at risk. I feel like the questions would have been a lot harder on the gov't if we still had a draft going on.

Interestingly, the US armed services absolutely 100% do not want the draft. They get less oversight without a draft. The all volunteer force is higher quality and there are fewer issues with people going AWOL, and people are more likely to stick around so training costs are lower. I think the people that don't want a draft are those that could be drafted (totally understandable, I wouldn't actually want to go to a war myself), and those that like their wars without having to deal with the costs.

[nick_riviera]

Thanks for a constructive and well thought out reply.

[mikeash]

I find it frightening that people support slavery because of vague and unsupported ideas about how it will influence public opinion.

I can kind of sort of understand the people who say that the draft should be used for national defense when fighting a critical war. I disagree, but I can see their point of view. But I can't understand at all the idea that we should force every person of a certain age (I'm assuming we won't leave women out anymore) into involuntary servitude because it might get people to think more carefully about waging war.