A GWOT draft has been a left-wing fantasy for some time now, most notably pushed by Charlie Rangel to the cheers of the nutroots. The idea is to fill the streets with thousands of kids burning draft cards and recreate the antiwar movement of the 1960s. So even though neither Senator McCain nor the Pentagon leadership has called for conscription, the Huffington Post tries to get the ball rolling anyway:
McCain is not joking when he talks about his war policy. He wants to continue the Iraq War. He pledges to increase the US commitment to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell (and, by the way, he knows how to catch him, he just has not told George Bush). He also speaks of other wars. He has 4 choices. He can call for a draft. He can wind down the Iraq War, and deploy some, but not all the forces to Afghanistan. He can get sufficient volunteers. He can get allies to add troops. Well, people are just not volunteering in sufficient numbers. The allies are pulling, not adding, troops. So, he is down to a draft or winding down the war. He said he will not do the latter. What’s left? He will not tell you this, but here is the answer: he will have to call for a military draft, period. The military would prefer not to do it, draftees are more difficult to train and form into cohesive fighting forces. But, there is no other way to fight all his wars, at the level he wishes to fight them. No, McCain is not joking about his war policies. He just will not tell the truth about the implications. He will, of course, deny vigorously when challenged that they require a military draft.
This is a particularly silly argument even by HuffPo standards. There’s no question that the military is overstretched, but no serious analyst is advocating a draft, publicly or otherwise. And this is for one simple reason–the Army, like other branches of the service, is still meeting, and exceeding, its recruitment targets, and all while increasing the overall size of the force:
HT: Instapundit
