The Draft

I mentioned yesterday that Rudy Guiliani wants to add ten additional combat brigades to the Army. I don't see how that can be done without a draft.

Ten brigades means you need at least 90,000 soldiers to make them deployable and that does not count the additional Stateside contingent of extra recruiters, instructors, medical staff for the Army's infrastructure, people to help 70,000 or so additional families, etc., etc. By the time it's all done, you may need 150,000 soldiers in order to have ten deployable brigades.[1] That's going to translate into needing to recruit 15-20,000 additional soldiers every year (assuming some of the ones in the combat brigades who don't get maimed decide to re-up).

The evidence from the recruiting numbers is that the only way the Army can meet its current demand to recruit 80,000 soldiers a year is by recruiting a sizable number of idiots and criminals, which is why a fifth of the new soldiers are coming in under waivers. And that's even with paying very large signing bonuses to those who agree to be sent off as cannon fodder.

I don't see where they have a hope of recruiting 95-100,000 a year. Keep in mind that for decades, the African-American community was a good pool of recruits and that they have largely concluded that they are not interested in dying in the Chimperor's Imperial Wars.[2]

Without a draft, where will those additional soldiers come from?

But the neo-con war criminals cannot ever agree to a draft. The only way the Afghan and Iraq Wars can avoid sparking massive opposition is by relying on an all-volunteer force, even if it shatters the Army. Once going off to Chimpy's Wars becomes compulsory, the opposition will mushroom once the induction notices start going out. People who don't feel strongly about the wars now will feel strongly once their sons and daughters are drafted. And then the supporters of Chimpy's Wars will be slaughtered at the polls as surely as if they were photographed having sex with a sheep.

So, Rudy, forget about your ten extra combat brigades.

[1] This is a rough guess, as the Army had 33 combat brigades/cavalry teams and just under 500,000 active duty soldiers in 2001.

[2] It's not that Blacks are not interested in serving their country, by the way. It more seems that the consensus is that Blacks are not as willing to go die for a lie than white folks. Those in the Wingnut blogosphere who have been saying "James Watson was right" might want to ask yourselves why this is so.