Backdraft

Back Draft

Back Draft

The United States ended the use of the draft, also known as conscription, in 1973 after the Vietnam War. Since then, the U.S. has relied upon an all-volunteer military force. The all-volunteer force is now engaged in on-going wars in several countries that is spreading military numbers thin. Recruiting and retention of new troops is so difficult, our country will eventually have to re-instate the draft.

To help alleviate the need, the government has been keeping troops in longer than their signed and sworn contracts (Stewart, 2005), which is basically a draft already. If another event, perhaps nuclear threats from Iran, and other anti-American countries arise, the U.S. will not have enough service members to deploy; therefore making it a good choice to restart the drafting of civilians to fight for their way of life.

Some speculate, apparently opposing the draft, or military service, that the United States is fine, meeting recruitment numbers and retaining plenty of troops. On the contrary, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report states:

According to DOD data, the active and reserve components generally met their enlisted aggregate recruiting goals for fiscal years 2000 to 2004. However, it should be noted that the "stop loss" policy implemented by several components shortly after September 11, 2001, might have facilitated these components in meeting their overall recruiting goals for fiscal year 2002 and beyond. A "stop loss" policy requires some service members to remain in the military beyond their contract separation or retirement date. Keeping service members on active duty longer can reduce the number of new people the services need to recruit to maintain end strength. For example, the Army, which has implemented some form of "stop loss" since December 4, 2001, has required several thousand service members to remain on active duty beyond their contractual separation or retirement date. (Stewart, 2005, p. 5)

Stop-loss is being labeled by some as a "back-door draft" (Thompson & Zabriske, 2004, Ð'¶ 9), as it keeps soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines in past their normal contract time. Stop- loss is permissible due to the fact that the contracts include active time and reserve time, where the member can be re-called to active service for usually four additional years after end of active service. The act of stop-loss generally overrides the theory of an all-volunteer force, and results in poor troop morale (Thompson & Zabriske, 2004).

Many of the American troops' morale are declining due to repetitious deployments with little time spent at home. Troops are going back overseas for their second, third, and fourth tours with very little training time and time to spend with their families (Baldor, 2007). For this new year, the troop increase has the Pentagon wondering how to determine which units to keep in theatre for multiple rotations. An Associated Press writer reports:

Military leaders are struggling to choose Army units to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan longer or go there earlier than planned, but five years of war have made fresh troops harder to find. Faced with a military buildup in Iraq that could drag into next year, Pentagon officials are trying to identify enough units to keep up to 20 brigade combat teams in Iraq. (Baldor, 2007, p. 1)

In an effort to bolster numbers, the Army has taken measures such as raising the maximum age limit for enlistment from 34 to 41 years old (Gettelman, 2007). The Army has relaxed other rules allowing maximum body fat to be higher, tattoos to be exposed in uniform, more recruits can enter with serious criminal records, and they can also have waivers for more medical conditions (Gettelman, 2007). The relaxed requirements are now becoming common among all branches, as a means to attract the people that they need to fill the spots that are required for America's thin-running military.

Would the United States really need a draft? Many politicians are debating it, although it mostly gets squashed right away. Time Magazine states:

Maybe not, but there is plenty of evidence that the U.S. need to find more troops. Deployed in more than 120 nations around the world, from Iraq to Mongolia, the nation's fighting forces are stretched, by all accounts, to the breaking point. Since 9/11, the number of active-duty and reservist troops deployed overseas has shot up from 203,000 to 500,000. All the Army's combat brigades have been dispatched into war zones over the past two years; some have already gone twice. The demands of war in Iraq and Afghanistan have forced the U.S. to keep some units on a constant combat footing, sharply reducing the recuperation and retraining period that military experts say is essential to maintain a first-rate Army. (Thompson & Zabriskie, 2004, p. 55)

If a draft is not needed, then where does the U.S. intend on getting the people that are not volunteering? The military is starting to show the strains it is bearing from the long deployments and lack of appeal it has to newer generations, by the lower recruitment numbers. The Army National Guard reported that for the first time in a decade, it fell five thousand members short of its annual goal for