More on the Draft

Rumours of a draft persist even though I discounted them in February and No Draft.

Rohan Pearce in his GreenLeft Weekly article Will ‘imperial overreach' lead to the draft?.

A January 28 letter to Congress by members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) — the right-wing think-tank that has provided much of the blueprint for the Bush administration foreign policy — called for an increase in the size of the US armed forces to crush any Third World resistance to Washington's aggressive post-9/11 empire building.

...

The PNAC letter accused the Bush regime of failing to increase US ground forces to “the size needed to meet today's (and tomorrow's) missions and challenges”. The signatories advocated a combined increase in the number of active duty troops in the US Army and Marine Corps of “at least 25,000” per year for “the next several years”.

One conclusion is that a selective draft, especially of medical personnel

... despite the undoubted political cost such a move would have, and despite the White House's denials, a draft, particularly one aimed at reversing deficiencies in important skills in the US military, remains on the agenda. ...

I remember reading in the New Republic Online shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks that the editors thought it was a good time to introduce a draft then. I suppose the Bush administration beleived it could rely on the flow of volunteers like Pat Tillman to bolster the armed forces. Now it finds that recruiting goals are not being and it is more explosive politically introduce a general draft now. What the Bush administration needs is another attack by Al-Qaeda to bolster the administration's fortunes.