Phil Carter is still on his we're going to have a draft kick. It's idiocy because it commits one of the cardinal sins in predicting the future, assuming that things will continue to move in a straight line. This is the "if we continue to do [x] at the current pace" fallacy.
We're a democratic republic. Our system is all about putting feedback loops in place that stop us from doing unnecessary harm to ourselves by making the pain of doing so a real impetus for party change and policy shift in the halls of government. I've yet to see any analysis that shows that this feedback process is broken. In other words we won't have a draft because we'll cut back on doing things with our military and take a breather before we have to impose a draft.
If that means that the Iraqis have to live with an insurgency for another two years over optimal, that's going to have to be the price paid to retain our own system's capacity to do another Iraq if necessary. In other words, we won't ruin a very good military manpower system in order to hurry a process that, while necessary for our own security, does not have a set "drop dead" date. Like every other time in our nation's history, the real world will see the voters and the political class continually making shifts in order to avoid doomsday scenarios. We've only really failed to do it once, over slavery, and I hardly think we're going to go to those extremes over the issue of shrinking the Gap.
Posted by TMLutas at March 23, 2005 11:52 AM