An unpopular viewpoint

So people join the military to get out of poverty - so drafting persons from poverty will work how? Have we forgotten Vietnam? How many politicians used their pull to keep family members out? You don't think that would happen today?

Compelling someone to serve when they don't want to is ridiculous. If they wanted to, they'd volunteer. Forcing poelple to serve to "change perceptions or values" will not work. If our nation being attacked on 9/11 is not enough to show people what's at stake, how would forcing them to join the military make it so?

The idea is that drafts are fairly traumatic. We only resort to them when we are in trouble already.

They worked well in WWI and WWII. Less so in Korea in part because the Chinese were willing to sacrifice more men than we were. And in Vietnam, we were facing a very intelligent enemy we had helped master how to fight established governments in a country that provided ample cover. They also worked in the Civil war but were unpopular because they were, as you say, the effect was to simply draft the poor.

My main requirement is that the Senators and Congressmen should think of their own families possibly having to serve in a war before the give authorization. The President needs to understand that his own relatives may be involved (one of the few things I respect about Mao was the fact that he sent his own son into Korea as a footsoldier, and his son was ultimately killed in that war).

We as Americans need to know the stakes are personal *before* we go in. Otherwise we run from trouble once we have stirred it up, as I fear we will do in Iraq.

Just because we disagree on some things doesn't mean there isn't room for disagreement on others.

FWIW, I think we need revitalized manufacturing industries in the US. But I don;t think it is possible to compete with the sort of factories we had in the past. The key is that because our costs are higher here, we have to do more with less. This means more automation, and fewer, but higher paying, jobs. One of my major projects is creating a free/open source supply management program for manufacturing businesses.