Reply #3: I agree with Rangel. [View All]

[The Devils Advocate]

Our military is currently all volunteer, but in a way that is also all mercenary. It is easier to rationalize someone's death if they died doing something they volunteered for. If people were to be conscripted against their will and made to kill and die in a faraway land, the public attitude would be very different.

This assumes that the draft is administered fairly. If it becomes a rascist/classist endeavor which sacrifices the poor and minorities while protecting the privelaged, well that will lead to the sort of problems which resulted in the popular movements of the sixties.

Either way, a conscription in this country would lead to a mass uprising, and I am all for it.