That is interesting. Kinda surprised that isn't done already, Maybe advertise especially in areas with a high level of immigration to the US like Mexico or connections to the US like the Philippines?
WI: Bush tries the draft
- Thread starter Armored Diplomacy
- Start date
That is interesting. Kinda surprised that isn't done already, Maybe advertise especially in areas with a high level of immigration to the US like Mexico or connections to the US like the Philippines?
I meant actively recruit from all over the world. Maybe create an American Foreign Legion, modeled on the French Foreign Legion and Spanish Legion.
Another idea would be to let them join the US military without a separate unit for them, but create an entire government institution dedicated to foreign recruitment. All those illegal immigrants, all those people marrying US citizens just for a Green Card, all those parents of anchor babies, and all those going through the many trials that involves getting US citizenship can be told that there is a much simpler way in.
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It was Democrat Rep Charlie Rangle that introduced the draft bills in 2003 and 2004. It would be interesting if he was successful. The President could call it the Rangle Draft Reauthorization Act and lay the blame squarily on the Dems feet. After all I don't think Bush has the power to restart the draft on his own.
And it'd have to be rather bigger than OTL for him to do that, too. Otherwise the only way Bush Jr. gets away with the draft would be ASB intervention where the US got ISOTed to WWII, Drakaverse, or 1984-world.
Marc A
Good thing the Soviets didn't invade western Europe at the time. Although I suppose being a consciouen... Crickey, I can't spell it.. objecter would be impossible when somebody's shooting at you. Unlike VC, I think the Red Army would be shooting something with a little more umpf than AK-47s.
Why would the U.S have a draft given the nature of the conflicts? with Afghanistan Initially we invaded a country and ousted the Taliban out of power, although the ending of that could have been alot better. With Iraq we invaded a country we along with allies beat in six months, we weren't trying to prob up a corrupt regime in the middle of a war backed by foreign powers. Given how well the draft was received it would suicide, unless the War on Terror still happens in some for without the U.S involvement in Vietnam.
For the most part the Cold War draftees were as good as the Volunteers of the era. Most did not want to be there, but also did not want a bad service record to screw with them when thier term was up. In the Viet Nam era a less than honorable discharge could make your employment outlook dismal.
So Oliver Stone aside the overwhelming majority were very good if properly led. If they lacked adult leadership as Stone depicted in "Platoon" then yes they sucked. Fortunatly most did have adult leadership. An example Elvis was considered an excellent soilder by his leaders, yet Hendrix a volunteer was booted out as sub par.
I don't know. The Vietnam era draft dodgers would probably be yelling for the illegal immigrants to go back to whatever rock they crawled out from.
MacCaulay
Banned
The French don't actively recruit. They just kind of rely on the fact that everyone knows about the French Foreign Legion.
The whole idea of kind of hyping the "military enlistment as the road to citizenship" is a good idea, though.
I'd totally support it. I'd even support adding some extra manpower the the DoD to handle it. I just think there'd be some cries from the Left about it. Hell, I think this board would not be a fan. "your using immigration to support the military industrial complex" and whatnot.
Nearly ASB due to a lot of factors.
a) All parts of the political spectrum would be against it. No politician wants to tell the voters that their children are going to be drafted. Especially during an eternal War on Terror.
b) The military don't want the draft back, and don't want to pay for expanding bases, training facilities etc to accept all conscripts.
c) The US military didn't need the enormous amount of 18 years old that are available in the US.
d) A lot of legal / technical problems would arise. Would the draft include women? If not, would such an exclusion be legal? Would students at university level be included? What happens to homosexuals?
e) How would conscripts be integrated with professional soldiers? Would they serve in the same units, or separatly? How would volounteers be handled in a draft system?
f) It would due to the above take years to get conscripts ready for combat, and the US military needed them NOW! Stop-loss, bonuses for re-upping etc meant that trained soldiers were kept available for longer. Simply enlarging the Army and Marines meant that existing units would get more replacements in half a year, simply to plug in the existing system.
With citizenship yes. But these guys are already legal immigrants in US. To offer Green Card to volunteers from around the world, or at least illegal immigrants who volunteer for few years is totally different game.
the draft will never be activated unless we have a really dire national emergency. About the only way Bush would activate it would be if terrorist attacks keep happening over and over and over, requiring us to be militarily involved in lots of other places besides Iraq and Afghanistan... say Iran goes nuts (well, more than usual) and loudly declares to one and all that they are behind a lot of them, and then Pakistan says 'yeah, us too!" and assorted other nations say the same thing. That might do it.
Can you say, "ASB"? I knew you could...
Can you say, "ASB"? I knew you could...
I wonder... It seems to me that they might get a lot quicker to wash people out and abandon much pretense of trying to get people through whether they like it or not.
There's honestly a pretty good case to be made for this, especially if you do it properly, with citizenship guarantees, aliases on enlistment and some of the other stuff that has traditionally gone along with the French legion. Or at least there WAS a case for it when the military was more focused on meeting quotas than downsizing. Might also be a good idea when the immigration system makes the IMO inevitable (talking about the next few decades, not years though) switch to being about recruiting as many as it can find. I suppose the current acceptance of foreign citizens is part way there, but there aren't real guarantees of citizenship as far as I know, and it definitely isn't all that actively pursued (whether we should go promoting it overseas or not).
As far as how it could happen, what comes to mind would be a limited medical draft. I don't believe they were all that hard up for doctors, but there was definitely a shortage of medics at the height of the two wars. If things got much worse than OTL I could see a pretty generalized draft of EMTs and nursing students at least being discussed.
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Another ASB idea is that someone comes up with the great idea after reading "Starship Troopers" that to have a job in any way connected to the Federal government that they have to have had served and any one under 35 has a choice of joining the military or get laid off.
