Purchase
The Crisis in Our Military and Why Selective Service Is Wrong for America
Random House
September 2006
On Sale: September 1, 2006
256 pages
ISBN: 0891418954
EAN: 9780891418955
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction Political
The draft may be on its way back and both Republicans and Democrats are offering compelling arguments for its return. This book tells us why it can't happen again. The Army and National Guard are missing their monthly recruiting quotas by fifteen to twenty-five percent. The Marines have missed their recruitment goals for the first time in ten years. Educational and fitness standards have dropped. Liberal use of stop-loss orders is growing. Never has the gap between what we claim to be ready to do militarily and what we have available to do it been greater than now, and a crisis is looming. With the neocons in favor of continuing the war on terror finding the draft more and more an unavoidable option, and some liberals seeing conscription as an answer to social inequality, this strange alliance could make the draft more than a pipe-dream. But according to Gold, a retired Marine officer, conscription is a bad idea no matter which side of the political spectrum it comes from. He shows that conscription has been used in bad faith ever since the Civil War and is completely out of line with what the founders of this country meant it to be. Gold argues that reinstating the draft without sweeping reforms, including restrictions on the ability of a president to enter into foreign wars unilaterally, would be wrong both on moral and constitutional grounds.
 Media BuzzNewsHour with Jim Lehrer - October 17, 2006
| 
© 2003-2026