Gangs in the Military

shogun
Sun, 20 Aug 2006 17:11:50 +0000

“I would not want to have anyone by my side in combat who hadn’t volunteered for duty.”

There might be some Civil War, Korean War, and WW2 vets who would disagree with you. All three of those wars were fought with a HUGE number of men who were conscripted into service:

Some numbers—

WWI: (Sept. 1917-Nov. 1918) 2,810,296 draftees
WWII: (Nov. 1940-Oct. 1946) 10,110,104 draftees
Korea: (June 1950-June 1953) 1,529,539 draftees
Vietnam: (Aug 1964- Feb 1973) 1,857,304 draftees

I was unable to find a number for the civil war, but I remember my US History–Lincoln called for a conscription which resulted in rioting in several northern cities. There were thousands conscripted in the north to fight to preserve the Union. It would be nice if everyone was a volunteer, but unless we are only going to wage war on a small scale, its just not practical when it comes time to take and occupy territory.

I would submit that none of these wars could have been successfully prosecuted without a draft.

Look at WW2—probably the one war most supported by the general population since the Civil War, yet we still needed to draft over 10 million men to fight it. I think if you did some research, you would find a significant number of highly decorated veterans from all of these wars were drafted into the service.