Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

[John Kelsey]

>From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
>Sent: Nov 21, 2004 9:23 PM
>To: John Young <jya at pipeline.com>, cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net
>Subject: Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

...
>By the way, John, did you know that Bush Is Going To Revive The Draft???

I know this is currently known to be false by all informed opinion, but I don't think it's crazy to worry about it.  If we want to fight high-tech wars like the invasion of Iraq, lots of conscript troops aren't that useful.  If we want to occupy places like Iraq, we need people to do the occupying, and it's clear that there's some strain on our forces now.  
Conscript troops might very well be useful for that kind of work.  Suppose we invade and occupy Iran next.  Where will the soldiers needed to hold down occupied territory come from?  Suppose we follow up with Syria, which is surely about as repressive and nasty a place as Saddam's Iraq.  

Three things are very clear about the current situation:

a.  A lot of people are finding out that their military obligations are going to be longer and much less pleasant than they expected.  This is going to have a big impact on recruiting in the future.

b.  If we just want to hold down what we've got, we have enough troops to do it, but if we want to really go on a democratizing bender in the Middle East, we'll need more troops.  

c.  It's not at all clear we won't be taking some action against Iran in the next year.  Hopefully, that won't involve invading them, but it could.  

>Cheers,
>RAH

--John