The United States Department of Defense Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The United States Department of Defense - Essay Example The United States Department of Defense An overview of the United States invasion in Iraq by the Bush administration can help one to gain an insight of why the contemporary US military needs to embrace the draft. While the US had earlier occupied numerous foreign lands—Germany, Japan, and on a lower scale in Kosovo among others—and helped to build relatively stable democratic governments in those countries, it failed to demonstrate this in the Iraq case. The military approach employed by the Bush administration saw the first democratically elected government of Iraq inherit a country widespread with assassinations, and kidnapping among other social ills. This is attributable to a miscalculation that saw the Bush admiration invade Iraq with a few troops. Further, the military of the day was sharply objected to the idea of sending more troops in Iraq when the country crumbled into a violent turmoil after the fall of Saddam. A school of thought in the military circles conceived all these ills that a transformed US military can be effective in a war with a minimal number of ground troops. True, the modern American military can manage to win a stunning battlefield. Nevertheless, such an instantiations force is not sufficient to secure peace—a critical aspect of the outcome of a war. Clearly, the modern all-volunteer American military could not have sustained the demand of the number of forces required in Iraq and continue deterring the American nation from threats elsewhere in the world. Adding the number of standing soldiers in the army may not have been a solution either. It is in view of this that the military draft should be adopted (MillitarySpot, Para 3). The underlying argument is that United States does not require a bigger standing army but rather a deep bench of well-trained soldiers who can be mobilized from their reserves to address the unpredictable but inescapable wars and other necessary humanitarian interventions of the future. The adoption of the military draft could go a long way in ensuring that the limitations of a surge in capacity of the al l-volunteer force do not hold the American society at a standstill when such a need arises. Indeed, history is clear that the American society has turned to the draft from time to time to offer an effective solution to the persistent issue of humanity crisis. While ideally it should not come in the shape of World War II mass combat mobilization or the Vietnam’s discriminatory conscription—because war advances as the nature of threats change—there is no doubt that a modern model of a draft is much-needed (Hod 9). Another argument in support of the military draft is evident from a look at the US military involvement in the past two decades. In these two decades, US has found it critical, in view of national security issues, to deploy over half a million military personnel oversees. Each at a time,