Military Draft

General Michael Sullivan is usually critical of the New York times. but with the comment "An excellent article why we don't need the draft", he forwards a piece from that paper, of which here is an excerpt:

 Don't Dumb Down The Military. By Nathaniel Fick
 
WASHINGTON: I went to war as a believer in the citizen-soldier. My college study of the classics idealized Greeks who put down their plows for swords, returning to their fields at the end of the war. As a Marine officer in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, I learned that the victors on today's battlefields are long-term, professional soldiers. Thus the increasing calls for reinstating the draft - and the bills now before Congress that would do so - are well intentioned but misguided. Imposing a draft on the military I served in would harm it grievously for years.
 
For the full text of the article, see the online edition of the New York Times (7/20/04)