The Draft - The Disconnect between the U.S. Military, Its Wars, and the American Public http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/04/the-draft/

There’s a new push to reinstate a Selective Service draft again. Two mainstream authors familiar with military history have put forth the reasons a re-instituted draft could solve a major problem facing this country – mainly, the loss of connection between the American public and the architects of our policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya.The professional all-volunteer military, journalist Jeff Shear states, is what rendered the military independent of civilian control and oversight.

He argues that switching to a draft is necessary because the volunteer forces have made it “easier for the U.S. to go to war with little public scrutiny.” Shear argues that the lack of a draft has had a shocking effect on foreign policy, making it possible to sustain war after war. “The professional military has taken the public out of the mix,” and the military is losing contact with the wider society.1The problem with this train of thought is that reinstituting the draft will neither guarantee a more democratically-controlled military nor solve the disconnect between the inner decision-making sanctum of the Pentagon and the American public. The Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is part and parcel of that circle.