There is much to be said in favor of a voluntary military, but on the debit side there is this: only those with 'skin in the game' -- either their own or that of their loved ones -- properly appreciate the costs of foreign military interventions. I say that as a conservative, not a libertarian.
There is also this to consider: In the bad old days of the draft people of different stations -- to use a good old word that will not be allowed to fall into desuetude, leastways not on my watch -- were forced to associate with one another -- with some good effects. It is 'broadening' to mingle and have to get along with different sorts of people. And when the veteran of foreign wars returns and takes up a profession in, say, academe, he brings with him precious hard-won experience of all sorts of people in different lands in trying circumstances. He is then more likely to exhibit the sense of a Winston Churchill as opposed to the nonsense of a Ward Churchill.
One of the reasons Obama is such a disaster as a president is that his experience does not extend beyond the merely verbal: that of the adjunct law professor and the senator. He is well-spoken and talks a good game, but his talk rarely hooks onto reality. He is a master of the manifold modes of mendacity. Compare him with Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces. Ike couldn't pronounce 'nuclear' but he knew something about the world. He saw the Nazi extermination camps and demanded that the atrocities be recorded for history.
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