Beautiful. This post on a DKos diary about the Backdoor draft was a frontal assault on the freshly hatched chicken hawks that have NO GOOD ANSWER when someone brings up the draft and whether they’d serve in Iraq..This is actually a combination of two posts by this person for context…

The draft IS coming. It has to come, or we can’t maintain strength.

On a related note, I sat on a promotion board on Saturday. The soldiers we boarded, Specialists and Corporals, were mostly average soldiers. Only 10 out of 80 made the ‘promote now’ list. The others all go on an Order of Merit list. No surprise there, and some will improve significantly by the next board in a year. In peacetime, 10 would be more than needed, and we’d have the pick of the litter. The problem will come with the fact that we will obviously need more than 10 new Sergeant Team Leaders, as so many first- and second-term soldiers are getting out. The quality of the NCO corps will begin to degrade. Our professional NCO corps is our ace in the hole. The best people are the ones leaving–not terribly surprising either–they’re smart enough to get out while they can. The longer this goes on, the more average guys we’ll have to promote, and eventually, the below average ones will start getting the nod.

…The young people I meet on campus and elsewhere who support the war, who think that Iraq had something to do with 9/11, who are, in short, rabid republicans, get real quiet when I ask them when they will join up. As one swaggering young man who called me an ‘anti-american liberal’ with that dripping hate they have, was shocked to learn about my other life said, ‘that’s not my role.’ I said that I needed soldiers, not cheerleaders. I told him I thought he was a pathetic coward who only believed in things when someone else’s ass was on the line. He stood up from his table with balled fists. “Swing at me and I’ll kill you where you stand,” I said. I was pissed at that moment, and everybody in earshot knew it. He didn’t move. “Sit your ass down, little boy.” I said, growling now, and he did so. Then I said “things are a little different when it’s your ass on the line, isn’t it?” Then I walked out.

Can we draft him first?

PTI 961