Just a couple of items.....

Last Christmas I was given a daily calendar called "This day in U.S. Military History".  I've found it personally interesting... especially for those dates involving the Revolutionary War and our Civil War since I'm very interested in American history - especially the history which involved my paternal family line since about 1650 (and any maternal lines I can find). 

However, of interest, on the 16th of September I note that "United States imposes the draft".  It says, "On this day in 1940, the Burke-Wadsworth Act is passed by Congress, by wide margins in both houses, and the first peacetime draft in the hisory of the United States is imposed. Selective Service was born!

It not only preceded our involvement in WWII which was declared in December of 1941 but continued on long enough for me to almost be drafted for the Korean Peace Action. In January 1950, I was number 16 on the draft list for that month in Santa Clara County in California so I immediately enlisted in the Unites States Air Force where I might have a better chance of doing something more useful rather than kill the enemy - or be killed!

I served my time well, I think, and was more successful in doing good for my country (and myself) during my four year stint in the USAF than I would as "canon fodder" in a campaign which has historically received mixed blessings as a justifiable war -- the first of several later wars which, I think have been totally unjustifiable!  Most important for me, of course, is that I survived!

We don't have the draft now having opted to hire a mercenary military. The reason for this, of course, is that when one's children are faced with being drafted during wartime, as one of my kids were....  and the war is not popular, the government which favors war has a serious political problem! So the draft was eliminated and the Vietnam war was ended just before my son would have had to serve. So, no problem, right?

Actually, not right! ....because how else can the parents of a nation's children object to their country going to war because, after all, their children are volunteers?  Obviously those who go to war are willing to go to war! Isn't it interesting that all males in Switzerland must serve in the nation's military?  Switzerland hasn't gone to war within my lifetime of eighty years!

I think that probably the only way to end our warlike behavior is to re-invoke the draft!