THE LEFT: "Our military is a mercenary force; we need the draft!"

Another FABULOUS post by Betsy of BETSY'S PAGE (hat tip Lorie Byrd at POLIPUNDIT):

David M. Kennedy has a column today bemoaning the thought that today's soldiers are mercenaries. Apparently, it is bad for society when our armed services fight for money rather than being drafted. ... What Kennedy is really advocating is some sort of return to the draft so that the population would be more involved in the war. ... I think this all part of the same push that Charles Rangel had last year saying that we needed a draft because if there were a draft the war would be more unpopular and there would be more of an anti-war movement in the country. ... But how many times does the military have to say that they don't want everyone serving? They want people who have gone through their special training and who are committed to the military for a certain set time and aren't looking to get out as soon as their year is up. Rumsfeld has said over and over that he is not looking for a draft. ... So, Kennedy's call for national service is based more on what he thinks would be good for the country's character than for the country's military. There is no way that having a bunch of disgruntled draftees in the forces is going to be a good thing for the military. ... You can see that that is what Kennedy is truly worried about: "This is not a healthy situation. It is, among other things, a standing invitation to the kind of military adventurism that America's founders correctly feared was the greatest danger of standing armies - a danger made manifest in their day by the career of Napoleon Bonaparte, whom Jefferson described as having 'transferred the destinies of the republic from the civil to the military arm.'"

Does Professor Kennedy really believed that we went in to Afghanistan and Iraq to conquer them in the same way that Napoleon went in to Spain and Russia? I'm sure he knows his 19th century history very well; I wish he were more familiar with his 21st history.

This is merely an excerpt of a very thorough post - WITH GREAT LINKS AND EXCERPTS. READ THE WHOLE THING!