The language in that document pales into insignificance compared to the stuff they threw at me when I was your age. In 1979, the draft was a recent memory, and I know for a fact that most of us thought it was going to come back. But it became obvious that it couldn't come back.
Look, let me give you one more thing to cheer you up. No nation in the history of the world has done more to substitute technology and firepower for manpower than has the US. People grumble a little if a drone is shot down or we use a few million-dollar cruise missles. They howl if a serviceman gets killed. This is not normal behavior in most countries with troops overseas. Today it takes so much to equip and train an American soldier that you are extremely unlikely to be called up even in an emergency, simply because it'll cost so much and take so long to train you that it's not likely to be worth it. Long, long before Bush (or Kerry) will resort to a draft, they'll withdraw the forces from the theater, because of the political and fiscal impact.
Look, let me give you one more thing to cheer you up. No nation in the history of the world has done more to substitute technology and firepower for manpower than has the US. People grumble a little if a drone is shot down or we use a few million-dollar cruise missles. They howl if a serviceman gets killed. This is not normal behavior in most countries with troops overseas. Today it takes so much to equip and train an American soldier that you are extremely unlikely to be called up even in an emergency, simply because it'll cost so much and take so long to train you that it's not likely to be worth it. Long, long before Bush (or Kerry) will resort to a draft, they'll withdraw the forces from the theater, because of the political and fiscal impact.
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