Daft About The Draft.

The San Diego Union Tribune does an unscientific reader poll every week. This week's poll asks readers to state whether they support reactivating the draft or keeping the military all volunteer. (Here.)

The poll is unscientific because it makes no attempt to collect answers from a representative sample of the population. Also its questions tend to be argumentative. This week's poll is no exception as the "yes" question demonstrates.

"Yes, a draft is only fair. We want our armed forces to be drawn from the entire nation, not just our poor and minority communities. And with a draft, the nation would be more cautious about using military force abroad."

The reality is that the demographics of the volunteer US military is representative of America. This is the demography as of November 2005:

"The data shows the force is more educated than the population at large. Servicemembers have high school diplomas or the general equivalency diploma. More servicemembers have some college than the typical 18- to 24-year-olds. ...

The statistics show the number of African-American servicemembers is dropping. ...

On the socioeconomic side, the military is strongly middle class ... More recruits are drawn from the middle class and fewer are coming from poorer and wealthier families. Recruits from poorer families are actually underrepresented in the military ...

Other trends are that the number of recruits from wealthier families is increasing, and the number of recruits from suburban areas has increased. This also tracks that young men and women from the middle class are serving in the military.

In fact, urban areas provide far fewer recruits as a percentage of the total population than small towns and rural areas." (Here.)

What's a lefty war opponent to do now?

-tdr

Technorati: Media, Military, Politics.