Hear Me Out: Bring Back The Draft

Slate Debates

Slate Podcasts

Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of Hear Me Out… the conscription question. The U.S. military is having trouble meeting recruitment goals — and for the first time in recent history, the Army has actually failed to meet its minimum. Joe Plenzler, a writer, consultant and Marine Corps veteran, joins us to argue that it’s time to bring back the draft; more specifically, a partial one. It’d help address recruiting shortfalls, but more importantly, it might also change how Americans feel about public service… and how politicians feel about endless war. If you have thoughts you want to share, or an idea for a topic we should tackle, you can email the show: [email protected] Podcast production by Maura Currie You can skip all the ads in Hear Me Out by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/hearmeoutplus for just $15 a month for your first three months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Headley. The last time the US government issued a draft
0:07.1	call was December 7th, 1972. We were a different nation then, in a lot of ways.
0:13.9	Fifty years ago we had a very different military, too. In 2023, most of the branches are struggling
0:20.2	to meet their volunteer recruitment goals, and the army for the first time in recent history
0:25.2	actually felt short. Put aside for a moment how you feel about the US military as an operation,
0:31.0	and let's talk about recruitment. If the volunteer system no longer works, is it time for another
0:38.2	draft? We have the all volunteer forces presently. That's worked great for the military, and I think
0:42.5	it's worked bad for America. All I'm asking people to do is really go back to the system that our
0:46.2	country was founded on. Joe Plenzler, consultant and Marine Corps veteran joins us to share his idea
0:52.1	for bringing back the draft in 2023. Welcome back to Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Headley.
1:01.2	The US military is having trouble with recruitment. Last year the army fell short of its recruiting
1:06.2	target by 15,000 soldiers, and this year the shortfall is expected to be worse. Now there are a
1:13.4	lot of ideas about how to solve this problem, but the least popular of all is a draft. The American
1:19.5	military has been all volunteer since the last man was inducted into the army on June 30th of 1973,
1:26.8	and a Rasmussen survey from last year found fewer than one in four Americans is in favor of bringing
1:32.8	the draft back, which means the vast majority of Americans do not want a draft, but there is a small
1:41.6	but persistent minority of people, many of whom are veterans, who say a draft is our nation's best
1:48.1	option. I'm not one of them, but this minority says not only could a draft help address shortfalls
1:55.4	in military recruiting, it might change our perspective on what military service is and it might
2:01.6	change it for the better. Joe Plenzler is a consultant lecturer and retired Marine Corps officer,
2:06.9	and he joins us now. Hello there. How are you doing? I'm doing well, thanks. Okay, so I think we're
2:13.2	about to disagree. Okay, who are you respectfully? Yeah, let's say I think we can start off with some
	...

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