constituents within their districts for the loss of draftees etc, it may just make them vote a little more carefully than if the ones we lose are just random people who opted in from elsewhere.

The MIC loves them some volunteers. Keeps things easy.

The part you miss is that people can always be manipulated to support the war, no matter what. Goebbels' words at the Nuremburg Trials don't just apply to 1930's Germany.

Conscription actually makes wars more frequent, and forces them to last longer. So long as you have cheap access to large numbers of soldiers, war becomes cheap, and the losing side can afford to hold out so much longer.

A professional volunteer force, on the other hand, is expensive. Each soldier represents a deep investment of money, time, training, and equipment. Losing professional soldiers is a much larger financial blow to the warring nation than the loss of conscripts.

And knowing what you know of the way this all works, what do you think is more worrying to our leaders? some unpopular sentiment, easily dismissed as an unpatriotic troop-hating treasonous minority? Or the financial bottom line?

If they have to face their constituents more often than they can schmooze with lobbyists they may actually vote for what is best for the constituents instead of what is best for the lobbyists and by extension themselves.

the Coast Guard, drafted, and about 70% of our dead were draftees, in Vietnam only the Marines and Army drafted, and about 70% of our Vietnam war dead, were volunteers.

There are a lot of arguments for both sides, a volunteer military becomes prohibitively expensive and eventually will become just another federal job where fighting becomes the last thing they want to do, as it becomes about comfortable living and family life, pay and benefits, as it becomes more common not only for husbands and wives to serve, but other family members, and so on.

The question is, can we fight a WWII type war anymore, and can our current military people take years of mass casualties, hard living, frequent hunger, lack of medical care, supply lines being cut off, paratroopers destroying our rear areas and support personnel, our war ships and supply ships and personnel carriers being sank, and the loss of air superiority, our troop carrying aircraft being shot out of the sky with hundreds lost each time,entire units being defeated, or are we becoming soft, small, and good for sprinting only.

Do we have the bench depth for a major war, against a major power?