The only reason I proposed a compulsory service agenda, is because the question of fairness bothered me.  I'm not arguing whether diplomacy is better than war; of course it is.  I'm talking about situations where we are already past that point. Diplomacy won't always/seldom works.  There is war, there will be wars; those are the hard facts of life.  Read world history for the last 1000 years and realize that yes, we are not about to light up the peace pipe, sit back,and wait for the buzz to kick in.   And I'm not going to argue all the negative fallouts like being subject to military law while in service, nor other possible intrusions.  There are also benefits like VA healthcare and retirement options not available to civilians but those are issues that I think are peripheral to the question in hand. Given the fact (and it is a fact) that the US is a warring/empire nation, how fairer to dispense the military burden?   Clearly overabusing the reserve forces is not a good answer (and the situation we have currently), and the draft has loopholes, so certain sectors of the population get to "serve" more readily (a great skew towards the poorer socioeconomic groups).   It's easy for people to drive along the highway with "I support our troops" stickers on their cars when they, their kid, husband, wife,  aren't serving.  If everyone were involved, it would strengthen the population's response to wars in which they don't want to be involved, and if anything raise the national consciousness in issues regarding war, and territorial expansion. It would force the entire nation to confront these issues head on, be more involved in the political process, be more informed about leaders they have chosen and be more "worldly" responsible.  Should we be more willing to stop genocide in Darfur with military force or should we let "diplomacy" continue to let people die there?  Is the answer, " Sorry, we don't have enough troops for that, we're too busy with the few troops we have in Iraq...and there's not enough oil over there for us to be concerned."   Don't you think there would be a lot more pressure on Bush to end the fiasco in Iraq if everybody's ass was on the line?  Keep sending in the reserves for their 2nd and 3rd tours and it's easy to keep "supporting our troops" with yellow ribbons and bumper stickers. 

So, yes compulsory service....in my opinion; that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Gene