conscription and selective service

[AFTT47]

I'd go the other way with it.  Let service confer benefits over and above the baseline...but allow that service to be civil or military.

As a former infantryman in a pretty rough span of time...I don't want any chance that the folks standing next to me aren't volunteers.  Hell...I used to tell all the nastygirls (who signed up thinking they'd never be deployed) to stay in the fucking humvee.  I value my life.

This.

I enlisted in the Air Force in 1985. I was one of the early generation of volunteers who joined because of relatively good pay and good treatment under the Reagan administration. I remember well the amazement of long-serving military and civil service members of the quality of incoming personnel.

The last thing the military wants is a return to conscription because the quality of military members under that system is terrible.