The United States Department of Defense Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The United States Department of Defense - Essay Example The United States Department of Defense An overview of the United States invasion in Iraq by the Bush administration can help one to gain an insight of why the contemporary US military needs to embrace the draft. While the US had earlier occupied numerous foreign lands—Germany, Japan, and on a lower scale in Kosovo among others—and helped to build relatively stable democratic governments in those countries, it failed to demonstrate this in the Iraq case. The military approach employed by the Bush administration saw the first democratically elected government of Iraq inherit a country widespread with assassinations, and kidnapping among other social ills. This is attributable to a miscalculation that saw the Bush admiration invade Iraq with a few troops. Further, the military of the day was sharply objected to the idea of sending more troops in Iraq when the country crumbled into a violent turmoil after the fall of Saddam. A school of thought in the military circles conceived all these ills that a transformed US military can be effective in a war with a minimal number of ground troops. True, the modern American military can manage to win a stunning battlefield. Nevertheless, such an instantiations force is not sufficient to secure peace—a critical aspect of the outcome of a war. Clearly, the modern all-volunteer American military could not have sustained the demand of the number of forces required in Iraq and continue deterring the American nation from threats elsewhere in the world. Adding the number of standing soldiers in the army may not have been a solution either. It is in view of this that the military draft should be adopted (MillitarySpot, Para 3). The underlying argument is that United States does not require a bigger standing army but rather a deep bench of well-trained soldiers who can be mobilized from their reserves to address the unpredictable but inescapable wars and other necessary humanitarian interventions of the future. The adoption of the military draft could go a long way in ensuring that the limitations of a surge in capacity of the al l-volunteer force do not hold the American society at a standstill when such a need arises. Indeed, history is clear that the American society has turned to the draft from time to time to offer an effective solution to the persistent issue of humanity crisis. While ideally it should not come in the shape of World War II mass combat mobilization or the Vietnam’s discriminatory conscription—because war advances as the nature of threats change—there is no doubt that a modern model of a draft is much-needed (Hod 9). Another argument in support of the military draft is evident from a look at the US military involvement in the past two decades. In these two decades, US has found it critical, in view of national security issues, to deploy over half a million military personnel oversees. Each at a time,

Robert Nozicks work entitled How Liberty Upsets Patterns Essay

Robert Nozicks work entitled How Liberty Upsets Patterns - Essay Example Nozick begins his argument by poising that people who have contrary beliefs regarding distributive justice, particularly those who abide by notions of patterned distributive justice such as utilitarianism and egalitarianism, should not refute his distribution theory of justice, especially with regard to holdings. Nozick’s theory takes a non-patterned consideration into the element of justice in holdings. According to Nozick, the repeated application of justice in holdings typically results in entitlement of holdings. Nozick bases his argument squarely on the concept of non-patterned principle of distributive justice, which attempts to elucidate the fact that patterned conceptions regarding justice in distribution are typically unable to work well with notions of liberty. Nozick uses the now famous argument of Wilt Chamberlain to demonstrate the manner in which patterned principles that deal with just distribution are essentially irreconcilable with all notions of liberty. Nozi ck poises that Rawl’s difference principle fails to provide a real description of the society today. (Sandel 2007, 359). The society runs on distribution patterns, which are defined by the desires of people who in it. Various distribution patterns are entirely just because they are based on the desires of the society. However, Nozick argues that, while an alternative distribution pattern in society does not typically conform to the favored patterns of people within the society, the alternative distribution pattern is still just. According to Nozick, the Wilt Chamberlain example essentially demonstrates that no standard patterned tenet of distributive justice can be well-suited with liberty. This is primarily because, in order to conserve the patterns provided for by patterned distribution where the society’s desires dictate distribution patterns, the state will need to interfere with the capacity of people to exchange freely their instinctual distributive justice on a constant basis. This is primarily because, as Nozick argues, all exchanges of distributive justice in patterned principles essentially require the constant violation of the patterns for which they were originally formulated. Nozick concludes that end-state, as well as a vast majority of patterned distributive justice principles provide for unfair ownership of people, their labor and actions. As a consequence, such principles provide for the shift from the notions of self ownership to those of limited property rights in the actions and beings of other people (Sandel 2007, 358). In essence, this means that, under patterned distributive justice systems, the example of Wilt Chamberlain shows that third parties will have a just claim on other people (Chamberlain) provided that the third parties transfer something valuable to the individual in question. Under patterned distributive patterns, third parties have legitimate shares in the individual since their shares cannot be changed. From the reading, several misunderstandings become clear; the greatest source of concern is the Wilt Chamberl