A Stitch in Haste

Your revered Admiral Nogura invoked a little-known, seldom-used "reserve activation clause." In simpler language, Captain, they DRAFTED me!
--Dr. McCoy, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"

The Army has announced that it will no longer summon up unwitting and unwilling members of the Individual Ready Reserve to active duty:

Poor records management has hampered the Army's efforts to draw on the pool, intended to fill holes in existing Army units, [Army Secretary Francis J.] Harvey told defense reporters last week.

Since June 2004, the Army has begun mobilizing 6,535 people from the IRR. Of those, about 3,300 have reported for duty, and 1,450 have been granted exemptions on medical and other grounds, according to Army figures from October. The Army is trying to locate more than 400 who were supposed to report by October but have not.
...
Officials said a year ago that they anticipated a similar dip into the IRR in 2005, but the Army is struggling to complete the first group.

The Individual Ready Reserve is the last, most desperate pool of inactive veterans. These are men and women who have fulfilled their bona fide service, either in the full-time military or the Reserves, and for all intents and purposes are civilians, with real lives, real families and real commitments. If they had been eager and able to serve in Iraq (or in another capacity), then they could easily have re-entered the active military.

Although there have been some reports of questionable IRR activations (to complement the whole issue of "stop-loss" extensions of service obligations), it is admittedly true that re-activated IRR members are "merely" being held to their enlistment contracts. Still, this is as close to a draft as an "all-voluntary military" can come.

Of course, this is a good opportuntity to remind the Department of Defense that it would be unnecessary to activate the IRR -- indeed it would likely be unnecessary to even have an IRR -- if they would simply abandon that self-inflicted wound known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

The primary excuse for DADT is that gays in the military "undermine unit cohesion and morale." But can anything be more detrimental to unit cohesion and morale than having unwilling soldiers serving?

If Americans weren't dying in Iraq, it would be downright laughable.