Going the course....without a draft????

It's no secret that the Army and Marines are not meeting their recruiting goals. The Pentagon announced yesterday that they will not be releasing their recruiting numbers at the usual time. Over at Slate Phil Carter and Owen West tell us how

a new Army directive that attempts to alleviate the personnel crunch by retaining soldiers who are earmarked for early discharge during their first term of enlistment because of alcohol or drug abuse, unsatisfactory performance, or being overweight, among other reasons.

With the war becoming increasingly unpopular The New York Times reports the major recruiting problem is becoming the parents of potential recruits.

Two years into the war in Iraq, as the Army and Marines struggle to refill their ranks, parents have become boulders of opposition that recruiters cannot move.

Mothers and fathers around the country said they were terrified that their children would have to be killed - or kill - in a war that many see as unnecessary and without end.

Around the dinner table, many parents said, they are discouraging their children from serving.

At schools, they are insisting that recruiters be kept away, incensed at the access that they have to adolescents easily dazzled by incentive packages and flashy equipment.

Parents are hanging up on recruiters and...

Several recruiters said they had even been threatened with violence.

"I had one father say if he saw me on his doorstep I better have some protection on me," said a recruiter in Ohio. "We see a lot of hostility."

It's all about the Iraq war:

But after the war in Iraq yielded no weapons of mass destruction, and as the death toll has mounted, he cannot reconcile the pride he feels at seeing marines deliver aid after the tsunami in Asia with his concern over the effort in Baghdad, he said.

"Because of the situation we're in now, I would not want my son to serve," he said. "It's the policy that I'm against, not the military."

When asked for an exit policy in Iraq the administration simply says we will stay as long as we are need, "stay the course". Parents increasingly refuse to accept that as a "plan" and refuse to have their children put in harms way for what what appears to be a never ending war with no real goals or purpose. We are rapidly reaching the point where the administration will have a choice between two politically unacceptable actions. Withdraw from Iraq or the DRAFT.