I think that the argument that draftees are automatically somehow inferior to volunteers is simply absurd.

Most of the people I served with in Vietnam were drafted, and there was no difference in "performance" between the draftees and those few volunteers that served alongside of them. None. The military has, over the years, evolved a very highly polished, tried-and-true system that takes all sorts of different kinds of people and very efficiently welds them all together into one homogeneous "Big Green Machine". They are the ultimate masters at using this system to produce an incredibly uniform end-product, regardless of what sort of material they have to start with. Draftees and volunteers all get exactly the same training, because the military intentionally trains them all side-by-side, to form that lasting bond between them; the military makes no distinctions at all between the two groups. They are one, for all intents and purposes. There was simply no difference at all between them so far as their training went. The only way you might have been able to tell the two apart was by their political views, perhaps. Some of the volunteers were (almost insanely) gung-ho and highly supportive of the President and the war (no matter what) and some of the draftees were pretty outspoken in their views that the entire war itself was just plain wrong. That never seemed to effect their combat effectiveness, though. When somebody is trying to kill you the political rhetoric pretty much falls by the wayside very, very quickly, and the focus shifts entirely to supporting each other, as all soldiers that find themselves in tough situations always do, in the hopes of winning and thus surviving. The human bonds that are formed in the cauldrons of combat are always much more important and enduring than any individual's political opinions. Those issues simply seem to cease to matter after a while. War is a singularly transforming experience, and many "volunteers" left the military at the first opportunity, feeling angry, betrayed and bitter towards their politicians and their country. Likewise many "draftee's" went on to become career soldiers, and many that I knew reenlisted for multiple tours of duty in Vietnam, and served with great honor and distinction.

I'd also like to point out that the MAJORITY of Medal of Honor winners in the 20th Century were draftees. It was draftees that defeated the Kaiser in WWI, and Hitler and Tojo in WWII. Democracy and the Draft are not mutually exclusive; history proves that. Patton's Third Army, for instance, was a Draftee Army, and a helluva fine Army to boot.

I also think that the assertion that National Guard and Reserve troops are in any way inferior to regular active duty soldiers is also totally absurd. In fact, my own personal experience indicates that in many (if not most) cases the Guard and Reserve people are actually much better, not worse, than the "average" member of our "all volunteer" active duty military.

For one thing the majority of Guard and Reserve personnel are "prior service" which means that most have already completed at least one full tour (4 or 6 years) of regular active duty in some capacity, at some time, in some branch of the full-time military. They invariably bring a great deal of experience with them. Many are former career professional soldiers that have retired from full-time active duty after years of distinguished service, and then joined the Guard or Reserve "just to keep their hand in" so to speak. The military gets into your blood, and many former career soldiers enjoy the freedom to pursue civilian lives and careers after retirement from the military, and yet still keep their military skills honed sharp as members of the Guard or Reserve forces, and most also strongly desire to continue to make their hard-won experience and wisdom available to their country in it's times of need.

Guard and Reserve soldiers are also "all volunteer" and they tend to be very, very highly motivated, highly skilled, totally professional and are often very highly "seasoned" in the practical military sense, and that alone is worth it's weight in gold on the battlefield. They are a valuable asset to any military unit. Having already "been there, done that" many times before they tend to be much more cool, composed and focused in combat, and are far more apt to draw upon their previous military experience than the fresh, inexperienced active duty recruits who have no such prior experiences to draw upon, no matter how "patriotic" these unseasoned recruits may be.

The Guard and Reserve personnel receive exactly the same training, in exactly the same places and with exactly the same equipment, performance requirements and expectations as their active duty bretheren do. Their is no difference between the two. They all train side-by-side.

The only real difference is that many all-volunteer active duty soldiers have no experience at all, or very minimal experience, whereas most Guard and Reserve soldiers have anywhere from some to a whole lot of actual experience under their belts by the time they arrive on the battlefield.

I also believe that the Guard and Reserve soldiers tend to handle the pressure of life in a combat zone better than the green active duty soldiers do. Guard and Reserve members tend to be a little older, a lot wiser, and a whole lot more experienced when it comes to dealing with life in general, and they've already faced many more genuine challenges in their lives, and somehow learned to deal with them and overcome adversity. They just seem to be much more steady and reliable. They don't get rattled as easily, they don't bolt or do incredibly stupid things under pressure, and they don't become depressed so easily when things are not going well, and they're also far less apt to cave in to stress-induced defeatist attitudes when things begin to look downright dire. Patriotic 18-19-20 year-old active duty "volunteers" are fine for common cannon fodder, but I'd much prefer to have a crusty old Reservist who has seen combat before, and already proved his mettle under fire covering my own ass in a firefight, any day of the week.

So...I don't buy these arguments that Guard and Reserve forces, or even draftees, are somehow inferior. They're not. History (and my own personal experience as a career soldier) shows clearly that this is simply not so. The only really valid argument against a draft is the argument that it's always going to be politically unpopular in the extreme, and that unpopularity always tends to rub off onto the conflict itself, in the end, and onto those political leaders that initially conceived and promoted it.

And lastly there is always the question of the draft process itself, and how fair and equitable it is across the broad spectrum of our society. Who gets drafted and who doesn't? During the Vietnam war the lower- and middle-class guys all got drafted, but the rich kids avoided it with college deferrments, influence peddling and other underhanded tricks (like George Dubya Bush and his Texas Air National Guard thing). Many more poor rural blacks and middle-class kids who could not aford college were drafted and died in Vietnam than did those kids fortunate enough to have rich daddies did, that's for damned sure. Very, very few politicians kids ever died over there, or ever served in the military at all, and that's hardly fair or equitable by any means. So that debate has some real merit.

Also, since the last draft we also have a new issue to deal with, and that's women in the service. During the Vietman war a woman could only serve in a war zone as a nurse. These days they serve in combat roles just as men do -- so, will they be getting drafted now, too? You can bet their will have to be a very lively debate about all that before the first conscript is ever sworn in.