Just an addendum to say thanks to Henry and Tom for additions and clarifications.  I knew that the military academies had been difficult to establish but did not know how really difficult that process was.

Regarding Vietnam, while it is true that the draft became unpopular because of demonstrations (many in which I participated) but there actually was another reason as well.  Just as some military figures, including General Collin Powell (retired) have warned about the military possibly being broken now, there was serious concern by the early 1970s about that possibility then.  Indeed, in the briefs filed recently with the US Supreme Court by retired Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretaries of Defense in support of affirmative action at the University of Michigan, there was mention of the need of a racially diverse officer corps so as to avoid the "fragging": of officers that took place in Vietnam.

The draftee military of the Vietnam War had been seriously misused and had become in important ways dysfunctional.  This had not been true of the remarkably democratic draftee military discharged after VE and VJ days in 1945 or the draftee military after the Korean War ceasefire.  I attended college with officers from the Vietnam War, who were given leave after their deployment in the war zone to advance their education.  I taught US Vietnam War vets for many years in California.  I finished my career in California, teaching Vietnamese Vietnam War vets.  The trauma of Vietnam is still with America:  at least, it is still with me, and I was not in the armed services.  My fear is that what the Vietnam War did to the citizen-draftee military in the 1960s and 1970s, the Iraq insurgency will do to the AVF of the first decade of the 21st century.

Then, what are our options?  A Praetorian Guard called Blackwater?

Harold S. Forsythe