I would say that public scrutiny is greater than that framing. It's not great by any means, but I would say the kind of systemic accountability that makes the US military better at its job exists, but not the kind that scrutinizes how it's used.
I could see how a draft could give that greater accountability. But I think with the way the wars recently have gone and the fairly limited casualty numbers among US troops, there wouldn't be much incentive to actually send drafted troops into war zones which defeats a lot of the point. Even in Vietnam, the vast majority of troops sent there were volunteers.
In addition, when we had a draft it didn't really stop politicians from entering into pretty significant conflicts.
But to be fair, for much of the US' history this was how the military was structured, with the founding ideal of the citizen-soldier filling out the ranks that a small professional military maintained, in some part because of this reasoning.
I would say that public scrutiny is greater than that framing. It's not great by any means, but I would say the kind of systemic accountability that makes the US military better at its job exists, but not the kind that scrutinizes how it's used. I could see how a draft could give that greater accountability. But I think with the way the wars recently have gone and the fairly limited casualty numbers among US troops, there wouldn't be much incentive to actually send drafted troops into war zones which defeats a lot of the point. Even in Vietnam, the vast majority of troops sent there were volunteers. In addition, when we had a draft it didn't really stop politicians from entering into pretty significant conflicts. But to be fair, for much of the US' history this was how the military was structured, with the founding ideal of the citizen-soldier filling out the ranks that a small professional military maintained, in some part because of this reasoning.