Why was conscription necessary for a conflict in, almost exclusively,

>>32848711
Vietnam was fought by something like 75% volunteer troops. Only about 25% of muh greatest generation volunteered for WW2

>>32848732
[citation need]

>>32848711

Vietnam wasn't only conflict around back then. They had a minor thing called the Cold War to deal with. US conscripts mostly served in units in US or forward deployed into places like Germany, Korea, Japan and so on. Places with lower change of lead poisoning. Another place for conscripts were non-combat units in Vietnam.

>>32848740
Not him but we went from a 100,000 Army to 8 million. Like 30,000 Marines to 500,000, and not sure about Navy but we beefed that the fuck up too.

Without citations I'd say it's fairly accurate.

>>32848711
In colonial wars you want professionals even mercenaries.

In holy/ideological crusades and wars with neighbours conscripts will be just as effective given that you're able to keep the discipline intact(rather than "liberalising" the military) but at the same time much, much more numerous(on top of the fact that conscription leaves you with gigantic amount of reservist - simply as that - US military has less reservists than military personnel while Estonian military has 5 times as many reservists as active personnel drafted vs. professional/volunteers)

End of story.

>>32848732
[citation need]

>>32848711
Conscription in European and Asian countries is a part of their martial tradition and necessary because of close proximity of Russia, China, and North Korea.

Conscription in America was used by the elites to draft unwilling cannon fodder to fight unnecessary/unpopular wars. We're too individualist for conscription to work like it does in Europe.

tldr; Tradition to Europoors, Slavery to Burgers