If we aren't getting as many military volunteers as we want, or we aren't getting enough of the caliber of volunteer that we want, the painfully obvious solution is to hike military pay even more than we already have. If it gets to the point where the market rate for some able-bodied intelligent young man to volunteer to go off and fight in Iraq is $250,000 per year, so be it.

At least that way all tax payers are sharing in the cost of the war, rather than hiding the cost by shifting it unwillingly onto young people. A draft is simply a way for those who support a war to force others to fight in it, without paying the free market rate for that service. In this country, if you want someone to do some work for you, you pay him what he requires to do it voluntarily, you don't pick a price on a whim and then throw him in jail if he doesn't agree to do the work at that rate.

Of course, paying soldiers what they're actually worth will be a lot more expensive than a draft. Market-priced labor can never compete with slave labor when it comes to cost. But it's the only moral option.

If you hike average pay for a soldier from $50,000 per person to $250,000 per person, that's going to cost the country $20 billion more, per year, for a force of 100,000 troops. That's a lot of money, but considering the war has already burned through $450 billion, it's certainly within our price range. Care to wager whether a quarter of a million dollars per year is enough to get excellent quality young people to line up to volunteer to go to Iraq?

It's just a question of whether Americans will tolerate the tax hikes needed to pay soldiers what the market demands for those services. If not, then clearly the war is not much of a national priority, and if it's not much of a national priority, we sure shouldn't be forcing people who may not even support the war to go over and kill and die in that cause.