From the beginning of the United States’ history, conflict has always been prevalent. The need for armed forces continually grows, especially in times of war, as the fight for freedom becomes more challenging. Conscription, better known as the draft, was first introduced during the Civil War as a way to get more individuals involved in the military to fill vacant positions. The practice of the draft was finally discontinued in favor of an all-volunteer military system, when the need for troops was no longer necessary. After almost two decades of being involved overseas, the demand for armed troops is imperative once again. In the essay “A New Moral Compact,” David W. Barno formally uses effective rhetorical techniques to successfully argue that a draft lottery system is essential for the United States’ involvement in armed foreign conflict to subside.
The first way Barno creates an effective argument is by his technique of consistently using the literary device of comparison to identify the similar, yet different, nature of the participation in the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts to the Vietnam War. Within the first sentence of the essay, Barno informs the reader of the United States entering “its second decade of armed conflict,” which translates into eleven years of continuous strife that the nation has endured throughout Afghanistan and Iraq (15). This specific information is significant as the author later uses it for an effective comparison with the ten-year Vietnam War.