SORRY, I OPPOSE A DRAFT, AND I OPPOSE MANDATORY “NATIONAL SERVICE” EVEN MORE: Ron Fournier: How To Defeat ISIS With Millennial Service:

I know a bet­ter way to fight IS­IS. It starts with an idea that should ap­peal the bet­ter an­gels of both hawks and doves: Na­tion­al ser­vice for all 18- to 28-year-olds.

Re­quire vir­tu­ally every young Amer­ic­an — the civic-minded mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion — to com­plete a year of ser­vice through pro­grams such as Teach for Amer­ica, Ameri­Corps, the Peace Corps, or the U.S. mil­it­ary, and two things will hap­pen:

1. Vir­tu­ally every Amer­ic­an fam­ily will be­come in­tim­ately in­ves­ted in the na­tion’s biggest chal­lenges, in­clud­ing poverty, edu­ca­tion, in­come in­equal­ity, and Amer­ica’s place in a world afire.

2. Mil­it­ary re­cruit­ing will rise to meet threats posed by IS­IS and oth­er ter­ror­ist net­works, giv­ing more people skin in a very dan­ger­ous game.

This may seem like a rad­ic­al plan un­til you com­pare it with two al­tern­at­ives: the status quo, which clearly isn’t work­ing, or a mil­it­ary draft, which might be the bold­est and fairest way to wage the long war against Is­lam­ic ex­trem­ists.

Re­mem­ber in Septem­ber when the be­head­ings of two Amer­ic­ans gal­van­ized the na­tion against IS­IS? Pres­id­ent Obama, who had dis­missed IS­IS as a “JV team,” prom­ised, “We will de­grade and ul­ti­mately des­troy” the Is­lam­ic State. Nine months later, IS­IS is win­ning.

Well, that part’s true. But it’s because of the personnel at the top, not at the bottom, of the chain of command.