Bush now wants to enlarge the military. From his State of the Union address:

And one of the first steps we can take together is to add to the ranks of our military so that the American Armed Forces are ready for all the challenges ahead. (Applause.) Tonight I ask the Congress to authorize an increase in the size of our active Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 in the next five years.

Rep. Charles Rangel has already called for a draft. Though the Democratic congressional "leadership" has not yet signed on, it has not absolutely ruled out the possibility.

The neo-cons have been largely silent. But now Andrew Sullivan has made the following statement:

At this point, the forces necessary to bring order to Iraq – to "shape the outcome" toward victory, in the president’s words – are probably in the region of several hundred thousand more. Victory, in the president’s terminology, probably requires a draft – or a much more drastic increase in military spending and manpower than is now planned. I think the reason Americans are so negative toward this president is that they intuitively know that he has not provided the resources to win. He still hasn’t.

Not yet exactly a call for a draft, but getting there. Also, note the standard militarist stuff: the US needs "a much more drastic increase in military spending and manpower than is now planned". Sure. We’re only spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the Pentagon every year for newer and more powerful weapons such as submarines to catch Osama bin Laden up in the mountains. But, hey, we need to spend still more. The way to fight the president’s Global War on Terror is not to redirect military spending but simply to add more useless, big ticket items to the bloated Pentagon budget, spend still more money and recruit more troops.

This kind of mindless militarism is not just an attribute of the neocons. It is standard, bi-partisan, interventionist foreign policy. I.e., the policy is: tell ‘em what we want and if they don’t comply, use military force or the threat of force.

As the Empire reaches further across the globe as it is now doing in Somalia, it will need more and more troops to threaten, invade, attack or occupy the countries it has decide to "liberate" in order to keep us safe. When Hillary Clinton becomes President, the Democrats will cease their anti-war posturing and support military interventions as they did with her husband in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Iraq and Haiti.

So, I expect more and more rumblings about a draft (perhaps under the rubric of "national service") from the left and right wings of the War Party. It is a slow campaign to soften up public opinion. The downside, as far as the imperialists are concerned, will be that, when the middle class sees its sons and daughters involuntarily hauled off to fight in Africa or Asia, those potential draftees will march in the streets as they did during the Vietnam War. But, by then it may be too late.