Here's something I didn't know:

On January 9, two days after Rumsfeld lyricized about [the volunteer military’s] virtues and got snooty about a peacetime draft, the Marine Corps, which reports to him, froze its entire active duty complement of 175,000 men and women in place for the next year; Marines who had completed their enlistments or who sought to retire after twenty years would be unable to do so. The Air Force has put a “stop-loss” order in effect that prohibits its officers and enlisted personnel from leaving active service. In the Army, the freeze is called “involuntary extension.”

...As of late March, over 212,000 reservists and Guard men and women had been activated. Though official Defense Department policy limits call-ups to twelve months, the Pentagon’s manpower demands have forced it to extend their tours for a second year.

Did we do this in other wars -- turn volunteer service into involuntary servitude? And remember, we're doing this while fielding an inadequate force to maintain stability in Iraq and Afghanistan, while we're also casting about for new wars to fight.

(I found this in John Gregory Dunne's review of Anthony Swofford's book Jarhead in the New York Review of Books. The review, unfortunately, is available online only to subscribers.)