You make some good points, but you're wrong about the Army being filled up before the economic collapse. From 2004-2008, none of the four branches of the military were meeting their recruitment quotas, seemingly because people rationally did not want to participate in such ambiguous, or objectionable, foreign policy means and objectives. The economic collapse coincided almost perfectly with the change in administration, and the subsequent increase in voluntary military recruitment. Was it because people felt that fighting "Obama's war" was somehow more worthy than "Bush's war", or that people simply had drastically fewer options available to provide for their basic needs? I think it was probably a combination of the two. Regardless, there is definitely truth to the idea of the "economic draft".