Military draft history and policy

Military Draft

In arguing against reinstating the military draft in the United States, several things come immediately to mind. First among those, for anyone who has learned anything at all about the Vietnam War, is that the draft can be devastating to society, causing upheaval at home as well as the return of bright, strong young men in body bags. David Halberstam, a journalist of considerable experience, wrote a book, The Best and the Brightest, about the sacrifice of these young Americans for precious little, if any, gain to this country or any other.

Moreover, that war lasted for years, ending in horrific scenes of people running through the streets of Saigon trying to leave any way they could. In the end, there was a Communist takeover despite the loss of all those young Americans.

In an article called "Thinking About the Draft," William Galston wrote:

In the wake of September 11, the United States has undertaken a range of new and expanded military commitments, especially in Central Asia and the Middle East. The military occupation of Iraq is likely to last longer, and require larger forces, than civilian leaders in the Department of Defense had predicted prior to the war."

In short, Iraq appears to be going the way of the Vietnam effort; it would be senseless to draft young Americans for a repeat of the Asian mess two generations later. An apt current phrase to apply would be "different day, same old stuff."

Galston makes the point, also, that the Vietnam era draft was "widely regarded as arbitrary and unfair, and it was held responsible for dissention within the military as well as the wider society."

Allied to the problem of the draft in terms of societal upheaval in the current time period it its effect on the next generation. The generation that was drafted to fight in Vietnam was the Baby Boom generation, the largest in human history. It is possible to believe, in fact, that the war was welcomed as a way to thin out the ranks of that enormous, resource-using generation. The current generation of young men and women is not nearly so large, and there is already information daily in the media that soon there will be insufficient workers to fill jobs. Those facts may be part of the reason the push to reinstate the draft has been so stealthily managed by the current administration. If the generation in question -- and their parents -- were fully aware of the progress already made toward draft reinstatement, perhaps those groups would take more significant action to prevent it.

Before the 2004 election, there was draft legislation pending in the House (HR 163) and the Senate (S 89), that got almost no "mainstream media but (was) getting some discussion on the Internet."

The Internet is where many young men and women, arguably, turn for information regarding issues of importance to them. However, it is unlikely they would have found the trails to the stealthy operations of the military hierarchy itself. While politicians were working in public to gain passage of the two bills, Swomley thinks even before the election, the Pentagon had "begun a quiet campaign to fill all 10,350 draft board positions as well as similar positions on 11,070 appeals boards. This all seems to have had its origin in a February 11, 2003 ...."

The question might be asked: What is it reasonable to conclude from this? It is reasonable to conclude that the Bush administration belatedly realized it needed warm bodies to operate the high-tech machinery in Iraq, when sandstorms didn't make it inoperable. And the administration also needed to keep a lid on Afghanistan while they conduct the hunt for Osama. That hunt is beginning to look very similar to the one Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon conducted four hundred years ago looking for the Fountain of youth. Bin Laden, the fount of all terrorism in the mind of George W. Bush is, it seems, as elusive as the fountain of youth, despite high tech gadgets such as GPS locators, satellite pictures that could recognized the dust off bin Laden's turban, and the doubtless presence of possibly inaptly named intelligence services in the region for decades.

Another conclusion is one provided by Swomley. He notes that the Bush juggernaut went ahead in Iraq using "false evidence that it had weapons of mass destruction."

If prevarication was so useful, not to mention successful, in Bush getting what he wanted in that case, why not use it in other cases? A conclusion one could make, considering this stealthy (and therefore dishonest) attempt to reinstate the draft without citizen approval or even knowledge, is that Bush needs lots more men and women than the public is aware of to fight more wars than the public could conceive of. Swomley notes that "the Bush strategy permits him to decide, well before there is any action or threat of action against the United States, to make war against any nation he chooses, or whose oil or other resources he covets."

War fighters are necessary for that.

Conclusion