So the idea of resuming the draft is making the rounds again. And again the strange political bedfellows are climbing in the sack together as rightists eager to "beef up the military" link with various lefties who on most other issues manage to think straight yet regard the draft as a jim-dandy idea because it would be "fairer" than a volunteer army and "would make it harder (some say impossible) to get involved in a war like Iraq" because people would "think twice if they were on the line."
When confronted with the historical unfairness of the draft, the answer from that latter group is invariably along the lines of "well, but what if we made it
really fair?" Generally, that "fairness" consists of a "strong non-military component," as one put it, of "national service," the draft's universal elder sibling.
Now, I'll just note quickly that such an argument undermines it's own premise. (This is leaving aside the insane complications of such an operation, which would involve locating, managing, and keeping track of the people in at least several million appropriate "national service" jobs yearly.) First, compulsion is not "fair" and doesn't become "fair" just because everyone is compelled. Second, there are only two ways to arrange such universal service at the military-civilian interface: Either some government agency decides who goes into the military and who doesn't - in which case you have a military draft - or people get to choose on their own whether they do military or "civilian" service - in which case you have all the downsides of compulsion and still have an all-volunteer military, the very thing this system was supposedly intended to correct.
(There is also a certain degree of elitism in some of the arguments as their propounders seem to think that whatever it is they already had planned for their lives would constitute the required "service," so the system they propose wouldn't really affect them at all.)
Ultimately, there is no "alternative" to the volunteer army (leaving aside yet another issue, that of whether any such alternative is necessary) that does not involve military conscription.
Okay, here's where the lazy part comes in. Rather than make my argument on the issue anew, I'm going to post here several things I have written in the past about the draft. Some of the language, the product of Vietnam-era youth, may seem a trifle over the top - but unlike John Kerry's attempt to distance himself from some of what he said in his testimony to Congress, I stand by every word.
A brief chronology of my involvement with the draft:
- In the mid-1960s I had a draft deferment as a college student.
- When I dropped out of college I was reclassified 1-A (draftable) and called for a pre-induction physical. I failed that physical because of a minor problem and was classified 1-Y (sort of a reserve pool if there proved to not be enough 1-As).
- In 1969, the Selective Service System instituted a new, "fair" means of how people were selected for the draft: a lottery based on birthdates. That is, the dates of the year were chosen in a (supposedly) random order and people were drafted in order of those birthdates. The lower the number, the more likely you were to be drafted. (You want to know if some guy is of that era? Ask him his lottery number. Chances are he knows; I even knew several people in the military at the time who knew theirs.) My lottery number was 281, meaning I had very little chance of being drafted. (In fact, in no year did the SSS get higher than 195.)
- However, my ethical opposition to the draft prompted me to turn in my draft card as part of a Moratorium Day demonstration, October 13, 1971.
- In 1972, the classification 1-Y was eliminated and those in it were reclassified 4-F (physically unfit to be drafted). In January, 1973, my draft board sent me a new classification card. I returned it the same day.
- In the summer of 1975, Gerald Ford announced an "earned re-entry" program for Vietnam draft resisters. In August I became the first person in my home state to publicly refuse to cooperate with the program.
I was never prosecuted; I can't say why except to mention that by 1971 there were an awful lot of us.
Okay. The first piece is a sort of prose poem I wrote for a friend in the wake of the first draft lottery. He got #56. This was written as a present to him. The quotes are from the 1965 Selective Service System's "Memorandum on Channeling." Some poetic license was taken with the order of the wording but the meaning and intent were unchanged. (Those who talk about "national service" might take note of the attitudes expressed.) The statements in parentheses are my friend's; they came from a phone conversation right after the lottery drawing. The omission of the final parenthesis was deliberate.
The date was December 6, 1969.
"It is in dealing with the non-inductee registrants that the system is heavily occupied, developing more effective human beings in the national interest."
(I found out I'm number 56.)
"Channeling is the device of pressurized guidance, used to control effectively the services of individuals who are not in the armed forces, via the club of induction."
(It just makes things more definite.)
"The young man registers at age eighteen and pressure begins to force his choice.... He is prodded to make a decision."
(I'll just have to decide now.)
"The door is open for him as a student to qualify if capable in a skill needed by this nation. He obtains a sense of well-being and satisfaction that he is doing what will help his country most."
(I figure about May - as soon as school gets out.)
"In the less patriotic and more selfish individual it engenders a sense of fear, uncertainty, and dissatisfaction which motivates him, nevertheless, in the same direction."
(I've always thought evasion was immoral, but now....)
"He complains of the uncertainty; he would like to be able to do as he pleases; but he complies with the needs of the national health, safety, or interest - or he is denied deferment."
(I don't want to go to Canada.)
"Throughout his career as a student, the pressure continues. It continues with equal intensity after graduation. His local board requires periodic reports to find out what he is up to."
(I won't have time to split for California.)
"He is impelled to apply his skill in an essential activity in the national interest. The loss of deferred status is the consequence for the individual who uses his skill in a non-essential activity."
(Maybe some South Sea Island.)
"From the individual's viewpoint, he is standing in an uncomfortably warm room. Several doors are open, but they all lead to various forms of recognized, patriotic service to the nation. Some accept the alternatives gladly, some with reluctance. The consequence is approximately the same."
(I won't even have time to get married....
The second is the letter I wrote to my local draft board (Red Bank, NJ) on January 27, 1973, to accompany my returned classification card. The ellipsis at the end of the first paragraph was in the original. (January 27, 1973, by the way, was also the day the Vietnam ceasefire was to go into effect.)
The end of a given war does not mean the end of war. The end of the war against Indochina does not mean the end of militarism in America. Even as a "generation of peace" is trumpeted, the already-obese military budget swells still more in Fiscal 1974, draining like a blood-sucking leech the life from the long-since anemic ideas of cures for or even opposition to hunger, disease, ignorance, sexism, racism, rats, foul air and dangerous water,....
Perhaps the clearest expression of America's still-convoluted sense of values is the continued increase in money spent on preparation for war ("There will be wars and rumors of wars" as long as there are Pentagons.) while money for pollution control is impounded and the OEO [Office of Economic Opportunity] is closed down to "economize." As long as the President continues to treat us as the "children" he has called us - with the Pentagon playing the part of the pampered favorite getting any new toy he wants by threatening to hold his breath until he turns blue while the rest of us are cast as the scorned daughter sent to bed without dinner for daring to question Father's decisions - there can be no letup in our resistance to the present destructive realities. As long as bombs are more important than bread, there can be no lessening of our work for future dreams. And as long as the state continues to claim that it owns our very lives, there can be no pause in our saying "no" to death and "yes" to life.
For that is what a military draft - what any draft - means: The state owns our lives and can use them as it sees fit, even to our deaths or our use as the instrument of others' deaths. And an end to inductions is not an end to that idea. An end to inductions does not mean the end of the draft, does not mean the end of American militarism, does not mean the state has rejected the pattern of violent solutions to problems, does not mean America has turned from death toward life. It means only that the state feels it doesn't need our bodies/lives - just now. As long as the idea that our lives belong to the state exists, the draft exists; as long as the draft exists, militarism exists; as long as militarism exists, the spur to war exists; as long as the spur to war exists, war exists.
The draft is linked to war. Ending the draft will not end war, but war will not end until the draft does. If we are to build a just, decent society, we must reject war, reject militarism, reject the idea that the state owns our lives - reject, therefore, the draft.
Life is the highest good, and anything that advances life is an expression of that special, crystal-glitter quality called "human," that self-awareness, that capacity for love, that reach for hope that separates us from other animals. Anything that opposes life or advances death is a rejection of that quality, a rejection of our humanity. To be human is to reach for life, for love, for hope - to reach for our potential for positive values. To be human is to reject death and all that advances death. The draft - the very concept of the draft - advances, indeed inspires, death. I reject the draft. And I reject all the symbols of the draft, such as the classification card I received today. Do with it as you will, but I will not have it.
Next is the letter I sent refusing to cooperate with "earned re-entry." It was sent to the US Attorney for Newark, NJ, on September 19, 1974.
On October 13, 1971 I returned my draft and classification cards to my local draft board (#46, Red Bank); I have refused to carry such cards since then. Upon receiving a new classification card in January of 1973, I returned that as well. At those times I stated in detail my moral and philosophical reasons for opposition to war and the draft, reasons which I will not repeat here beyond stating my conviction that war is morally intolerable and logically untenable, and that anything that aids in prosecuting war, such as the draft, is likewise unacceptable.
As I'm sure you're aware, I'm still liable for prosecution for these acts. It's my understanding that under the recently announced "earned re-entry" program, in order to avoid such prosecution I would be expected to present myself to you and indicate my willingness to do 24 months of "public service" work.
I'm writing to you to inform you that I will have no part of this punitive plan, this so-called "leniency." "Leniency" it is not, "reconciliation" it is not: It is punishment, pure and simple. Punishment for the crime of following your conscience, punishment for the crime of resisting government criminality, punishment for the crime of refusing to kill at the order of the state.
Calling a requirement for two years of work at a low-paying job acceptable to the government "public service work" is merely a euphemism for doing time, and a flimsy one at that. Requiring an oath of allegiance from those who tried to right our national wrong in Indochina is an absurd distortion of reality: It is those who pursued the war, not those who resisted it, who should be required to take such an oath, for it was our leaders who lead us into the war, and who now continue to use American tax dollars to fund its continuation by others, who betrayed the ideals of justice on which this nation was supposedly founded.
The work and oath of allegiance requirements are in effect requirements for expressions of contrition by those who resisted the war. I can't in good conscience express contrition for acts that I feel to have been, not merely not wrong, but actually quite right. And as long as the US continues to insist on being "#1," with all the attendant ill consequences for millions of people all around the world, I could not possibly swear an oath of allegiance which could in effect pledge me to support values and actions in which I could not believe.
I turned in my draft card as a public expression of my refusal to kill other human beings. Now I'm being told to say "I'm sorry." I'm not sorry. Even though I presume that my chances of being prosecuted are somewhat increased by this, I feel I have no other moral choice than to treat this "earned re-entry" plan the same way I treated the draft: I reject it, openly, freely, publicly - and entirely.
In 1980, I was running for Congress as an independent. Jimmy Carter had announced his desire to renew draft registration and legislation was introduced to that end. On June 12, 1980, I issued the following statement. (I have edited out a section responding to arguments being made for registration that were specific to the time, as they didn't seem relevant to the present discussion.)
The Senate has now joined the House in passing legislation to require 19- and 20-year old men to register for the draft, perhaps as soon as mid-July. Due to a technical change in the Senate version, the bill must be re-approved by the House, which is expected to act in a few days. The bill could be law by the end of next week.
This is a wholly reprehensible action. The move for draft registration is based on a combination of ignorance, foolishness, paranoia, and cold political calculation, riding a mindless tide of resurgent militarism. And no one, not even registration's most ardent supporters, believes this will be the end: It's merely the first step, the groundbreaking, toward resumption of the draft with all the problems that entails.
Those problems are many: The draft is notoriously unfair to minorities and the poor, automatically favoring the better educated, the more articulate, and those more used to dealing with bureaucracies. It's coercion, wholly out of place in a democratic society. It involves disruption of people's lives, invasion of their privacy, and lack of choice. It is by any rational standard involuntary servitude. It makes felons of those who want to live their lives free of militarist domination. It is, in short, unfair, discriminatory, anti-democratic, and probably unconstitutional.
And, equally importantly, it is, even in the nascent form of "just" registration, another escalation of an already dangerously out of control arms race.
Indeed, resumption of registration and the draft declares the US is more willing to go to war, more willing to seek military solutions to political and diplomatic problems, more prepared to try to forcibly impose our will around the world. It says, bluntly, that we still pursue, now more vigorously, the myth of making the world ever-safer by standing ever-more-ready to blow it up, a renewal of the macho fantasy of "standing tough" as the way to peace - peace, that is, through domination.
The draft is a tool, a military tool. If we learned anything from the Indochina war, it should've been how easy and tempting it is to grasp at such a tool when faced with political problems, and how easy it is through that to escalate military involvement in other nations. The draft actually increases the danger of future Indochina-type wars. Those who point to the need for further legislation to invoke the draft itself ignore a hard reality: Do they really believe that a Congress that passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 24 hours could not be stampeded into further adventuring by another such "emergency?" ...
What we're left with is a program that will not accomplish its supposed goals but will escalate the arms race, promote further militarist schemes, open the door to the draft, invade the lives of millions of Americans, and make felons of unknown thousands - the Carter administration itself estimates as many as 400,000, 10% of those affected, will not register, risking prison in the process.
We can't stand by silently. There have been antidraft demonstrations before, and there must be more. I state here that I'm ready to help organize, publicize, and take part in nonviolent action against draft registration.
And I pledge more: If elected, my first action as a member of Congress would be to introduce legislation to revoke registration and destroy any records gathered to that date. And my second act would be to introduce legislation to dismantle Selective Service entirely.
And I make one more pledge: to support in any way I'm able those who refuse to register. Indeed, I urge that all young men refuse to in any way participate in registration. I fully realize what I'm asking and the risks involved. When I turned in my draft card in 1971 and later publicly refused to cooperate with President Ford's so-called "Clemency Program," I took similar risks. I'm not speaking in a vacuum. I know what I'm asking.
I urge it because it's necessary: The door to the draft must not be opened. The crazy notions that denying freedom to some will preserve freedom for all, that violating the constitution will protect the constitution, and that increasing the chances of war will show the way to peace are part and parcel of the 1984 mentality gripping our leaders that must not go unchallenged.
Finally, a short letter-to-the-editor to the Boston "Globe" from February 7, 1991, the last time the draft was being plugged by liberal voices. Notice how the same arguments are being recycled today.
Your editorial promoting the draft argued a)it's "dubious...whether Congress would've approved" war in the Gulf had there been a draft, b)reinstating it "would make it much harder for the government to go to war" later, c)Gulf war "manpower requirements" may require it, and d)we must worry about "somebody else...tak[ing] aggressive steps" due to inadequate "military power."
That is, we need a draft to continue being cops of the world and better fight the war - and what's more, having a draft would make such things impossible.
Huh?
Your argument is internally contradictory, inconsistent, and lacking principle. If this is an example, no wonder "liberal thinking" is increasingly thought an oxymoron.
Final note: A "truly equitable" draft that'd magically end military adventurism is fantasy. Having a draft didn't keep us out of Korea, generate wide debate during the Cuban missile crisis, prevent Vietnam, keep troops out of the Dominican Republic, or preclude the secret wars against Laos and Cambodia. About all it did was provide an easy source of cannon fodder for the Pentagon. On the other hand, it took years to generate the level of debate about Vietnam we're already seeing about the Gulf even though no one's been drafted since 1972.
The answer to militarism isn't militarization; the answer to one injustice isn't adding another atop it. Conscription militarizes. Conscription is unjust. We're better off without it.
I have said it before and I say it again: I am opposed to military conscription at any time, in any form, by anyone, for any purpose.
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