Reinstating the draft is not the panacea some claim

The ghosts of Vietnam are being stirred. A recent congressional bill proposed by Charles Rangel, the Democratic Representative from Harlem, calls for the reinstitution of military conscription. The raison d'etre for Rangel's bill is not a belief that the current all-volunteer force (AVF) is inadequate, but rather that "a renewed draft will help bring greater appreciation of the consequences of going to war." In other words, it's the Representative's version of an "antiwar bill." Despite the bill's lackluster support (it has only 11 cosponsors), Rangel's method of discourse concerning the pending Iraqi war has many scholars and journalists thinking about compulsory service's benefits, and it has my mother worrying.

In the March 2 issue of The New York Times Magazine, James Traub writes that conscription is "still [an idea] worth seriously thinking about" and justifies his pro-draft stance on the basis of several alarming statistics regarding the condition our armed forces. For example, of the United States military's 1.4 million active-duty personnel, 250,000 have recently been positioned along Iraq's borders. In addition more than 265,000 troops from the National Guard and Reserves have been activated in response to Saddam Hussein elusive weapons of mass destruction programs. It is understood among those in Washington that such a large number of troops in the Middle East is stretching the military dangerously thin. To make matters worse, in three of the past six years, all military branches (except the Marine Corps) have missed recruitment aims, and barely met them in the other three; the dropout rate of enlistees after the first-term of service has increased by 50 percent and the amount spent per recruit in the last decade has doubled what it was in the 1980s. These daunting numbers have undoubtedly added vitality to the pro-draft camp.

But is a renewal of conscription — the stormy petrel that helped bring domestic turbulence to dangerously high levels during the Vietnam era — the answer to our current recruitment woes?

Supporters of compulsory service, like James Traub, argue the erroneous claim that a draft would be cheaper because it would completely eliminate the high costs of recruitment. But according to a report recently put out by the Naval Institute (that is, an official publication of the U.S. military), Chris Briem rebuts, "taking millions of potential workers out of the workforce or delaying their education would have an adverse impact on the national economy." And even if recruitment payments are removed, what about the additional costs for outfitting, training, and arming such a large influx of servicemen? Furthermore, Traub contends, "We live in a culture in which everyone has rights, and no one has obligations; the social contract has never been so wan." But what about that little responsibility called taxes? If up to forty cents of every working man's dollar is bestowed to the government, I'm beginning to wonder whose not holding up their side of the contract. What's more, death and taxes are said to be life's two greatest drawbacks and already the government has a stronghold on the latter. So why give them full possession of the former unwillingly with a mandatory military service?

But the most salient argument put forth by pro-draft adherents is the fact that even today, the burden of service falls disproportionately among those in the lower classes. With government's main target for service being those whom recently graduated from high school, and the enticement of money and an education being the primary reason for joining the enlisted ranks, it is no wonder that citizens with minimal schooling and social status choose to risk their lives for the American Dream. But, again, is the draft the answer? During the Vietnam War military service was compulsory, but nevertheless sociologist Christian Appy reports in his book entitiled "Working-Class War" that 80 percent of those who served were from "lower class or poor backgrounds." Because of a wartime slashing of educational standards, medical exemptions that favored the well-informed and well-to-do and student deferments, the upper-classes were able to escape the insurmountable failure that was Vietnam. With only one child of today's 534 members of Congress enlisted in the military, something tells me that the boys of the Beltway will find a way to keep youth's privileged out of harms way even if the draft returned.

So if conscription is not the answer to mitigate the military's depressed personnel numbers and primarily lower-class social composition, then what is? One solution might be to bring back the nobility of service; that is, a recruitment strategy that entices all America's youth equally to serve because of the patriotism it instills in an individual, rather than the paycheck it provides. Furthermore, despite increases in the number of college students every year, undergraduates remain a virtually untapped resource. Charles Moskos, a Northwestern sociologist and military affairs expert, reports that if only five percent of the nation's 1.2 million college students were enlisted, the nation's recruitment woes would cease to exist. To attract undergraduates to enlist, Moskos further suggests a shortening of the required enlistment period. If the minimum enlistment time was 18 months, rather than its current three to four years, recently graduated seniors might weigh military service as a viable option before entering the workforce or returning to academia. Or for those college students who vie for time off during their college years, shortened enlistment periods would attract possible "fifth year seniors."

In spite of Mr. Rangel's noble intentions of dissent to America's strong military stance against Saddam Hussein, there are better means of opposing war than conjuring up an institution that nearly brought this nation to its knees some three decades ago. And already, the notion of a renewed draft is gaining adherents from the public and intellectual realms. However, what is needed to solve our countries lagging military is not the reinstitution of required service, but the restructuring of our current recruitment strategy.

So before you start to "seriously consider" endorsing a conscription system, think about the more rational alternatives. Then think about your mother's sanity. Or else I'll start thinking about Canada.