Does Anyone Else Feel That Draft?

As the new congress convenes, will Congressman Rangle (D.-NY) push his view on reinstating the draft? Mr. Rangle’s website features the draft as his number two current issue. He is the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee and may well become it’s chair in the next session of congress.

Conscription remains an anomaly in American history. There was no draft for the Revolution, in fact the Constitution originally provided for conscientious objection. Lincoln’s plan for a draft ignited riots in major cities. Both world wars and the Viet Nam war saw drafts. The draft and its consequences for draft dodgers remains one of many open sores of the Viet Nam generation.

Mr. Rangle remains an adamant opponent of the war in Iraq. He intends reinstatement as both important to maintain military strength and as a matter of fairness to the poor and minorities.

It will be interesting to watch the unfolding of the president’s plans for Iraq. The military cannot sustain this level of troop involvement. The Pentagon will agitate for bigger numbers from congress and will probably get them. However, recruitment figures even if we assume some modest degree of accuracy, show a fall in numbers. Why else would the military have to offer more attractive inducements?

Mr. Rangle has an intuitive sense that the war preys on the poor an minorities disproportionately. Of course , conservatives dispute this. The Heritage Foundation has numerous posts challenging the demographics. They assert that numbers indicate recruitment tends to come from the middle class and avoids the inner-city poor altogether: “Like their peers in 1999 and 2003, recruits in 2004 and 2005 came primarily from middle-class areas. Poor areas are proportionally underrepre­sented in the wartime years (2003–2005).” Kane, Who Are the Recruits? The Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Enlistment, 2003–2005, http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda06-09.cfm, October 27, 2006.

Reintroducing the draft may quickly end US involvement in Iraq. The draft set generation against generation. The so-called sixties culture of protest against the establishment derived in major part from opposition to the draft. (In addition of course to civil rights and feminism). A draft will force every family in America to face the very real possibility that their children might die in Iraq.