The Draft

We hear talk that a draft is very likely in the offing, due to events in Iraq. That always disturbs me, on several accounts.

One is that if you're truly serious in considering the invasion of Iraq to have been a mistake, then it would seem that the most logical answer is to acknowledge that mistake and get back out quickly, without bringing in more troops.

If a person wants a draft, it means that they want instead to go on with things as they are but at a higher force level, in the hope of achieving some kind of a victory that they can recognize. But that doesn't help all those who will suffer and die needlessly meanwhile.

Another uncomfortable aspect of mentions of a draft is that they aren't usually accompanied by indications of what form it will or should take, and that matters enormously.

So far I have seen only two forms, and I have heard of a third. I don't know if others are possible, short of slight variations of these three.

The first was the universal one followed in WW2 and during Korea. The second was the lottery that was tried during Vietnam.

The third was the Conscription Act that was tried by Lincoln during the Civil War. This draft brought on widespread strife rivalling that of the war itself. and it led directly to a fearful slaughter of people of African descent by people of Irish descent, in the New York City Draft Riots of 1863. As their excuse for those atrocities, the latter argued that by being drafted and leaving for the battles, the former would be given their jobs. This draft raised only a small portion of the number of men that the North needed, and it was deeply flawed by the fact that exemptions could be bought, and that option was available only to the well-off.

Naturally the lessons of that draft weren't lost on later draft architects.

For modern purposes I don't see how the universal draft could fly, because of the tremendous number of people who would be inducted and the huge expenses.

A draft is not the same as signing up people to be reservists and such. People who are drafted actually enter the military service on full-time active duty. There are now close to three hundred million people in this country. Think of the scores of millions who would be eligible for the draft. It would be a logistical nightmare, and for what? Merely to take a whack at first one small country and then another?

The big requirement that is always asked of a draft is that it be fair, and the only fair draft is when EVERYbody goes, with exemptions being almost non-existent.

In that light the second, Vietnam-era lottery draft wasn't fair, as it was purely the spin of some wheel that determined whether a person served with the risk of meeting injury or death while just past the stage of childhood ...or whether he got to stay safely at home and lived to be a great-grandfather. Everyone has a right to expect that his destiny will be determined on a level considerably higher than that of a TV game show.

The Vietnam lottery draft didn't avoid the eventual loss of that war, and with so many specters hovering around it, I don't think that draft will fly in today's America either.

Actually, I am certain that all the talk of a draft means nothing, and there won't be another one any time soon, unless the U.S. becomes involved in something on the scale of a land war with Russia or China, or a fair amount of the rest of the world gangs up on the U.S. and prepares to invade -- fantasies that are the province purely of hungry wargamers.