I Want a Draft

Dear President Obama:

I am a student, and I support the draft. As an eighteen year old male, I remembered only a few days ago my obligation to sign up for the Selective Service, the institution tasked with maintaining the lists and mechanisms in the case of a draft. Pressing the "Submit" button provoked my musings about the potential consequences of reauthorizing this institution. Such an event would require approval by Congress and yourself, an unfortunately unlikely circumstance. Nevertheless, I would support fully an attempt to reinstate it, as Rep. Charles Rangel, a veteran and the Democrat from New York has done twice in the past decade.

First of all, I adamantly oppose a "surge" in Afghanistan, and actually support complete withdrawal. I understand however, the point that my government teacher makes when he says that if you were to announce withdrawal, the United States would not see the end of the recession until President Palin's second term. Since it appears almost (but not completely) politically impossible to withdraw, I request that the United States restart the draft. This would "bring the war home," in a much more constructive (and morally permissible) way than the Weather Underground's bombings in the 1970's.

The history of the draft, given that it is now disbanded, is filled with controversy. The first national draft occurred during the Civil War and provoked riots in NYC in 1863. The draft instituted for WWI led to harsh imprisonments and vigilante attacks on evaders, resisters, and conscientious objectors (CO's). WWII saw the birth of the modern draft mechanism (heralding a more harmonious draft), and the Korean War saw the end of the paternity deferment. In terms of the draft (and, of course, many other things), the Vietnam War was the great cataclysm.

The experience of the police action in Vietnam and the accompanying draft, however, is part of the reason that I support conscription. The Vietnam War was a major player in the generational crisis of the '60s and '70s. This crisis was nevertheless demographically inevitable, given the affluence of the Baby Boomer generation compared to the oppression of blacks, women, and other groups at the time. But in a war of incomparable imbecility, the draft galvanized millions of students to stop talking and begin acting for peace. Their self-interest was at stake which pushed them to eventually take selfless action--witness the Kent State shootings, for example.

Beyond building a student movement for peace, reauthorization of the draft would dampen the aggression of the American electorate. My father, a small business owner, abortion opponent, and staunch Republican, acknowledges that he would not have voted for President Bush a second time had I been liable to be sent to the Middle East to search for weapons of mass destruction. He was however, willing to support President Bush's attempt at nation-building because his upper middle class son had a bright, collegiate future ahead of him. The draft would build not only a student peace movement, but a desire to resolve issues without war in the greater body politic.

This mention of class segues perfectly to my third, final point. In 1968 during the Democratic primary, Senator Robert Kennedy, running on a social justice and antiwar platform, denounced draft evaders and resisters. He said that when a rich boy receives a deferment, a poor boy dies in a Vietnamese foxhole in his stead. While you denounced the idea of two Americas in your campaign, President Obama, you are surely not blind to the reality that the American military is not at all representative of the nation's socioeconomic situation. Our all-volunteer military relies disproportionately on the working and lower classes to secure our freedoms. This is a tragic irony because in the end, it is not the poor who need the military. They do not have real estate that rival nations wish to capture, they do not have positions of authority that rival countries desire to seize, nor do they hold bank accounts that rival states want to empty. The rich profit from the military, yet they do not serve in its ranks.

President Obama, if you decide in the upcoming days to maintain or expand the American occupation of Afghanistan, please tie such an action to reauthorizing the draft. Such a draft of course, would need to avoid the faults of the one from which Dick Cheney and Tom Tancredo received deferments. Sit down and listen to Congressman Rangel's ideas. While we often associate solely the ability to choose with freedom and democracy, the social and racial makeup of the army does not reflect democratic or egalitarian values.