May-June 2004:
A Martyr for Peace in Nigeria
Why the U.S. Keeps Invading Haiti
Forecast: Not So Drafty
David Dellinger, 1915-2004
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Forecast: Decreased Likelihood of Draft

By Rick Jahnkow

arnings about an impending draft have been circulating on the Internet for months now. Some are tying a possible draft to the election and predicting with bold certainty that conscription will be introduced in 2005 if George W. Bush is reelected; others are saying that even John Kerry, who advocates enlarging the overall size of the military and continuing the occupation of Iraq, would be forced to ask for a draft if he were elected.

The energy that’s been generated on this topic has been both amazing and, I have to confess, somewhat seductive to anti-draft organizations like the one for which I work. Conscription was abandoned near the end of the Vietnam War, but in 1980, the Selective Service System was commissioned to begin registering young men again for a possible future draft. After initial massive protests, there was another upsurge in organizing around the issue in the mid-1980s when the government prosecuted a small number of registration resisters. When prosecutions were abandoned in favor of using economic methods (such as tying college financial aid to registration) to coerce compliance, the draft and Selective Service were pushed to the bottom of the peace movement agenda. For the last 20 years, a handful of organizations have been struggling uphill to draw attention to the issue.

Even as an anti-draft activist, however, I have very mixed feelings about the new, intense energy that’s being expended on the issue. I continue to share people’s concern about the draft in principle: Conscription is a dangerous tool that has been used to make military aggression possible and exert social control at home through the indoctrination of draftees. Contrary to New York Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel’s assertion that a draft would discourage politicians from making war, conscription has always made war more possible and society more conservative. We should oppose any genuine threat to bring it back, whether it’s proposed by Democrats or Republicans.

But there are two reasons why I don’t share the concern I’m currently hearing over the draft. The first is that much of the almost obsessive attention being given to it is based on misinformation that overstates the likelihood of a draft. For example, one of the “proofs” of an impending draft cited in some Internet articles is the fact that SSS is recruiting volunteers to serve on draft boards. A Dartmouth College professor, Ned Lebow, has been quoted claiming it is the first public call to reconstitute draft boards since the compulsory draft was abolished in 1973. But, in fact, the Selective Service System has been recruiting and training draft board members since the early 1980s, when Congress authorized SSS to move into stand-by readiness. Congress still would have to give authorization before a draft could begin, but SSS has essentially been testing the system and getting it ready for the last 24 years.

Misinterpreting the SSS
Another item cited as “proof” that SSS is about to begin drafting people is the SSS Annual Performance Plan, Fiscal Year 2004. This plan, presented to Congress in 2003, is basically the agency’s annual justification for continued funding. It states various goals for its performance and cites specific amounts of money needed to reach those goals. The 2004 plan is similar to previous ones and describes activities that are extensions of the ongoing work SSS has done since 1980. The budget of $28 million requested in the plan was slightly more than previous SSS budgets, but there is nothing in the 2004 plan that is significantly different from other recent years.

Someone who misinterpreted the 2004 plan sent a widely circulated Internet alert incorrectly stating that the plan requested a $28 million increase in SSS’s budget and that it was a blueprint to begin drafting after March 31, 2005. In reality, SSS got a total allocation of only $26.1 million, and the March date was a normal deadline for SSS to report on whether it had reached its annual performance plan goals. If such planning were truly an indication of an impending draft, then we should have already had one for years.

Some people have similarly misconstrued recent news that SSS is studying the possibility of a special draft for people with foreign language and computer skills. In reality, it is an outgrowth of the SSS habit of looking for new things to do to justify renewing its budget. In this case, the Pentagon never asked SSS to develop such a plan, and SSS has no legal authority to implement it. Furthermore, there are critical questions about whether it would be feasible to identify the individuals who might be called up in such a special skills draft.

Another item that has been frequently cited is two companion bills in Congress, S. 89 and H.R. 163, which would require men and women to either perform mandatory civilian or military duty. But this legislation, introduced in January 2003 by Democrats Charles Rangel in the House and Fritz Hollings in the Senate, has gone nowhere in Congress. It’s not likely to, either, because of features that make it impractical overall, especially for the military.

The Pentagon Says “No”
Pentagon officials are adamantly opposed to bringing back the draft, they say, because: (1) They have the personnel they need, (2) a professional army performs better and is less costly to train in the long run, and (3) a draft would cause a loss of morale. But one of the biggest reasons for Pentagon opposition to conscription is unspoken: the memory of the severe damage done to the military’s image and national influence by the Vietnam War and the last draft. Since that era, the Pentagon has been forced to rely on public relations and marketing to fill its ranks, and as a result, the U.S. military has not only recovered the respect it had lost, it has also expanded its influence over key civilian institutions to an unprecedented level.

Hostility toward conscription, however, is still running very high. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll taken in October 2003 indicated that 80 percent of all people (88 percent of people 18-29) opposed a return to the draft. Only 17 percent said they supported a draft, which was down from 27 percent just prior to the Iraq invasion. The Pentagon is very aware that in such a climate of opposition, the draft would produce a backlash, especially in high schools and colleges, that could greatly undermine the support it has struggled to recover over the last three decades. It would require a very serious crisis before the risk would seem worth it to the military leadership.

Some people believe that such a crisis is about to happen because of several combined factors: the over-extension of U.S. forces, declining enlistments and plans by the Bush administration to expand military intervention to additional countries. However, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has begun a number of initiatives that would provide tens of thousands of additional combat troops without a draft (most Reserve and National Guard members have yet to be mobilized, and more combat troops for Iraq can be obtained through shifts in stationing and transferring more jobs to civilians). And the growing criticism of Bush’s foreign policy, now coming even from within his own party, is leading some observers to conclude that the Bush doctrine has been severely undermined. In fact, we may be witnessing the development of a new “Iraq Syndrome” that will create effective limits on U.S. military aggression in the near future.

No dramatic changes in first-time military enlistments were evident as of early spring 2004, and the same held true for re-enlistment rates for active duty and reserve members. Many of the reservists, however, were not in a position yet to leave the military, in part because of deployments and “stop-loss” orders extending the separation dates of many personnel. If a significant drop in the reenlistment rate does eventually occur, it will lead to an increase in quotas for first-time enlistments and, undoubtedly, more aggressive efforts to propagandize and pressure high school students into joining.

More Immediate Issues
The latter point leads me to the second reason why I have some negative feelings about the current concern over the draft: Much of the anxiety is coming from people who are ignoring the more pressing problem of aggressive military recruiting, which, among other things, disproportionately affects non-affluent youths and people of color. In essence, there has been a draft for these individuals—a poverty draft—and yet it has drawn relatively little attention from antiwar activists. There is a race and class bias reflected in this that needs to be seriously considered and addressed by the general peace movement.

Magnifying the problem is the fact that the Pentagon’s rigorous pursuit of young people for cannon fodder has led to an astounding degree of militarism in high schools and, more recently, in middle and elementary schools, all of which is not only influencing the career paths of young people, but also affecting the development of attitudes and values in future generations.

In the last dozen years, for example, military training programs in high schools have approximately doubled. Now, half a million secondary students are attending Junior ROTC classes daily, and militaristic programs like the Young Marines are springing up in middle schools. Tanks and helicopters are being brought into elementary schools for children to play in, and a growing network of official partnerships between military units and K-12 schools is making field trips to military bases a routine occurrence in some communities.

The implications of this for the future are enormous. Not only is a steady flow of cannon fodder being created by popularizing soldiering and war, but the basic concepts of civilian rule and democracy are being seriously undermined as military values and leadership models are increasingly integrated into the educational curriculum and environment. As each new generation passes through this experience, more members of society will get acclimated to regimentation and be influenced by the propaganda, and society will become more militarized and politically conservative. One of the effects of such a shift in values and ideology will be to weaken the possible anti-draft backlash, the specter of which currently keeps both politicians and the Pentagon hesitant to impose conscription.

Right now, there is very little open support for conscription in Congress, beyond a small handful of Democrats and smaller number of Republicans. If Bush were reelected, it’s true that as a lame duck he would not face personal political consequences if he abandoned his previous opposition to a draft. But there are a lot of other Republicans, as well as Democrats, who would have to consider the fact that disenchantment over Iraq is growing and 80 percent of the populace is already opposed to a draft. Plus, the Pentagon’s opposition would carry major weight, and the factors that might compel the military establishment to modify its view on the subject do not currently exist.

If, by some chance, true warning signs of a possible draft did develop, I think it’s clear from just the energy that’s already been generated by misinformation on the topic that massive opposition could be quickly mobilized. However, our ability to do this could be undermined in the future by the shift in values and ideology described above.

The irony for people who are worried about a draft is that by not focusing enough of their attention on the more immediate problem of the militarization of schools and young people, their current obsession could later become a self- fulfilling prophesy.

Rick Jahnkow works for the San Diego-based Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft and the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities.