The idea of reinstating the military draft keeps popping up. Sometimes it’s anti-war reverse psychology: Politicians won’t start wars if their kids have to fight them. Others think it’s unfair that fewer than one percent of us actually fight America’s wars while the rest of the country would just as soon change the channel.
My military career, active and reserve, spanned the Vietnam-era draft and the transition to today’s all-volunteer force. The likelihood of being drafted was one of the reasons I joined the Navy after college, and many of my shipmates were there for the same reason.
The military I joined in 1964 was the product of 25 years of the draft and included many veterans of World War II and Korea. Some were draftees, or draft-motivated enlistees, who had made the service a career. I served with a diverse group of people who represented every region, economic class and political opinion.
But the Vietnam-era draft was neither universal not fair. The educated and affluent found it easy to avoid the draft or, if conscripted, to land a rear-echelon billet. Those inequities, combined with the unpopularity of the Vietnam War, led to the draft’s demise in 1973.
In the years that followed, I watched a growing divide between the Armed Forces and the rest of America as an active reservist from 1968 to 1992. Part of this was the result of public opposition to the Vietnam War. When I served in the Pentagon in the early 1970s we wore civilian clothes to avoid being harassed on the streets of Washington. Even after the war ended, many Americans continued to resent the military.
The feeling was mutual. Military people and their families retreated onto their bases and disengaged from the civilian community. On my reserve weekends I grew accustomed to hearing disparaging remarks about civilians from career military people. As recently as 1990 I encountered senior officers who still thought most civilians were longhaired hippies.
Geographic representation also changed. ROTC disappeared from many universities, including most of the Ivy League. Anti-military attitudes in many parts of the country prompted the services to concentrate their recruiting in the South and West. The composition of today’s military (apart from racial integration) would look familiar to Robert E. Lee.
Political diversity also diminished among service people. When I attended the Naval War College in 1984, my seminar instructor noted that the classes of two-week reservists had more varied opinions, and livelier policy discussions, than our active-duty counterparts. A more ominous sign is that voter participation among military people has declined and absentee ballot problems disenfranchise many service members.
The military-civilian divide is likely to get worse as the Armed Forces continue to shrink. The latest trend is that a growing number of new recruits come from military families, which suggests that a military caste is evolving apart from American society.
Reviving the draft could reverse this trend over time. But it would have to be much different than the traditional Selective Service system. It would have to include women and would produce many more recruits than the armed forces need.
What could work is some sort of national service with the military as one of many options. The challenge is to make it truly universal for everyone from Harvard graduates to illegal immigrants, with ways to accommodate single parents and budding criminals.
It would be a massive exercise in social engineering but could produce a variety of social benefits. Something like the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps, for instance, could perform useful work and prepare unemployable youth to enter the work force. The most important benefit, however, is the idea that everyone has the obligation to serve his or her country.
Universal national service eventually could break down the military-civilian divide and make the services look a little more like the country they serve. And in a democracy, it’s a good idea to have a certain number of people in uniform who do not want to be there.
ers, about three inches long, with short, rapidly moving wings that allow them to hover and a needle-like beak that taps the nectar from flowers. They actually do hum, though it’s more of an angry, insect-like buzz generated by wings that beat about 80 times per second.
Whose boots on the ground?
After a weekend of round-the-clock news coverage of the terrorist attacks in Paris, I am appalled by the depravity of the terrorists and dismayed by the reaction of politicians and pundits.
We’re seeing some stark contrasts. At the same time the president of France was calling the attack an act of war, Democratic presidential candidates were refusing to use the term “radical Islam.” Sen. Bernie Sanders’ claim that climate change is still the greatest threat to national security was downright bizarre.
A more hopeful sign, which received practically no news coverage, is that Muslim leaders around the world also condemned the Paris attacks.
I hope President Obama resists the pressure to commit American ground troops to the conflict in the Middle East. That would play into the apocalyptic ISIS narrative of a great battle with a Crusader army.
The greater danger is that President Obama has an unfortunate habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. If shamed into sending troops, he is likely to deploy an insufficient force with inadequate support. His aversion to waging war will hamstring our troops with restrictive rules of engagement and political micromanagement. The result will be needless loss of American lives.
More air strikes in Syria won’t solve the problem. ISIS will have to be defeated on the ground, preferably by pissed-off Sunni Muslim soldiers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. The model for this is the coalition we saw in the Persian Gulf war in 1991-91, minus the massive commitment of American ground forces. The U.S. needs to lead this coalition because nobody else has the military capability to coordinate and support multinational warfare.
Middle Eastern ground forces have limitations on their own, but can be highly effective if they’re backed up by American and NATO air power, technology and support. The role of U.S. and European forces should be to provide close air support, advisers, search and rescue, logistics, special operations and coordinated communication and intelligence.
The Paris attack is motivating the world to undertake what is likely to be a generational campaign to eliminate the threat of radical Islam. Our allies in Europe and the Middle East appear to be willing and ready to join the fight.
All that’s missing is leadership.