Restart the Draft

by Bruce Schimmel

No American in the last 30 years has been forced to serve in the armed services. And while America’s all-volunteer force has long been lauded for excellence, that era is apparently ending. Liberals and conservatives agree: Our nation’s armed forces are overextended, and volunteers alone aren’t going to be enough.

As we move toward widening commitments around the globe, there’s talk on both sides of the aisle of restarting the draft. Done right, I think it’s a great idea.

The oft-touted phrase "an all-volunteer Army" may sound like a noble idea, until you look at who's doing the fighting and dying. America's soldiers are not the scions of the powerful. Instead, they're the sons and daughters of the impoverished. As middle-class jobs disappear and college tuition continues climbing, military service is, for many, the only road out of otherwise dead-end lives. The official draft ended in 1973.

What we now have is an economic draft. With soldiers forced into service by economics, the military has been transformed from a force founded on citizens to an Army filled with de facto mercenaries. Add to that a growing number of outsourced military contracts, as well as a burgeoning market in military-hardware deals, and we've become a nation in which youth makes a living, and industry makes a profit, on war. A mandatory, general conscription might slow this terrible juggernaut. But only if the draft is truly universal. It worked during Vietnam, halting that unjust war. For despite special deals for the children of powerful -- including the young George W. Bush -- the prospect of ending exemptions for almost everyone's kids brought that war into sharp, critical focus. It's amazing how carefully a people will contemplate war when suffering is distributed equally, fairly and democratically. For those who argue that universal conscription is incompatible with an effective army, one need only consider Israel. There, everyone serves. And as a fighting force, especially in combating terror, Israel is second to none.

A military comprised primarily of citizens is more answerable to civilian institutions: Its goals are the people's goals, its missions held in check by democratic forces. In a nation like ours, where the destruction of the middle class has put democracy at risk, universal service might also bolster other broad civic values. Ironically, universal service could advance democracy precisely in the way that our public schools have failed. War is too often a necessary evil for the survival of nations. But should we truly need to fight to defend ourselves, the personal burdens should be shouldered equally, by all. Equality and fairness form the foundation of democracy, the very heart of why we should ever go to war.

If a nation decides to kill, it is a moral imperative that all its citizens, from all walks of life, share in the burden of dying.