A Military Draft To End All Wars

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

Last week President Barack Obama revealed how quickly we are going to pull our military forces out of Afghanistan. A few troops have served eight tours in that Allah-forsaken place. We have never had enough boots on ground in either Iraq or Afghanistan to carry out our “national security” goals because even with 2.5 million in uniform we never had enough grunts to secure a single province, let alone a mountainous killing ground the size of Texas. And we have dropped a total of $444 billion into that den of opium and thieves. Not even is there no light, there is no tunnel in which to shine it.

Our politicians screwed us deeper into the mountainous quagmire by not declaring victory in 2003 and bringing the grunts home. That’s when the Afghan war was actually legit and won. Now we have “experts” who say there are only 50-100 Al Queda left in Afghanistan. We have killed 2,000 people over the years with Predators flown from Las Vegas and targeted by private first-class TV analysts in Florida interpreting video from 9,000 miles away. So why do we have 100,000 troops with their supporting casts there?

I think writer Donald Kaul, who spent 30 years with the Des Moines Register before retiring, came up with the perfect candidates to fill a military draft. After all, we will never have enough volunteers to fight all the wars the neocons want us to fight. This would be a “no excuses, no deferments” type of draft of both men and women based on drafting the least useful group of ten broad groups in the following order: 1. Congresspersons and their family members. 2. Lobbyists. 3. Lawyers. 4. Golfers. 5. American Idol voters. 6. SUV owners. 7. People who drive while using cell phones. 8. Little League parents who scream at umpires. 9. Litterers. 10. Everybody else. All reasonably able-bodied persons between 18 and 68 would attend basic training before further assignments.

Such a draft would certainly put “Full Stop” on most wars caused by the very profitable military-industrial complex. Remember when we invaded Grenada and Panama? These were two “psycho” wars designed to try out “new” equipment and would serve as emotional Prozac for our loss of Vietnam. It took Vietnam War draftees years to say “Hell, No!” and “Take that jungle hill and shove it!” but they finally did. In the end, draftees will always determine whether a war is necessary or winnable.

The Toughest Job In The Army

We are now recruiting people for the Army who have not quite reached 42. The minimum physical requirements have been lowered to accommodate these old folks. We slip in $20,000 to $150,000 bonuses for talents and specialties we really need. Having an all-volunteer military was Richard Nixon’s idea in 1973. He knew the poor have to fight somebody all the time anyway just to eat so they might as well fight for country for a few bucks a month. He also believed that rich kids would stop protesting the Vietnam War if they didn’t have to fight it. How right he was. He knew the rich would be eternally grateful to him for keeping their sons and daughters safe at Harvard, Princeton and Yale; therefore, they would shower him with illegal campaign funds. How right he was. In 1956, when we had a draft, over 400 Princeton grads joined the military to escape the clutches of the draft. In 2004, with double the number of grads, only nine Princeton grads decided to fight for God, country, the poor and their investment bankers.

The world has had military drafts since the first cave-clan leader looked around his smelly abode and pointed: “You, you, and you.” Recruiting for an all-volunteer service today is a complicated, hellish task. We have been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for ten years, which is at least eight years longer than we should have been. Last week we spent our 3,536th day in Afghan tribal territories which have never lost a war. Multiple and extended stop-loss tours have lowered the patriotic fervor that was present in 2001-2003. (Stop-loss is when you are extended beyond your discharge date because the country does not have enough “volunteer” replacements. You are needed to fill out the command you were originally in so it as near to full strength as possible for the next tour.)

The Army has 1,650 recruiting stations scattered around the country, manned by 7,600 recruiters. Each recruiter has a goal of recruiting at least two a month. Recruiting has become among the toughest and the most dangerous jobs in the Army. The suicide rate among recruiters is triple the average Army battle zone rate. A Time Magazine article by Mark Thompson outlines the pressures recruiters are under because most of them are regular Army who want to retire from the service. One of the tricks recruiters use to have prospective recruits pass drug tests is to have them drink gallons of water prior to physicals so the pot can be flushed out of their system. For recruits who can’t get a parent’s signature, recruiters have been known to forge the signature on enlistment forms. They also have been known to proclaim: “You’ve never had asthma, right?” It takes tough economic times and very high unemployment rates to ensure there will be enough “volunteers” to fill quotas.

The Wisdom Of Senator James Webb

Democratic Senator James Webb of Virginia, decorated Marine combat veteran of Vietnam and former Republican Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, author of many books, was elected to the Senate in 2006. He is one politician I have had some faith in. Of course, now he is quitting the Senate because “nothing gets done.” In 1980, when President Jimmy Carter was thinking of reinstating draft registration, Webb wrote a revealing and important letter because of his experiences in Vietnam titled “The Draft: Why The Army Needs It.”

“The volunteer Army is an unmitigated disaster … Because there is no draft, volunteer Army soldiers are wheedled and cajoled by recruiters. This sort of seduction, which has become necessary in the face of recruiting shortfalls that have increased every year, creates an attitude in both the enlistee and the military itself which is destructive to discipline and the traditional notions of service ... The military is not a job, any more than paying taxes is a job … We should all be willing to give a portion of our lives in order to assure that our freedoms will not disappear … It is fundamentally wrong—and cowardly—in a democratic society to claim that those who stand between us and a potential enemy should be risking their lives merely because they are “following the marketplace,” and the military is their “best deal.” The result of such logic is today’s volunteer Army is a collection of men and women who have been economically conscripted to do society’s dirty work, as surely as if there were the most inequitable draft imaginable. Our greatest need … is to make our military once again a fighting force rather than a social lab, and to stop being afraid to ask the men of Harvard to stand along the men of Harlem, same uniform, same obligations, same country.”

In 2006 Veteran Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, a former infantry company commander, was asked whether a draft would make the military “more equal.” He said, “I think our society would benefit from that. The draft brings people from all quarters of society with different socioeconomic and educational backgrounds together in the common purpose of serving.” He was later forced to withdraw his statement. A draft bill was submitted in 2007 but it never received a hearing. Less than one percent of our total population has served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Who Volunteers?

Just under 50 percent of all volunteers come from rural areas. Only 15 percent come from major cities. The South furnishes 40 percent of the volunteers, the West 25 percent. The least represented area of the country is New England, the home of the patriotic colonies. All of the Army’s 20 top recruiting counties have lower than national median incomes and 12 have higher poverty rates. The states with the highest recruitment rates are Montana, Kansas, Mississippi, and Texas. According to the group Mission:Readiness, 75 percent of Americans 17 to 24 are currently unfit for service, with most physically unfit. Many have criminal records or have not graduated from high school.

The Vietnam Draft Record

During our last legal draft between 1964 and 1975, 9.2 million men served in the military branches. About 3.5 million never slipped boots in Vietnam mud. Of the 27 million men in the eligible brackets, we drafted 2,215,000 men during the Vietnam era. But the draft has been credited with “convincing” as many 8.7 million to join the military rather than endure the draft risk! About 16 million men escaped military service during this time period because they had critical jobs, were deferred for educational reasons or were disqualified for physical and mental deficiencies or criminal records. Rush Limbaugh was diagnosed with a pilonidal cyst, somehow discovered at his draft physical when he bent over. He was unaware of it. That gained him 4-F status. Joining National Guard units to escape the draft was very popular during Vietnam days because Guard units were rarely sent overseas. Our 43rd president Lurch gallantly patrolled the Rio Grande in Texas in his F-4 fighter, diligently watching for Viet Cong invaders.

As a nation today we know little about war, although we can read about the half-dozen or so we are involved in today-–Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Pakistan, and I haven’t read the morning papers yet. As Richard Cohen, the columnist said: no one knows the military expression “lock and load” except Sarah Palin and a few veterans. Our “volunteer” military today, Cohen says,”Enables us to fight wars about which the general public is indifferent. The military today is basically Southern, white, and has been ‘conscripted’ by culture and class … by those of us who would not, for a moment, think of doing the same.”

Usually “just” wars create great patriotic and romanticized songs. WW 1 gave us “Over There.” WW II snapped out with “Praise the Lord, And Pass The Ammunition.” Did a great patriotic song come out of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan? Something by Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen perhaps?

The Wisdom Of Roy Scranton: College Dropout, Dishwasher, Floor Scrubber, And Army Volunteer

Everyone should read a five-part series written in 2010 in the New York Times by Roy Scranton, who volunteered for the Army in 2002 because he was bored to death with a scrabble life. He served for four years, had a tour with the 1st Armored Division in Iraq, serving mainly in Baghdad and Fallujah. He is now working on his doctorate in English at Princeton. He is both typical and atypical of the volunteer. His summary of why he joined the Army: “The obvious answers are easy: adventure, excitement, travel, challenge. In 2002 I was an unemployed, desperate, snaggle-toothed college drop-out, stuck in a dead end. I’d had enough washing dishes, mopping floors and scraping by, and the Army offered me money for college, full medical and dental, a regular check and combat pay. I also wanted to see war. I’d been told that war was an experience above all others. I wanted to know what it felt like to be shot at; I wanted to know what it felt like to kill.”

Roy did learn quickly about a war that was dirty, uncertain and morally dubious. Near the end of his tour he summed it up this way: “The last few months in Baghdad we mostly drove convoy security ... I was bitter and angry: I felt I’d done my part and wanted to go home before I got killed. I was sick of Iraq, the Army, my rifle, my boots, and the tension in every mission somewhere between boredom and terror … I got my college money; I got my teeth fixed; I saw the dirty work of empire up close ... I saw the chaos of war.”

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