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Young men burn their draft cards in New York City on April 15, 1967, at Sheep Meadow, Central Park. Public Domain.
Americans hate the military draft. They revolted against it in stupendously high numbers in the 1960s and ‘70s, but the intellectual heavyweights in the House of Representatives idiotically brushed off that bit of relevant history with their odious vote June 14 to facilitate reinstatement of conscription. With any luck, they’ll reap the whirlwind they deserve. By that I mean voters, especially young ones and their families, should throw these bums out.
Some argue that the House bill, “Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization for Fiscal Year 2025,” will not haul people off in the draft. Young men, you see, already must register for the military or be charged with a felony. Former president Jimmy Carter reinstated this very watered-down version of the draft in 1980. The current bill would automatically register young men. According to Reuters June 26, the national registration rate in 2023 was 84 percent, high enough to make you wonder, why this new step? (Incidentally, the Selective Service website says that if congress wants a draft, it must amend the Military Selective Service Act.) But automatic registration sure makes the process of drafting people easier, doesn’t it?
Senators must now consider the bill, and assuming they approve it, it goes to Joe “Proxy War” Biden for signature. It’s easy to imagine him all in for the draft, as he has been so recklessly belligerent regarding Russia – even blowing up the Nordstream pipeline – and has deployed such heated rhetoric toward China. And then there’s Iran, always a hotspot and convenient target for presidential bloviating. So Biden has plenty of excuses to go one step closer to the draft. Wouldn’t it be nice if he defied expectations and vetoed it? But he likely wants a free hand militarily, if he totters into a second white house term, and if he doesn’t arrive there, well, it will be part of his martially muscular legacy. Blah.
Six wars featured the U.S. military draft: most recently in Vietnam. The Civil War, the War of Independence, both world wars and the Korean War also used the draft. During Vietnam, hordes of men evaded combat. One method was to enlist in the National Guard, since very few Guardsmen were sent to South Vietnam. Acceptance into the Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force was another way to minimize chances of getting killed. People also piled into divinity school, according to Wikipedia, where they were exempt from the draft. And then, of course, multitudes of outright draft dodgers fled to Canada. Still, overall, between 1964 and 1973, 2,594,000 men and women were deployed to Vietnam. But rampant draft evasion and the wildly unpopular, ferociously hated military led Richard Nixon, in the 1968 presidential election, to campaign against the draft: he promised to end it and did.
How will Americans react in, say, 2025, if Joe “Doubletalk” Biden informs them that he’s sending soldiers to Ukraine (assuming he’s still sentient and gets reelected, both being hugely unlikely)? Will they respond like sheep or will they show the spine of their boomer grandparents by refusing en masse? This is not some idle consideration. Biden equals war, as he has amply demonstrated. And while Donald “Dictator for a Day” Trump escalated by sending weapons to Ukraine, he has promised to wrestle Moscow and Kiev to the negotiating table. Take that oath how you like, but it’s sure not on Biden’s to-do list.
Unfortunately, the military draft appears to be on the senate’s to-do list. Not only that, but, The Hill reported June 20, “Senate Democrats have added language to the annual defense authorization bill to require women to register” for the draft. This complicates “the chances of moving the bill on the senate floor before Election Day.” Why? Because the proposal sparked fury among social conservatives and Republicans, who made it a campaign issue. Good. Let those war-mongering Democrats lose their races for attempting to corral and coopt feminism into the service of their sickening militarism.
One GOP army veteran, Sam Brown, running against Nevada Dem senator Jacky Rosen, was badly burned by an IED. “Look at my face. This is the high cost of war,” he tweeted, noting that his wife served in the military too, “but forcing America’s daughters to register for the draft is UNACCEPTABLE. Shame on Jacky Rosen.” Shame indeed. If Rosen’s so gung-ho for wartime slaughter, let her go join the army. Her bloodthirsty enthusiasm typifies the attitude of Democrats over decades; after all, it was a Dem demon, Woodrow Wilson, who snookered the country into World War I, another Democrat got us into World War II, another dragged us into Korea, another into Vietnam – in fact it wasn’t till the first Gulf War that the GOP really got blood on its hands. So I suppose it’s no surprise that it’s the supposedly more liberal of the two reactionary war parties that’s trying to ram conscription down American throats. No surprise, but still infuriating.
So what’s the immediate impetus for Dems firing up the draft – why now? Because the U.S. lacks enough soldiers – there’s an enlistment shortfall in the all-volunteer military. Not enough young Americans want to fight overseas, certainly not enough if the psychopaths in the white house get their wars with Russia, China and Iran. And then there’s the thorny knot of the globe-spanning Empire’s nearly 1000 foreign military bases. Someone must staff them – soldiers, because of course it’s unthinkable that Washington would ever downside its wildly expensive imperial outposts.
We would all be better off shedding at least half of those bases – we’d have more money, less chance of foreign military entanglements, and the U.S. could finally start to reestablish itself as a Republic. But to sacrifice power and prestige voluntarily? The notion is anathema inside the Beltway, even though it’s one of the three key ingredients in the medicine to cure this nation of its deadly self-inflicted folly. The other two ingredients are grappling our absurdly over-financialized economy into control, so that the Wall Street vampire stops feasting on the real economy, and reindustrializing, in a sane, green manner. None of these three even makes it into a major political party’s platform. Nor do they ever appear in the news. What, me worry? That should be our national motto, because we have Alfred E. Newman for president and will again, come November, no matter who wins.
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