Feeling a Little Drafty? Get Real.

Alright,

So recently I've been hearing a lot of strange things from my friends and I read something on Foreign Policy that raised a few questions for me. These questions all deal about that notorious word that became so infamous in the 1960s and 1970s, which is: The Draft.

"The Draft," is one of those words that makes people cringe. It makes people think, "What? They're going to force me to serve my country?" This is a point which I will expound upon later and disagree with. It makes people shiver and think: Oh god, fascism is here again. Believe it or not, I have heard that one and it made me just sit there with a confounded face. Other people rail against it, saying it's a very violation of our fundamental freedoms, which I will have to give them.

My stance on the draft is basically an emphatic: NO. I however, think that when people bring up the idea that a draft will and can happen, they're pretty much crazy or just not that well informed. I know I'm making a lot of assumptions with that last sentence. People who bring up draft = crazy + uninformed. Let me explain myself first before you go for my jugular, okay?

We don't have the necessary conditions for a draft.

There, I said it, it's that simple. Let me reiterate: We don't have the necessary conditions for a draft. Now, what do I mean by this? Let's take a look at all the times in the United State's (short) history to see what drafts came up. I'm going to only use recent examples here, World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam. It's kind of interesting that my examples are going to take us from: hooray draft! To: FUCK THE DRAFT (made famous by the Supreme Court case: Cohen v. California).

World War II was the prime example of what I want to highlight as the necessary conditions for a draft. World War II was the last time that we would see a total war being fought on a global scale. It seemed as if almost every nation that had become involved in World War II had gone to a completely war focused economy. Basically everything they were producing was going to the war effort (read: rationing food and women not having nylons because they were being used for parachutes). So how does this make the necessary conditions? Everyone else was doing it. It's as simple as: we needed the men.

While I'll acknowledge that a lot of people will say: Well, hey Mario! We need the men right now in Afghanistan! I'm going to say: Well, yes and no. Yes, the United States shifted to a networkcentric warfare strategy and reduced the size of the troops and now they're facing the harsh reality of not having enough boots on the ground, I'm going to have to say this: Is the Taliban forcing conscription? No, they are not. They can't even really force conscription.

See, the thing here is this: Germany, Italy, and Japan were using conscription. All our allies that we have now, with the exception of the U.K. were beaten down by the Germans. So now we faced a really large, professional army that had the military machinery of Europe at its behest, while we had a large, professional army that had vast amounts of resources in Asian at its behest. Now, too me, this sounds a little different than the Taliban running around in the mountains of Afghanistan. Think of how many men we lost in World War II compared to how many we've lost since 2001 in Afghanistan. About 505,000 servicemen killed, 700,00 servicemen wounded in World War II on the American side. About 500 Americans have died in Afghanistan. 4,237 dead in Iraq, 31,010 wounded. Now, while I don't want to make it seem like the dead and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan are insignificant, far from it. I just want to highlight the "conditions" which brought about "the draft." World War II happened in four years. We've been in Afghanistan since 2001, Iraq since 2003. However, the draft mechanism was made after World War I, in an effort to create a standing army, which we really did not have at the time. World War I was a very bloody war, which stands to reason why we'd want to have a standing army in case Europe went at it again.

We hadn't yet really gotten into the mindset of human rights yet. It took the atrocities of World War II for the world to figure out that the recognition of human rights was probably a good idea. This recognition of human rights led it to be wide spread, and almost everyone by the time Vietnam rolled around knew what basic human rights were, or at least had this vague notion that such a thing existed. Moreover there was also the addition of the television and the nightly news that turned the public against the draft (could you imagine what would've happened if there was TV around when World War I or II were going on?).

So here we have a kind of two headed spear against the draft. On one hand, we have the notion that we are more technologically superior than we were back in the early half of the 20th century, and that the people we are currently fighting do not have such a developed infrastructure or military capabilities such as the Germans and Japanese did at the time, or even the Vietnamese in North Vietnam. While on the other hand we have a large resentment towards the draft, and we have mass media to show us the casualties and to sway public sentiment.

Frankly, to me, a draft would seem impossible. It doesn't even sound like a good idea. We currently can't even really supply or own military (numerous examples in Iraq and Afghanistan), so how are we going to outfit a 100,000+ more people? 500,000+ more people? I don't think we can even do it. The only imaginable way is if the Taliban somehow got its caliphate in the Middle East with tanks and stuff and we had to shift to a total war doctrine again.

There are various other reasons why a draft isn't a good idea. They range anywhere from people crying out that its a violation of their human rights, it can turn public sentiment against the war, the army that is created could be undisciplined and have a low moral (do you really want people to serve who don't want to?). All of these are very valid reasons, and I think that the only way to make them just excuses or not valid reasons would require a lot of time and a lot of money. You would have to see that each of the people are very well trained, organized, and disciplined.

I however have one interesting thing that I stumbled upon while reading this. It was a pro for conscription, and it was the only pro that made me go, "Woah." It was the notion that conscription can protect democracy. That if you have a lot of people circulating in and out of the military, you don't have this little "state-within-a-state" the the military can create when it is a professional army. A lot of people sign up for the military might prefer the authoritarian nature of its lifestyle, and once the strict rank and command structure has been put in place some might follow their orders because its their only chance at a job and a decent life. So, if you have a constant turnover rate, this might be alleviated. The caveat to this though is that the United States has civilian control over the military, and in its 200+ years of exsistence, I can't recall off the top of my head any medium to large scale attempt at a military coup, or even a small one.

All in all, it boils down to this: If you think it's feeling a little drafty in here, shut the window of doubt, bulk up on your knowledge and hope for the best. Liberties are like muscles, the more you use them, the stronger they become. If you however are completely apathetic? Well, then you'll get pushed around.