Feeling A Draft –
Reflections from Quaker House, Fayetteville NC

First Month, 2002

The message was short, and attention-getting: a bill to bring back the military draft had been introduced in Congress.

For those of us shaped by the wars since World War Two, and especially Vietnam, the news was ominous: here we go again! For many there was a ripple of anxiety: not for ourselves personally, because we’re now too old; but we have children and grandchildren, and what about them?

For some others, reactions were not so simple. Maybe the idea was not all bad. Or at least, maybe it could address some problems that might be even worse.

Even worse? How could that be?

The Gist of the Bill

HR 3598 would establish that:

"It is the obligation of every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the United States, who is between the ages of 18 and 22 to receive basic military training and education as a member of the armed forces . . . ." [Section 3(a)]

But women would also be allowed to join up.

The obligation would be for one year, of which at least six months would involve:

". . . instruction in physical fitness, international relations, military tactics, homeland security, United States and world history, vocational training, and such other topics as the Secretary [of Defense] considers appropriate." [Section 5]

What about COs? Those recognized as having conscientious objections to combatant training:

". . .shall, when inducted, participate in basic military training and education that does not include any combatant training component. The person may be transferred to a national service program . . . ." [Section 10(b)]

For that matter, other draftees may, at government discretion, be transferred to national service programs after basic military training to complete their year of service.

And the program could be phased in over ten years.

That the nub of it.

What do Reps. Smith and Weldon hope to accomplish with this bill? Weldon hadn’t responded to my inquiry by press time, but I did get through briefly to Smith. He emphasized a number of points, which were echoed in a statement made on the House floor on November 7, 2001. He is worried, first of all, about the rapidly declining proportion of members of Congress who have military experience.

"Within a few years," he said, "there will be nobody in this Chamber that has served in the military. In a few years, there will be nobody in state legislatures that has served in the military except, possibly, for maybe a few heroes that have come back and had the name ID that allows them to run for political office."

Smith considers this a dangerous condition for American government. He also believes that ". . .service in the Armed Forces for all American men has been an experience that has I think unified us in this country." And he cited the increased needs for homeland security since September 11. But his concern predates the attacks; he says he’s been working on this idea for five years.

Not Yet a Landslide

What are the prospects for Smith’s proposal? Typically, a bill with only one cosponsor is going nowhere fast. Moreover, Smith’s bill doesn’t mention the cost of his program, which would be huge.

But my guess is it would be premature to dismiss this idea. Neither Smith nor Weldon are household names; but they are not obscure backbenchers either. Each chairs a legislative subcommittee, so they have cards to play and horses to trade. Smith’s is in Science; but Weldon heads the Armed Services Procurement Subcommittee. That’s the one that passes on all those new multi-billion dollar weapons systems that so many members lust after for jobs in their home districts. So Weldon’s legislative cards are high ones. And neither man has yet to start promoting the bill actively among their colleagues.

Moreover, beyond Capitol Hill, a growing number of influential voices are calling for similar action. A quick search of media archives turned up strongly worded post- 9-11 pieces in the Washington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor. John McCain is also promoting a somewhat similar national service proposal in the Senate, though without the conscription feature.

This is hardly a political avalanche; but it is more than one rock bouncing down the policymaking slope, and one thing can lead to another.

Moreover, you don’t have to be a conservative Republican to be concerned about the erosion of civilian control of the American military. When I sent out an email alert about HR 3598, mainly to Quakers, more than one echoed this concern:

"I have mixed feelings about the draft," wrote one Friend. "Without it, we have minorities and the poor who fight and who have no voice. With it we have the moral outrage of the middle class who cannot believe that their kids would have to fight and die and they have a voice. Without the draft, would there have been the Viet Nam protests? This conflict and the Gulf War are both safe for most of America because their kids are not at risk. A professional army is the antithesis of a democratic society."

Dick Steele, of Houston’s Live Oak Meeting, felt a similar unease: "I am very concerned about our professional army. I truly believe that the very best way to control military excess is to have a large number of young enlistees and officers who don’t want anything but out. Remember

the Russian army (in 1989), largely composed of conscripts, refusing to open fire when ordered. . .?"

These Friends are not alone. From my new vantage point, hard by Ft. Bragg, home of the Special Forces and one of the country’s biggest army bases, I’m picking up the same vibrations. These were reinforced in a new book, Homefront: A Military City and the American 20^th Century, by Catherine Lutz (Beacon Press).

The View from Fayetteville

Lutz, an anthropologist at the University of North Carolina, spent several years piecing together a detailed analytical portrait of Fayetteville and Ft. Bragg. She makes a convincing case that the evolution of fort and town offer a clear lense through which to trace the growth of American militarism and gauge its implications for the larger society.

In her final chapter, Lutz methodically outlines the post-Vietnam evolution of America’s military, their attitudes and activity. The upshot is a developing "crisis of military civilian relations," which she is not the first careful observer to notice.

The elements of this quiet crisis include such factors as the steadily rightward drift of political attitudes among military personnel, especially officers; an ever-more elaborate and sophisticated public relations apparatus, which is reducing civilians to "military spectators" and elevating military service and its presumed virtues to a kind of elevated, purified super-citizenship.

This is not the place to try to do justice to Lutz’s fine book; it deserves an entire report of its own. Suffice to say that the cumulative impact of her wide-ranging, careful research is deeply unsettling: The American military is steadily, quietly becoming an alienated state within a state, and a highly armed one.

Lutz views this from the angle of one army town. Nick Smith sees it from Capital Hill, where the political class is rapidly losing any sense of direct experience with the part of the government which spends the largest part of the budget and has all the largest weapons.

Jim Wooten, an editor at the Atlanta Constitution, wrote worriedly about this in 1999. "When the draft was ended," he noted, "77 percent of the members of Congress were veterans. Now it is 33 percent. Only three of the top six House and Senate leaders have served in the military. The number of veterans in Congress is at its lowest point since World War II . . ."

And of course, we are now on our second draft-dodger president–the first of whom was clearly disdained by the brass, while the second seems firmly in their pocket.

What difference does this make? A few years back, in a biography of Dwight Eisenhower; I was stunned to read about how hard he had to work as President to hold back generals who were secretly trying to provoke a war with Russia. But as an ex-general, he knew how to handle them. Ike was also the president–remember?–who warned us about the growing "military-industrial complex."

Who will do that today, or tomorrow? So I’m with Catherine Lutz, the left-wing scholar, and Nick Smith, the conservative Michigan dairy farmer/solon, that this problem is real and growing. (Talk about strange bedfellows!)

But I doubt Smith’s proposal would do much to solve it. The dose of military experience it would administer is very small, and superficial. Smith’s language is carefully limited: The program is repeatedly described as "basic," and including only "training and education," not regular military service (i.e., exposure to combat).

I can already hear the brass snickering about it as "summer camp." For that matter, it’s hard to see how a Congress populated by such "soldiers-lite" would be much better equipped to ride herd on the generals.

In Search of a Better Solution

But if Smith’s version of the draft won’t solve the military-civilian problem, what will? At this point, I am obliged to admit that I don’t know what else to propose, at least not yet. A full-fledged, "universal" draft into military service, including combat? In theory this could work; but everyone my age knows that such "universality" was purely fictional in our time; it is our generation of draft evaders who are Smith’s congressional colleagues.

Across the Potomac, in the damaged Pentagon, the brass also remember how unruly, even rebellious so many of the Vietnam era draftees were; they are no more interested in dealing with new hordes of such unwilling troops than I am in seeing my son called to join them.

So what is the upshot here? Thus far, only the beginning of a new chapter in a very important public conversation about military-civilian relations in our society.

Rep. Smith’s bill seems unlikely to become law anytime soon; but what it has delivered already is a full plate of serious food for thought. This is true for all citizens, but perhaps especially those who aspire to the mantle of peacemakers.

– Chuck Fager
chuckfager@aol.com