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The DRAFT! Is it coming back?
(Frida Berrigan, AlterNet. July 5, 2005)
In city streets, town squares and rural strip malls, military recruiters are beleaguered. The Army is unable to meet recruiting targets even after lowering quotas and standards. At the same time, recruiters are overwhelmed by scandal and scrutiny, and uncomfortable in the face of growing anti-war sentiment. . . . Though half a world away, the war in Iraq feels close. Mounting U.S. casualties, exhausted soldiers and an intractable civil conflict in which the only thing different factions agree on is that U.S. soldiers are the problem, make military service increasingly unattractive to even the most gung-ho patriot. Meanwhile, Washington is determined to "stay the course" right over the brink. . . . J.E. McNeil, executive director of the Center on Conscience & War, is preparing for the worst. She sees a "perfect storm" of conditions brewing a return to the draft. So far, more than one million U.S. military personnel have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. An estimated 341,000 soldiers have done double deployments (and many are now entering their third deployment). And they are not just serving, they are dying. More than 1,700 have been killed, and an average of two more soldiers die each day. . . . Recruiters are hiding police records, mental illness and physical ailments to make their quotas. An Army investigation into recruitment improprieties found 1,118 incidents involving one in five recruiters. . . . Recruiters and some senior army officers admit that for every documented impropriety, there are at least two more that are never discovered. "We have to play fast and loose with the rules just to get by," one recruiter told The New York Times. . . . "The only people who want to join the Army now have issues; they're troubled, with health, police or drug problems." . . . McNeil's perspective that the draft is creeping back is strengthened by recent announcements by Selective Service that it can now register and draft healthcare workers, computer specialists, linguists and other personnel if necessary. In March, the SSS issued a report notifying the President that "it would be ready to implement a draft within 75 days" following Congressional authorization. . . . Military expert David Segal believes that a new military conscription policy would galvanize an anti-draft movement that would dwarf that of the 1960s. . . . There [already] is the "poverty draft" of young people who are told the military is their only path to a career; the "backdoor draft" of the Stop-Loss program which mandates soldiers stay in active duty for up to 24 months after their contracts have expired; "the senior draft" in which reservists (who make up 40 percent of the fighting force in Iraq) are compelled back into active military service; and finally, there is the "secret draft" of mercenaries and private military contractors. . . . Kevin Ramirez, an organizer with the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, catalogues recent actions making the military very unwelcome in schools and on campuses. . . . At Seattle Central Community College in January, "students literally chased Army recruiters off campus." The following month, college students in New Haven tabling with counter-recruitment materials "received so much positive attention from other students" that the military recruiters packed up their tables and left. In Bloomington, Minnesota, Ramirez continues, a high school group fought their administration and the American Legion to allow "counter-recruitment tables and information" equal access to their school and they won. . . . The movement against Stop-Loss, counter-recruitment actions, young people organizing to get the military out of their schools, and the ongoing work to end the war and bring the troops home resonates today and tomorrow, whether or not President Bush asks Congress to vote to reinstate the draft. These movements sustain hope and save lives, while hinting at what a de-militarized United States would look like. These movements prove that we don't have to wait for a draft to have an impact.

posted by LoZo 11:53 AM