The Case Against the Draft
Steinberg, Arnold
Who, Me? The Case Against the Draft Arnold Steinberg Given a choice between the draft and a volunteer military, most Americans would accept only one justification for the draft-that there is no...
...Despite fashionable interpretations of a few court decisions, its constitutionality has never been settled...
...Because most of the military is composed of true volunteers (considering the number of men who re-enlist after their initial term), the need is for enough volunteers per year to maintain forces at effective strength...
...The bureaucratic selective service system, costly and arbitrary as it is, disrupts the lives of millions of young Americans...
...Perhaps the most interesting observation on the volunteer military debate is that the objections of most Ritualistic Liberals, as indicated earlier, are reasons for a volunteer military...
...Although, some Ritualistic Liberals charge a volunteer military would create a caste system, the present system is a caste system, with first-term recruits, especially draftees, in one caste, and higher-ranking officers in another...
...Last year the President's Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force (the Gates Commission) completed detailed studies and confirmed what military manpower experts have long proposed-that the alternative of an all-volunteer force is feasible and desirable...
...Hence conscripts are denied the proper and experienced leadership to which they are morally and practically entitled in combat...
...The alternative, at a net cost estimated reliably at between two and four billion dollars, would restore the voluntary tradition of military service which has characterized nearly the entire history of the United States...
...One hears talk of military intervention and coups which would follow the end of a "citizen's army"-but all the historical studies of the Gates Commission demonstrate a high correlation between military influence (including coups) and conscription...
...The use of conscription during World War II underutilized various groups, including Negroes, who were discriminated against, and farmers, who were deferred...
...The supply of volunteers was stifled because military compensation and allowances remained unchanged and no enlistment bounties were introduced...
...Its uncertainties cause some to attend college who should not be there...
...The use of furloughs, permitting soldiers to collect double pay while working in a factory, induced adequate volunteers...
...The present system is discriminatory and unfair, wasteful and inefficient...
...most of these men serve in the military only for the remainder of a two-year term...
...Conscription encourages the use of manpower in wars where air and naval power should be more heavily utilized...
...One result, partially produced by such a system, is the disgraceful casualty and death rates in combat in Vietnam...
...This discriminatory tax is borne only by those men who render compulsory service...
...As long as first-term recruits are paid less than the federal minimum wage, anti-military ritualists who prate against a volunteer military and poverty clearly contradict themselves...
...Pay increases which would more than double the direct compensation of a first-term recruit would entice adequate volunteers...
...One wonders why these Liberals would deny this avenue of opportunity and higher wages to blacks...
...The present system requires training-at considerable cost-of large numbers of men for periods ranging from four to seven months...
...Although most troops in the Civil War were volunteers, the draft was still used...
...totalitarian regimes have always depended on conscription...
...Officers are required to serve a tour of duty in Vietnam to be considered for promotion, and they spend six months on a combat tour, then are replaced by another officer...
...The draft has been rarely used in the United States, and never used during peacetime until the period following World War II...
...It necessitated the suspension of habeas corpus following draft protests, and its overall effect was compromised by exemption, commutation and substitution...
...By increasing the average length of service of a soldier, efficiency will increase...
...Although Ritualistic Liberals also charge that blacks would compromise a disproportionate share of the volunteer military, studies indicate that the percentage of blacks in the military would not significantly change...
...The volunteer military would also increase the percentage of the military in effective status as opposed to training status (men being trained or training others...
...Ironically, the Ritualistic Liberal who opposes the voluntary military charges that it would create a poor man's army...
...One Gates Commission researcher estimated, only partially tongue-in-cheek, that if black recruits were paid twenty per cent less than their white counterparts, the military's racial composition would precisely reflect that of society...
...The result is that the poor and black bear the primary burden of this tax...
...Because the manpower pool (healthy men within a given age group who are mentally qualified for service) has usually substantially exceeded military requirements, deferments have been a convenient way to exclude a large share of this pool...
...Consider conscripts and draft-induced volunteers (as opposed to true volunteers) who would not join the military at present levels of compensation . unless they were coerced into joining...
...In altering the career or marriage plans of others, as well as its distortion of higher education, the draft incurs real costs for society which are incalcuable...
...The most persistent charactistic of the draft, the few times it has been utilized in American history, and virtually all the time in the history of other nations, is that conscription represents a hidden tax-in-kind...
...It would result in a more professional, efficient and effective military force-response to both our national security and to the precious Western value of individual freedom...
...In other words, a volunteer military would not preclude civilian control, but has always tended to correlate with it...
...Any system with unlimited manpower supplied at absurdly low rates is not merely inefficient and unresponsive to change, but it has no incentive to meet the needs of the first-term recruit...
...During part of World War I draftees were used, and contrary to the earliest American tradition of home militias, draftees were used in combat outside the United States...
...The Case Against the Draft Arnold Steinberg Given a choice between the draft and a volunteer military, most Americans would accept only one justification for the draft-that there is no alternative...
...The difference between the level of compensation they receive and the level which would induce them to volunteer represents a hidden tax...
...Any society unwilling to tax its members to finance the military resorts to this immortal alternative-coercing some men into the military, forcing them to bear this tax-in-kind (a tax on their labor...
...yet statistics indicate that we actually have a poor man's army (including military families on public assistance and food stamps...
...In fact, volunteers tend to be more productive than conscripts, and a change from conscription to all-volunteer forces would necessarily mean a more efficient military...
...The constitution gave the federal government the power to raise armies, but if this could be done without conscription, there is no reason to assume that conscription is sanctioned by the constitution...
...The draft has always been alien to American tradition...
...Currently the draftee is expendable-not merely in combat but in any task...
...Although, this argument is a favorite of anti-war types, Vietnam war supporters in the Pentagon have privately criticized the poor leadership provided to draftees in combat...
Vol. 4 • May 1971 • No. 6
