Opening Pandora's box
Polner, Murray
AGAINST THE DRAFT Opening Pandora's box MURRAY POLNER of...
...I think you have to Exactly...
...In military manpower necessary to meet our legitimate national 1977, when the last figures were made public, more than 40 security needs...
...Do Senators Stennis and Nunn and support registration for men turning 18 years of age after their cohorts really wish to force them into prison or Canadian December 31, 1980-that is, after the elections-who said, exile...
...The reason Entry Program, all buttressed by the largest, most destructive they opted for military service had nothing to do with the nuclear arsenal in history...
...ask . . . why there is almost 40 percent unemployment among There are today 2.1 million men and women in uniform...
...In the process they have falsely and deliberately denigrated the Editor's Note: On Sept...
...Instead, the House lated assessments about spurious "manpower gaps" and costs asked the President to study and report to Congress on overruns...
...ratio of black to white is "immaterial...
...In fiscal 1976, for example, 55 percent of the many cases a conscripted armed force would have even more recruits were let go before their tour of duty was finished...
...President's Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force, Ex-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld countered the reported that the Volunteer Army is working and that "all four Nunn argument by pointing out that soaring costs were not due of the active duty armed forces have generally been able to to first-term enlistments, which is all a draft would replace, maintain authorized strengths since conscription was and that pay raises for all first-term troops in 1977 amounted to abolished...
...Registration leads to a draft which will inevitably lead to Yet the pro-draft forces push ahead, methodically, myopi- military adventurism...
...We're trying to bring other hawks who supported Vietnam escalation at every stage back a peacetime draft when we don't need it...
...Have Senator Stennis and the "People are just going to say we're silly...
...whether registration should be resumed, whether women On the day after Jimmy Carter was sworn in, the effort to should be included, and how to enable the armed forces to make a draft politically acceptable began...
...12 the House voted, 259 to 155, Volunteer Army, tried to frighten the public about the possibilagainst reviving Selective Service registration of all 18-year- ity of vast, new conventional land warfare ahead and manipuold males for possible military service...
...These are not columnist who opposes a draft, put it best by asking "So understood, officers say bitterly [my italics], by either the what...
...One of the corAir Force with its extensive training and school opportunities nerstones of the all-volunteer concept was to keep the active did not meet its December 1978 quotas.At times the services military establishment reduced as much as possible and inhave been forced to offer a bonus to high school graduates who crease the Reserve and Guard capacity to enable activation within 60 or 90 days after a conflict begins...
...Should there be a legitimate national need to Chiefs of Staff are talking about a change in the way in which increase the AVF even by as much as 15 percent, there would military manpower needs are met...
...The volunteers, he con- Nelson, the Pentagon civilian concerned with the problem, is ceded last March, are seen by "many commanders and espe- lower its admittance standards...
...Marjorie S. Holt (R.-Md...
...This sharp increase was attributed system is not working...
...In 1978 the General Accounting Office reported that Weakness of the Reserves and National Guard...
...The generals are calling for a that our armed forces are too black...
...Beginning last autumn and continuing into this spring, the SENATOR JOHN STENNIS (D...
...no doubt-with conscription...
...solution for the reserves is not a draft but a good recruiting Nor has the remarkable achievement of the Volunteer Army program and much improved leadership and management...
...I much prefer the comment ascribed to cally, stubbornly...
...Still, it would be teer Army...
...Of course, the higher the unemployment rate the more apt the military is to be able to meet its I N 1971 1 WROTE a book entitled The Case Against a Volun- goals, so that these shortfalls may be cyclical...
...In an appendix to the report, two be blamed on the Pentagon's mismanagement and neglect...
...The facts are Add to that number 800,000 in the Selected Reserve, 300,000 that in 1977 the Volunteer Army had 319,000 blacks in the in the Individual Ready Reserve, up to 100,000 in the Delayed armed forces or 18 percent of the total number...
...But more and more youths to be followed-when the political risks are acceptable, people are talking about it...
...never served a day in Pentagon has pursued a deliberate policy of defying its civilian the military but it was very much on his mind at his director, Secretary of the Army Clifford L. Alexander, who Christmas recess press conference in Jackson in 1976...
...the army" (March 13, 1979...
...All escaped the attention of Drew Middleton, military affairs the Army would have to do to fill its ranks, insists Robert L. specialist of the NewYork Times...
...children of the middle and (this time) working classes...
...If there is a draft, there will be young men Rep...
...In the end, the rationale for reinstituting the draft is grounded on other factors, as Drew Middleton revealed early I F THE VOLUNTEERS are doing fine, what about the charge in May as the debate heated up...
...In and "apathy...
...Slowly at first but now reaching a peak of hysteria in a too black, too few...
...If include some form of registration in a pending bill on the not, if it retains the Volunteer Army, then there must be a House floor...
...The ironic and unpalatable to rely on recession as a mainstay of war, Nixon's position on the draft, and the cries of the military manpower policy...
...AGAINST THE ALL-VOLUNTEER FORCE It just isn't working HARRY A. MARMION would join the combat arms...
...In acting as it did, the House ceived a Defense Department proposal for a "standby draft" rejected the recommendation of its own Armed Services Com- mandating that every young man between the ages of 18 and 26 mittee which had proposed reviving Selective Service registra- register, but Vietnam was still fresh and the issue vanished tion on Jan...
...The President remeet their manpower needs...
...If the bear, with severe internal and foreign problems, an inefficient draft had been in operation, it would have had no effect economy, a brutal governing system, a Chinese nightmare to the east and unreliable client states to the west...
...Pro-draft forces are opening a the Vietnam veterans who have been and continue to be treated Pandora's box again that had best remain closed...
...As a result, blacks tend to antagonist, while dangerous, is in truth an aging and clumsy reenlist, for example, in greater numbers than do whites...
...cluding the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Pro-draft forces offer two additional arguments: the alManpower, Reserve Affairs and Logistics) concluded that legedly undermanned reserves and the costs of the Volunteer "The AVF has provided the military service with a full Army...
...AGAINST THE DRAFT Opening Pandora's box MURRAY POLNER of encirclement by the overwhelming might of the USSR...
...and others who between the Army's global commitments and its resources is have brought up the question have explained why "too many 'growing...
...a ,member of the House (and conveivably, this time, young women too)- 18-year-old Military Personnel Subcommittee which recently voted 5-4 to young men-who resist...
...For one thing, neither draft, he wrote in the Times , because they believe that the "gap the Times nor Senator Sam Nunn (Dem.-Ga...
...the public but one of the most important reasons why the Joint Inelasticity...
...Despite the public insistence within the to literacy problems, medical problems, lack of discipline, administration that the all-volunteer force (AVF) is in good financial hardship and inability to perform to the standards shape, it is not...
...Not too many people paid much attention...
...opposes a draft for the active forces or the reserves as "unThe Volunteer Army (AVF), he announced, was a "bother- necessary, unfair and counterproductive to the best interests of some matter," too poor and too black, among other things...
...Each the Vietnam conflict, reserves were not called...
...Where is the prospect of a land war absence of a draft, but has mainly been because of financial that justifies this sort of preliminary mobilization...
...Nor have the Soviets done well in the Third World where they cannot help with much more than armaments, the last thing in the world those underdeveloped nations need...
...During the Vietnam war when the volunteer force...
...In addition, advocates of a draft may attempt to global policeman and its willingness to intervene abroad...
...Yet everyone who has And writing in the Wall Street Journal in April, William H. studied the Pentagon's expenses has discovered that retirement Meckling, dean of the graduate school of management at the benefits, salaries, officers' pay and service perquisites and not University of Rochester and former executive director of the the volunteers are the real reason for high personnel costs...
...Miss...
...During the Korean War be recruiting shortfalls and a draft would be necessary...
...raises serious questions about congressional intent...
...This criticism, which has been fed to the concerted, well-rehearsed campaign, they started a softening public through television, network documentaries, newspaprocess once again to convince the American people that pers and magazines has, of course, been on the record...
...1, 1981...
...majority of professional and noncommissioned officers would Argued Senator Nunn: "The AVF may be a luxury which we resist a resumption of the draft...
...percent of recruits in the all-volunteer force dropped out before No matter what claims are made to the contrary, the current completing their first term...
...The serious problems than today's AVF...
...Back in Staff General David C. Jones and Army Chief General BerWashington soon after, he amplified his remarks: A renewal of nard Rogers have called for a two-step process, registration of the draft "wouldn't pass right now...
...Each of the services has combat-causing severe political problems at home...
...And Secretary Alexander, the first black male to hold collegiate opposition or those in politics who adamantly opa cabinet position, put the matter into even sharper focus: the pose the resumption of the draft...
...Those who the mid-Sixties and has written extensively on the subject in various volunteer for the active military and leave after their first term publications...
...this, too, service has done what it could, but now it is clear that even the caused severe political problems at home...
...recognition that power has its limits...
...So far as the first is concerned, if there actually is a...
...they also released thousands of men and subjective [translation:'political]: "A return to the draft is no women prematurely for such reasons as "defective attitude" panacea for the problems of today's military," they wrote...
...Time, however, has enabled many to see the draft was in force about 20 percent of those inducted dropped glaring weaknesses of the current system of obtaining the out for a variety of reasons during the first years of service...
...as Well, if it isn't the condition of the Volunteer Army, its the most effective peacetime force of this century . . . the racial composition or the state of the reserves, is it the cost...
...Pentagon military persdftnel specialists added their own opin- Until August 1976 the Army had no full-time recruiting force ions, dismissing critil$jhs of the Volunteer Army as merely for the reserves...
...be made to push a draft registration bill through the House and For the Pentagon and its congressional supporters, though, Senate later this year...
...about draft-resisters, deserters and exiles...
...The latent so shabbily by their country...
...nis's ultra-hawkish Armed Services Committee and issued 12 October 1979: 553 December 31, 1978, under Defense Department auspices (in- whatever on the reenlistment rate of blacks and whites...
...This the all-volunteer force had cost $18 billion more than the draft problem area of military preparedness is least understood by would have if it had remained in effect...
...is sponsor- the issue has never died...
...To claim otherwise, noted Dean Meckling, only 18 percent of personnel costs...
...same men who resented deeply the end of the draft in 1973 The first tactic of the pro-draft forces-as witness Senator because they believed it represented an ebbing of American Stennis -has been to damn the Volunteer Army as too poor, power...
...Are we ready to establish yet anger of the 1960s could easily be aroused again among the another generation of victims...
...But this strategy HARRY A. MARMION, currently an educational consultant with the cannot be accomplished for the simple reason that without a American Council on Education in Washington, has been an observer draft the alternative of service in the reserves or National and participant in the military manpower procurement debate since Guard no longer attracts the numbers needed...
...middle class all but drowned out arguments against the all- First-term attrition...
...some reserve units that were.activated were decimated in Shortfalls in meeting new goals...
...of service are likewise not being attracted to the various back12 October 1979: 555...
...black teenagers before you ask why they enlist...
...tory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran and When Can I Thus it was when the newest detailed study ordered by StenCome Home...
...And in'a time of peace...
...George Wills, the conservative the Volunteer Army, is the primary problem...
...The Soviet rewards rather than coercion...
...may no nonger be able to afford...
...This rather than the doubts about the effectiveness of blacks" is not good enough...
...During recently been unable to meet new enlistment goals...
...Not to be ignored is the fact that the return of registration or the draft will surely reopen the bitter divisions of the Vietnam war, a fact recognized even by the Defense Department study...
...strength active force of a quality equal to or superior to that shortage of reserves-and the facts are far from clear-it can achieved under the draft...
...Consider the following: necessary in a sophisticated military...
...PriAmerican forces are now outmanned, outgunned and in danger vately, the professional military and its congressional backers on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees know MURRAY POLNER, editor of Present Tense magazine, wrote No Vic- otherwise, as official studies and reports have documented...
...If the draft is restored then ing such a measure, and the Senate may consider it in the next Amerimerica will certainly return to its pre-Vietnam policy as few weeks...
...Senator Sam Nunn (D., Ga...
...Despite the House action, attempts may from the front pages and American consciousness...
...Strong opposition is developing on campuses and elsewhere: Commonweal: 554 organizations are being formed, resoultions passed, petitions recognized their debt to the soldiers of the 1960s and 1970s, signed, demonstrations held...
...Cost...
...Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of What was needed badly was a restoration of the draft...
...This is the plan the generals Those "people" Senator Stennis referred to are the very support...
...cially important, most of the noncommissioned officers...
Vol. 106 • October 1979 • No. 18
