Category: The Draft

Inclusion on Compulsion

A news article over the weekend explains that certain “lawmakers” are “leading the effort to allow all Americans ages 18 to 25 to be included for registration with the Selective Service System.”

To “allow”? And “to be included”?

The allowance and inclusion mean “at gunpoint” … by force of law: the expansion of compulsory draft registration to women, in addition to men, does not mean that lifelong dreams could finally come true. After all, military jobs are already open to women who want to serve … voluntarily.

Young men have long been required to register for a military draft upon punishment of prison for refusal … even though President Reagan, who enforced the law post-Vietnam, acknowledged “The draft or draft registration destroys the very values our society is committed to defending.”*

After praising “the brave women who have volunteered to serve our country,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R‑Missouri) argues that “volunteering for military service is not the same as being forced into it, and no woman should be compelled to do so.”

He’s right there.

But neither should men be so compelled.

And Senators Ron Wyden (D‑Ore.), Cynthia Lummis (R‑Wyo.), Rand Paul (R‑Ky.), and Patrick Leahy (D‑Vt.) have introduced an amendment to the NDAA that would end draft registration completely for “all Americans.”

“The real question now,” as Jeff Jacoby wrote incisively in The Boston Globe, “is whether anyone should still be required to sign up for the draft.”

The answer is easy: No.

The All-Volunteer Force has been a huge success. Free Americans have and will defend our freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* I know about those precious values as well as about the penalty — 37 years ago today the FBI showed up at my door. And not for coffee. For my refusal to sign a draft form, I spent more than five months in a Federal Correctional Institution (and yet still go around in error from time to time).

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The Draft

Slaves to “Equality”

“This will light up the right.”

So Rollcall, the Capitol Hill newspaper, quoted an unnamed Republican aide.

At issue? Last week’s Senate Armed Services Committee vote to force young women to register for the military draft. That provision is contained in the gargantuan National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Only five senators voted against mandating draft registration for women — all Republicans.

Two hawks, Senators Tom Cotton (R‑Ark.) and Josh Hawley (R‑Mo.), so opposed the change that they joined the beer-swilling Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D‑Mass.) in voting against the overall NDAA.

“Our military has welcomed women for decades and are stronger for it,” Cotton explained on Friday. “But America’s daughters shouldn’t be drafted against their will.”

“It’s one thing to allow American women to choose this service, but it’s quite another to force it upon our daughters, sisters, and wives,” said Sen. Hawley, adding “compelling women to fight our wars is wrong.”

As is conscripting men.

This Wednesday, the issue will come before the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Jackie Speier (D‑Calif.). “I actually think if we want equality in this country …” Speier has argued, “we should be willing to support a universal conscription.”

Speier’s empty homage to “equality” does nothing for women, of course … or national defense.

“It’s time to end military draft registration altogether,” tweeted Rep. Peter DeFazio (D‑Ore.), “not extend it.” He joined a bipartisan group — Rep. Rodney Davis (R‑Ill.) and Sens. Rand Paul (R‑Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D‑Ore.) — in a letter calling draft registration “expensive, wasteful, outdated, punitive, and unnecessary” and urging support for their legislation to end it.

Finally, some common sense.

I’m Paul Jacob.

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Memorial Day

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Accountability general freedom The Draft

Of Honor and Horror

army, twitter, public relations, veterans,

Last year, when the public relations wing of the U.S. Army asked, on Twitter, “How has serving impacted you?” the bulk of the responses were not what was hoped for.

What came like tear drops and bursts of rage were thousands of horrific tales, expressions of sorrow, bitterness and despair.

No doubt the intention was to elicit, if not patriotic uplift, at least stories of learning, moral growth, centeredness, and personal victory out of sacrifice and suffering. Almost certainly the Army wanted what the promoters of “national service” now want.

The outcome was far messier.

Now, the Army handled the Twitterflak very well, with a tweet thanking people for their expressions. But a response by Mike Schmidt (@MikeSchmidt69) was probably as upbeat as could be expected, given the ‘writing on the wall’— er, Twitterfeed: “Some say this thread back-fired but this is just the thread that is needed each [M]emorial [D]ay so we remember the sacrifices military members and their families make and how we as a country need to understand the true cost of service and improve our support.”

Most of the tweets I read were decidedly not upbeat. The anger and pain over battle deaths, wounds, PTSD, mental illness, suicides, and so much indifference to it — it was deep and wide … and heartbreaking.

And needs to change NOW.

‘War is hell.’ In the defense of freedom, in self-defense, the brave soldier and general are honorable. But that honor is informed by the reticence that comes from actual knowledge of war’s true costs.

Maybe this Memorial Day President Trump and the Congress can also agree to review the use of military manpower around the world, looking to need to memorialize as few Americans as possible in the future.

In fact, that sort of public policy debate is for all of us holding the hot dogs.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom The Draft

Why Not Ask for Help?

pandemic, shut down, epidemic, freedom, voluntary, covid,

“When this is all over, the NHS England board should resign in their entirety,” Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, quoted an employee of Britain’s National Health Service.

Horton agrees. It’s “a national scandal.”

But now things are looking up.

“[T]he British government asked people to help the National Health Service,” reports The Washington Post, “it called for a ‘volunteer army.’”

“The NHS is ‘rallying the troops’ for the war on coronavirus,” reads the NHS webpage, “with volunteers being called up to help vulnerable people stay safe and well at home.”

The results?

“Within four days, 750,000 people had signed up,” The Post quantified, “three times the original target and four times the size of the British armed forces.”

The newspaper story recounts several endearing tales of people inspired to serve their fellow Brits. And now the website’s sign-up page notes recruiting has been paused — to process the applications.

That’s certainly not the tack taken by New York’s Bill de Blasio. “Mayor de Blasio today called on the federal government to institute an essential draft of all private medical personnel to help in the fight against COVID-19,” informed the city’s website.

Sadly, the mayor wasn’t alone. At Foreign Policy, University of Massachusetts professor Charli Carpenter asked, “But why isn’t compulsory service on the menu of policy options right now?”

Why would a politician and a professor demand to conscript citizens of a free Republic?

Without ever asking for volunteers.

Meanwhile, ABC News notes that “[m]ore than 9,000 retired soldiers have responded to the U.S. Army’s call for retired medical personnel to assist with the response to the novel coronavirus pandemic,” and others are rushing to help.

As free people are known to do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard The Draft

Draft Mom or Not?

draft, registration, selective service, woman, women, female, barbed wire,

“The biggest piece of opposition” to extending draft registration to women, former Nevada Congressman Joe Heck told The New York Times, “was, we are not going to draft our mother and daughters, our sisters and aunts to fight in hand-to-hand combat.”

Yet, that seems precisely what the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service, chaired by Heck, called for in its just released report, urging Congress to make our daughters sign up for the military draft and to be equally conscripted in any call-up.

Or in a new compulsory military will draftees be able to say, “No thanks, I don’t feel like engaging in hand-to-hand combat”?

Today, women comprise nearly 19 percent of 1.2 million active-duty soldiers. They rightly have all combat jobs open to them — the very positions a draft has traditionally been used to fill.

So, in the name of equal rights are we forcing mom into a foxhole or not?

It seems … complicated.

“Women bring a whole host of different perspectives, different experiences,” offered Debra Wada, a commission member and former assistant secretary for the Army.

Since when does the military conscript people for their “perspective”?

“[B]eing drafted does not necessarily mean serving in combat,” The Times paraphrased Wada. “In a time of national crisis, the government could draft people to a variety of positions, from clerical work to cybersecurity.”

This doesn’t seem to be about actual equality of service —or equality of risk — at all, but instead about a bigger pool of possible forced labor.

“If the threat is to our very existence,” Wada rhetorically inquired, “wouldn’t you want women as part of that group?”

Yes! Certainly.

Of course.

But as volunteers, not as conscripts — and the same for men.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom The Draft

A Policy Misadventure

draft registration, women, female, soldier, selective service, draft,

The National Commission on Military, National and Public Service released its report today, advocating that Congress should force our daughters to register for the military draft.

“The commission recommended that the United States keep a draft option in place,” explains The New York Times. Commission chair and former Nevada Congressman Joe Heck called it a “low-cost insurance policy against an existential national security threat.”

But that flies in the face of former Selective Service Commissioner Bernard Rostker’s testimony: “there is no need to continue to register people for a draft that will not come; no need to fight the battle over registering women, and no military need to retain the MSSA [Military Selective Service Act].”

And speaking of “an existential national security threat,” the scenario Heck put forth at one hearing was a simultaneous invasion from both Canada and Mexico.

Puh-leeze.

“This is a necessary and fair step,” states the 255-page report, according to Politico, “making it possible to draw on the talent of a unified Nation in a time of national emergency.”

It has always been possible to draw on the talents of the American people — both men and women. Just not to draft folks against their will.

Legitimate arguments for fairness and equality* must not obscure what we are talking about: A step closer to using force to fill the military’s ranks.

There is only one reason for a military draft: the inability of a nation to persuade citizens to voluntarily defend their country. Yet, as I told the commission last year, never have Americans failed to rise to their country’s defense.

Conversely, too often our “leaders” have substituted foreign misadventures for actual national defense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* More soon on the sort of “equality” being envisioned in the next military draft.

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ideological culture The Draft too much government

How Un-Warlike

It’s war!

A common refrain regarding the coronavirus. “This is our World War II,” say media mavens and politicians … who have never had to endure anything like World War II.

The utter vapidity of the “war” response was explained very well by Peter Schiff on a recent episode of The Tom Woods Show. Schiff is famously bearish on the American economy, which he has argued for years is addicted to debt and consumption but not production and responsibility. He notes how different this new “war” is.

Folks today, he argues, have no more idea how World War II was won than how the economy works.

Politicians increased taxes during the war.
Americans were not bailed out: they had to struggle to survive, even on the home front, as
they had to do without creature comforts. Taxes on goods and services sky-rocketed, to pay for the war …
in which many young men died.
Middle-class wealth was tapped like never before, to win the two-front war, and one mechanism to aid the effort was the withholding tax …

which now we are talking about suspending.

What is widely being proposed today is not the “socialism” of war, where lives and wealth are conscripted.* What is being proposed is the “socialism” of bailouts and sugar-plum fairies, where consumers are coddled.

And unlike in World War II, Schiff contends, there is no vast private wealth to tax to pay for what is deemed necessary. Instead, we have debt.

It is indeed a strange war where we fight the threat of any harm coming to us, or any sacrifice required.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* We should oppose the conscription of individuals, as was done in the First and Second World War as well as Korea and Vietnam. Not only does it violate the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition against involuntary servitude, it was not needed then, nor is it now. More on this later in the week.

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From a photo by Nick M

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general freedom national politics & policies The Draft

Draft Winds Blowing

draft, conscription, slavery, registration, force,

A month ago, the U.S. drone strike against an Iranian commander in Baghdad sparked enough public concern over military conscription to overwhelm the Selective Service System’s website.

“With the ongoing military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan unlikely to end any time soon,” former Congressman Ron Paul writes, people are “right to be concerned about a return of the draft.”

“There is not going to be a draft,” SSS Director Don Benton emphatically declared. “At least, we don’t think so.”

The current context? Last February, a federal judge ruled male-only draft registration unconstitutional. On March 3, the Fifth Circuit will hear the government’s appeal of that ruling.*

A few weeks later, the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service will release their report to Congress on what to do with draft registration — jettison or keep and expand to young women — as well as the advisability of a year or two of compulsory government service after young people graduate from high school.

The issue is really very old unfinished business. “The U.S. draft proposal that no one supported,” reads the headline of a February 8, 1980, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation article on then-President Jimmy Carter’s proposal to register both men and women.

Back then, women were not permitted in combat units, and Carter’s proposal did not propose putting women into such positions. Still, as the CBC’s Washington correspondent at the time explained, “On Capitol Hill, the reaction was overwhelmingly negative.”

Especially because of a Catch-22. “Those who are for the draft are mostly against women being included,” he found. “Those who favor equal treatment for women are mostly against the draft.”

Nowadays, support for the draft is, if anything, even less enthusiastic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* See National Organization for Men v. Selective Service System.

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national politics & policies The Draft

Five Days Left!

draft, registration, slavery, war, freedom,

You may have noticed me take notice … repeatedly … of an otherwise little-noticed National Commission on Military, National and Public Service (NCMNPS). It was established by Congress in 2017 to look into the issue of extending draft registration to women or let the federal courts end registration for not including women.

While I protested the atavistic practice, loud calls could be heard to bring back military conscription partially or universally … or to impose a year or two of national “service” on all young people when they turn 18 — despite its utter lack of value.

The last day of the year — Dec. 31, 2019 — is your deadline to quickly and easily express your thoughts on the draft here.

Thankfully, as the Commission is finishing its work (making its report in March — don’t forget to share your thoughts!), Rep. Peter DeFazio (D‑Ore.) and Rodney Davis (R‑Ill.) have introduced House Resolution 5492. “To repeal the Military Selective Service Act, and thereby terminate the registration requirements of such Act …”*

“Today, with the introduction of H.R. 5492, the report of the NCMNPS due in March 2020, and Congress likely to be forced by pending legal cases to choose between ending draft registration and trying to expand it to women as well as men,” 1980s draft registration resister Edward Hasbrouck writes at AntiWar.com, “we are closer to ending draft registration than at any time since the requirement for all young men to register with the Selective Service System was reinstated in 1980.”

Speak loudly to the Commission now and let’s carry all the big sticks we can to Congress in the new year with one simple message: Pass H.R. 5492.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The legislation would also end what are sometimes lifetime penalties imposed by federal agencies and state governments against those who fail to register.

Draft Links of Note: https://thisiscommonsense.org////2019/01/01/paul-jacob-on-the-draft/

Archive of Posts on the Draft: https://thisiscommonsense.org////category/the-draft/

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