Students Debate a New Draft

By Michael Gaworecki, WireTap. Posted February 25, 2003.

I vividly recall the day I walked into the kitchen at my parents' home and found my Selective Service registration card sitting on the table.

"What's this?" I asked my mom, who was sitting at the table paying bills. It was really a rhetorical question; I knew what it was. I just hadn't expected being confronted with it on that very occasion.

"It signs you up for the draft. All boys get one when they turn eighteen," Mom explained.

"What if I don't want to sign it, what happens then?" I asked defiantly.

"Nothing, really. Except you can't get any student loans from the government."

"What? The land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy," I mumbled.

"What did you say?" my dad growled, entering the room.

"It's just lyrics from that band," my mom said. She gave my dad a look, waved her hand dismissively, and returned to the bills. (I had made Rage Against the Machine well-known throughout the house, but especially to my mother.)

"Just why do you think you have any freedoms at all, Son?" my dad bristled, obviously angry.

Now, my dad is not the type of man one should anger intentionally. He is burly and quick to anger (at least he was back then). His voice alone, when he raised it, sounded as if it could beat you senseless. And he was raising it then.

My dad was seventeen years old when the war in Vietnam ended, meaning he missed the draft by a year. Many of his friends, however, were not so lucky. I knew that at the time, too: I had been with him once when he visited the Vietnam memorial in Washington D.C. He searched out many names, then just stood there with his hand on the wall, over his friends' names as if he were leaning on them for support.

Recalling that day, I decided this was one battle I would never win. I signed the card, and am now happily sitting on the other side of a bachelor's degree -- paid for with federal loans.

A New Draft?

The last draft was deactivated at the close of U.S. involvement in Vietnam in 1973. Draft registration was ceased altogether in 1975, but resumed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980 as a response to the growing Soviet threat. Since then, however, signing those registration cards has largely been a symbolic act for America's young men. But a bill proposed in the House of Representatives last January could make that one signature a life or death choice for all of today's youth.

If passed, the Universal National Service Act of 2003, introduced by House Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY), would require two years of military or civilian national service for all Americans between the ages of 18 and 26 -- both male and female. No exemptions are to be given, according to the bill, for college students.

Rep. Rangel says he drafted the bill to spark debate about the true costs of a preemptive strike against Iraq. "We're talking about war," Rangel said in an interview, "but we're really not discussing sacrifice." Rangel also says he wanted to ensure that the burdens of this conflict will be borne by all Americans regardless of their socioeconomic status, because this hasn't been the case when the U.S. has gone to war in the past.

A staunch opponent of war in Iraq, Rangel also feels that if U.S. legislators' children stand to be drafted and sent to the front lines, perhaps no war will happen in the first place. "I truly believe that those who make the decision and those who support the United States going into war would feel more readily the pain that's involved, the sacrifice that's involved, if they thought that the fighting force would include the affluent and those who historically have avoided this great responsibility," he says.

The bill has virtually no chance of being passed -- President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld both quickly announced their opposition to a new draft. Rumsfeld is quoted in an Associated Press report as saying: "We're not going to re-implement a draft. There is no need for it at all. The disadvantages of using compulsion to bring into the armed forces men and women needed are notable."

But this won't mean the bill is a failure. As long as it sparks the debate it is intended to, and makes people consider more heavily the costs of war, it might yet be a success. Given that youth and students arguably have the most at stake should the draft be reinstated, theirs should be the loudest voices in the debate. With that in mind, I spoke with students, read campus newspapers from around the country, and found students' responses to this issue both impassioned and thoughtful.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »