Letting in the Draft

After two years of intensive fighting in Iraq, the Pentagon is feeling the strain in every military muscle and has been looking for relief in just about every direction but one -- the draft. All across the United States today, young people are wondering whether, sooner or later, in its increasingly airless military universe, the Bush administration will open the window a crack and let the draft in.

A key reason for the ever-more-evident strain on military resources is that more than 40% of the 150,000 soldiers in Iraq are Army Reserves and National Guards. As Army Historian Renee Hylton told Salon reporter Jeff Horowitz, use of these forces creates pressure to "win and get out...there's a definite limit to people's service." When they are called to active duty, these troops risk their jobs as well as their lives; so, when their mandatory two-year terms expire, a significant proportion of them, under the best of circumstances, are likely to refuse further service. And service in Iraq has already proved something less than the best of circumstances. Little wonder then that, just past the two year anniversary of our invasion, the military is under increasing pressure to replenish this crucial element in the recruitment mix -- without much of an idea of how to do so.

In addition, in order to maintain troop strength in Iraq at anything like present levels, large numbers of active-duty soldiers must return there for more than one nine-month tour of duty, and this redeployment too generates distrust and distaste. Sooner or later, sizeable numbers of these angry soldiers must nevertheless be convinced to re-enlist, or else the pressure for new enlistees will escalate out of control and beyond the bounds of the present system to satisfy.

Add to this a constantly increasing casualty toll, now well beyond 30,000, which, in a variety of ways, places yet more pressure on recruitment. Finally, as embittered double-deployment veterans and angry Reserves, along with wounded and mentally stressed dischargees, return home, they only stiffen the resistance to enlistment among the young in their neighborhoods.

None of this was anticipated at the start of the Iraq war by Bush administration officials; they were confident that the American military could topple Saddam Hussein's government and pacify any left-over "dead end" loyalists of the old regime in about three months. Defense Department figures, reported by the Washington Post on March 19, projected reductions in American troop strength in Iraq and Afghanistan from just over 200,000 at the time of the invasion to about 125,000 by September 2003; to 50,000 six months later; and -- not counting troops left to garrison the permanent bases -- to zero by the end of 2004.

They were wrong, of course. Troop levels, after declining according to plan during the summer of 2003, began climbing again as the resistance grew -- in response to a deepening economic and infrastructural disaster, and to the brutal nature of the American military occupation. With some fluctuations, since the beginning of 2004 the numbers of boots on the ground in Iraq have remained at about the 150,000 level (not counting expensive private "security contractors" hired by the Pentagon and private firms) -- almost double the number that the U.S. could hope to sustain in the long run, given the force levels of the present volunteer military.

Several recent reports have documented the depth of the impending crisis, including a detailed analysis of troop strengths by Ann Tyson in the Washington Post. So far, over one million U.S. military personnel have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, with some 341,000 already doing the dreaded double-deployments (and many now entering triple-deployment territory). The military has moved troops into Iraq from all over the world, including previously untouchable Cold War detachments in Korea, Germany, and Alaska, and it's still "scrambling" to keep 17 battalions regularly in Iraq, many severely undermanned. These shortages have led to an increasing dependence on expensive private security contractors, who themselves add to the Pentagon's recruitment problems by hiring away otherwise re-upable military personnel for four times the wages paid in the Army.