The Draft: No Solution to Social Inequality

"You bet your life," says Charlie Rangel when asked if he's still prepared to reinstate the draft. With the Democratic takeover of the House, the 18-term representative from New York is slated to chair the powerful Ways and Means Committee giving him a powerful seat from which to push his legislation.

As recently as August, word that the Marines were calling up their last line of reservists had reignited draft chatter for the first time since Rangel's previous draft push during the run up to the 2004 elections. "This move should serve as a wake-up call to America," said Jon Stoltz, former Army captain in Iraq and head of VoteVets.org, who called it "proof that our military is overextended," and "one of the last steps before resorting to a draft."

There's a temptation among progressives and liberals to view the draft as a potentially positive force, both in bringing about an end to the war and in evening the playing field in terms of whose children actually have to fight. Unfortunately, to the extent that it ever was true, this simply isn't the case anymore. The draft will only pull more unfortunate men and women from the ranks of the underprivileged and underrepresented.

The Vosges Mountains, Fall, 1944

They had been in classrooms only a few months ago, now they were tramping down some muddy road in a strange place, flinching from explosions. Annoyed by their flinching, someone would explain they were outgoing rounds, nothing to worry about.

Shipped overseas, sent to a replacement depot, greeted with indifference by their new platoon mates, expected to be dead or wounded in a few days, they were infantry and all their problems boiled down to surviving the German Army. Thousands would find themselves in Belgium, France, Italy, the Pacific, fighting on the front lines.

Casualties in Normandy had been higher than the Army planned for. Eisenhower was desperate for manpower. He sent one memo asking for 100,000 Marines. The Navy didn't have them, but the Army had two large untapped pools of men, the Army Specialized Training Program and the Air Cadets. Both were ended and their men sent to where the need was greatest, facing the Wehrmacht in France. The ASTP was designed to create a class of Army bureaucrats, the future administrators of ruined allied countries and the defeated Axis states, but too many had been trained. The same with the Air Cadets. The Army had overestimated the clerks they needed and underestimated the infantry required to win the war. Eisenhower was so desperate for bodies that soldiers facing court martial were often sent to front line units. Late in the war, they created black platoons to serve in white infantry units.

Most came home to start or resume educations under the GI bill, changing who ran America. Once, college was reserved for the rich and the lucky. Now, all that was required was an honorable discharge. So whether you were a Marine armorer (Art Buchwald), a sailor (Pat Moynihan), air crew (Howard Zinn, Joseph Heller) or an infantryman (Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, Mel Brooks, Malcolm Forbes), you had a radically different future ahead of you: college, a mortgage, a middle class life after a childhood of poverty. Even if you were wealthy, combat service was a key to social acceptance and political success among the masses.

When we talk about the draft, it is through the prism of World War II and the GI Bill. We see the mass armies of World War II as leveling -- one where people served without class distinction.

This is Hollywood's fantasy.

In reality, rich kids gravitated to the Navy and Air Corps, or the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services. They didn't sign up to be Rangers or Airborne, much less infantry.

It was the GI Bill, not the army, which made for a more equal America. There isn't space to discuss the fight for the GI Bill here, but it was a struggle to extend it to every soldier, regardless or race or social background or service. And in the end, it was probably the most revolutionary legislation passed until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. No other bill did more to change the face of America.