For about a year now, I have been saying that the military draft is coming back. At the beginning of the war last March, I began to wonder if there would be enough soldiers to fight on multiple fronts. We were already committed to Afghanistan, and going into Iraq would make it more difficult to have full force preparedness across the globe.
Back in 1999, during a discussion among college friends, I went to the Selective Service website. At question was whether or not you had to go into the Army if you were drafted while attending college. I knew that during the Vietnam era, college was one way to escape the draft. This is not true anymore. From the Selective Service Website:
If a draft were held today there would be fewer reasons to excuse a man from service.Before Congress reformed the draft in 1971, a man could qualify for a student deferment if he could show he was a full-time student making satisfactory progress in virtually any field of study. He could continue to go to school and be deferred from service until he was too old to be drafted. Under the new draft law, a college student could have his induction postponed only until the end of the current semester. A senior could be postponed until the end of the full academic year.
So now I knew that college was no safe haven from a new draft. Fast forward to last year. The Selective Service posted a notice on its website that they wanted volunteers to help re-populate local draft boards. These draft boards decided who went to war during a draft. Although the Department of Defence downplayed this notice as routine, many publications wrote stories and people got worried that another draft might happen. This piece was in USA Today last September. Not soon after these stories made it to print, the Defense Department pulled the notices.
Today, I went to the Selective Service website, and lo-and-behold, the notice is back on the front page. I went back to the site because of stories like this one that came out over the weekend:
The government is taking the first steps toward a targeted military draft of Americans with special skills in computers and foreign languages.Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is adamant that he will not ask Congress to authorize a draft, and officials at the Selective Service System, the independent federal agency that would organize any conscription, stress that the possibility of a so-called "special skills draft" is remote.
Nonetheless, the agency has begun the process of creating the procedures and policies to conduct such a targeted draft in case military officials ask Congress to authorize it and the lawmakers agree to such a request.
Isn't this interesting. Basically this is admitting that they don't think there will be enough "special-skills" manpower for future operations. Is this a first step towards a new Vietnam-era styled draft? Obviously, the idea of this is extremely unpopular in this country. A lot of politicians shy away from this topic, especially during an election year.
But what if Bush wins another term, and then decides to fight more wars? Republicans in the past have followed every command from the Bush Administration. Lately, they have been upset, mainly at fiscal problems, but you can bet they would still follow orders if he won the presidency again.
This is an important story, one worth more airtime and print. A year ago, the mere mention of "special-skills draft" would have some people freaking out. Now, while attention is on the election, the procedures for a draft can be drawn up in silence.
From the Selective Service Annual Performance Plan FY-2004:
Strategic Objective 4.1: Ensure a mobilization infrastructure of 48 Alternative Service Offices and 48 Civilian Review Boards are operational within 96 days after notification of a return to induction.
Routine or not, this sounds a little scary.