Rick Jahnkow argues in May’s _Nonviolent Activist_ that there’s a “Decreased Like­li­hood of Draft”:http://www.warresisters.org/nva0504‑3.htm. There are many aging paci­fists that have become obsessed late­ly with the idea that com­pul­so­ry mil­i­tary ser­vice might be return­ing to the Unit­ed States. For exam­ple, I’ve watched the leader of one annu­al anti-draft work­shop pre­dict the draft’s immi­nent return year after year, in ever more excit­ed terms and won­dered what evi­dence this orga­niz­er has seen that I haven’t.
Jahnkow watch­es this issue as much as any­one in his work for the San Diego-based “Com­mit­tee Opposed to Mil­i­tarism and the Draft”:http://www.comdsd.org/ and he’s been watch­ing the hype build as he’s become more skeptical:
bq. Warn­ings about an impend­ing draft have been cir­cu­lat­ing on the Inter­net for months now. Some are tying a pos­si­ble draft to the elec­tion and pre­dict­ing with bold cer­tain­ty that con­scrip­tion will be intro­duced in 2005… The ener­gy that�s been gen­er­at­ed on this top­ic has been both amaz­ing and, I have to con­fess, some­what seduc­tive to anti-draft orga­ni­za­tions like the one for which I work.
Most of the peo­ple I’ve seen get excit­ed by a pos­si­ble return of the draft were in their teens back in the Viet­nam War era. Their orga­niz­ing some­times seems almost nos­tal­gic for the issues of their youth. They’re try­ing to save the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion from hav­ing to go through the same trau­ma. But the old­er activists’ anti-draft work is often patro­n­is­tic and self-congratulatory, for it does­n’t take into account the fact that younger Amer­i­cans don’t need saving.
The bot­tom line truth is that the Pen­ta­gon sim­ply could­n’t rein­state the draft. Jahnkow cites a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll that found that 88 per­cent of peo­ple 18 – 29 oppose a return of the draft. There would be mass may­hem if the draft returned. While some young men would sure­ly obey, a huge per­cent­age would active­ly defy it. Even if only 10% dra­mat­i­cal­ly refused, the sys­tem would break down. This is a gen­er­a­tion raised in a post-punk cul­ture and many of its mem­bers aggres­sive­ly ques­tion author­i­ty. They were raised by par­ents who lived through the six­ties and saw wide­spread lies and abuse of pow­er, includ­ing the Viet­nam War and the Water­gate scan­dal. The media mythol­o­gy around sixties-era rad­i­cal­ism has kept us from real­iz­ing that there’s a base­line of every­day rad­i­cal­ism today that far over­shad­ows much of what was going on thir­ty years ago. The Pen­ta­gon knows this bet­ter than the peace move­ment does.
It’s not the only nos­tal­gic protest­ing this gen­er­a­tion is engag­ing in these days and I’ve com­pared revived orga­niz­ing around “phone war tax resistance”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000230.php to “recy­cling dead hors­es.” I agree with Rick that today’s teens and twenty-somethings have real issues which we need to address. He says it so well:
bq. The lat­ter point leads me to the sec­ond rea­son why I have some neg­a­tive feel­ings about the cur­rent con­cern over the draft: Much of the anx­i­ety is com­ing from peo­ple who are ignor­ing the more press­ing prob­lem of aggres­sive mil­i­tary recruit­ing, which, among oth­er things, dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affects non-affluent youths and peo­ple of col­or. In essence, there has been a draft for these individuals�a pover­ty draft�and yet it has drawn rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle atten­tion from anti­war activists. There is a race and class bias reflect­ed in this that needs to be seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered and addressed by the gen­er­al peace movement.
“Here’s the link to his arti­cle again”:http://www.warresisters.org/nva0504‑3.htm
h4. Related:
* Last Novem­ber we pub­lished a provoca­tive arti­cle by paci­fist Johann Christoph Arnold argu­ing that “A Mil­i­tary Draft Would be Good for Us”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000231.php and a per­son­al response piece I wrote about how the “pres­sures of a mil­i­tary draft”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000231.php can force an eigh­teen year old to real­ly think hard about issues of war and peace.
* Non​vi​o​lence​.org has guide to issues of “mil­i­tary con­scrip­tion and con­sci­en­tious objection”:http://www.nonviolence.org/issues/conscience.php. We also watch issues of the “peace movement”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_peace_movement.php, and tend to high­light gen­er­a­tional issues a lot.
* The Urban Leg­end debunkers at Snopes​.com have tracked and researched the “draft fear emails going around”:http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/draft.asp. They don’t think a draft is com­ing back and any time soon, cit­ing many sources.