February 12, 2005
US military readies draft plans.
In
The Return of the Draft, from Rolling Stone, Tim Dickinson gives a good overview of the various ways the US military plans to come up with the soldiers it needs.
Possibilities include a general draft, of both men and women, or, more likely, selective drafts of people with certain skills. The military continues to deny that it has any plans for the draft at all, but they are all ready when and if needed. If you're under 35, or know someone who is, it's something to be concerned about.
According to an internal Selective Service memo made public under the Freedom of Information Act, the agency's acting director met with two of Rumsfeld's undersecretaries in February 2003 precisely to debate, discuss and ponder a return to the draft. The memo duly notes the administration's aversion to a draft but adds, "Defense manpower officials concede there are critical shortages of military personnel with certain special skills, such as medical personnel, linguists, computer network engineers, etc." The potentially prohibitive cost of "attracting and retaining such personnel for military service," the memo adds, has led "some officials to conclude that, while a conventional draft may never be needed, a draft of men and women possessing these critical skills may be warranted in a future crisis." This new draft, it suggests, could be invoked to meet the needs of both the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.
The memo then proposes, in detail, that the Selective Service be "re-engineered" to cover all Americans -- "men and (for the first time) women" -- ages eighteen to thirty-four. In addition to name, date of birth and Social Security number, young adults would have to provide the agency with details of their specialized skills on an ongoing basis until they passed out of draft jeopardy at age thirty-five. Testifying before Congress two weeks after the meeting, acting director of Selective Service Lewis Brodsky acknowledged that "consultations with senior Defense manpower officials" have spurred the agency to shift its preparations away from a full-scale, Vietnam-style draft of untrained men "to a draft of smaller numbers of critical-skills personnel."
Richard Flahavan, spokesman for Selective Service, tells Rolling Stone that preparing for a skills-based draft is "in fact what we have been doing." For starters, the agency has updated a plan to draft nurses and doctors. But that's not all. "Our thinking was that if we could run a health-care draft in the future," Flahavan says, "then with some very slight tinkering we could change that skill to plumbers or linguists or electrical engineers or whatever the military was short." In other words, if Uncle Sam decides he needs people with your skills, Selective Service has the means to draft you -- and quick.
A good, thorough article on the subject. The possibility that they could draft you if you have certain skills, and keep you for up to 30 years, is bound to keep at least some people from acquiring those talents. And the idea that you have to regularly keep them updated on what you've learned, and on what you're doing, up till the age of 35, is even more bothersome.
I have to say though that I'm not entirely averse to the notion of drafting people with particular skills, say medical people, under certain conditions. I think for instance that it's disgusting that plastic surgeons and such are making vast fortunes while children go without basic care. I wouldn't mind drafting some of them at all. But for very clear and specified periods, and only under very clear and specified conditions.
