Feeling a Draft?

The day was so long ago that I got the news from an old, clacking wire-service machine that spit out a long spool of paper.

I searched for my birthday. There it was. My number was over 300. I was safe from the draft.

Any man who was over 18 during Vietnam remembers the lottery. Those of us who were in college were protected from an immediate call-up, but not once we graduated, so those numbers mattered.

I've often thought that if there were a draft today, the protests against the Iraq war would be so great that it would force an American withdrawal. But since those doing the fighting and dying are drawn from a small segment of society--volunteers, rarely from the elites--the impact on the rest of the country is muted.

Now comes Charlie Rangel, soon to be chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, with a proposal that we reinstate the draft. His argument is that politicians would be less likely to authorize war if they knew that their children and those of their friends and supporters might be whisked off to places like Iraq against their will.

He is, of course, right. But that has to be weighed against the broader impact on millions of young Americans whose lives, studies and fledgling careers would be disrupted by such a policy. Why resort to a draft when we can fill the military ranks with those who, for reasons ranging from financial incentives to patriotism, are willing to sign up on their own?

And if there is a class element in the volunteer approach, there was in the draft as well. Young men not in college had to go if their number was called, while those of us in higher education were protected.

The Rangel plan has zero chance of passing. In fact, Democratic leaders have been tripping over themselves in running away from it. This underscores the degree to which the Democrats are a party of freelancers. In the highly disciplined House GOP, no committee chairman would be allowed to float a controversial proposal without the backing of the Republican leadership.

But the intellectual debate is an interesting one. Has an all-volunteer Army made war too easy, or do armed forces function better when comprised of people who want to be there? And what about the notion of universal sacrifice?

This is a hot subject in the blogosphere, starting with Betsy's Page:

"Charlie Rangel is, at least, showing the courage of his convictions by working towards reinstating the draft. He believes that politicians wouldn't vote for war if they thought that their children would have to go fight it. Perhaps that is true, although we have fought wars when we did indeed have a draft, albeit with provisions for people to get out of it. I don't know how many congressmen have draft-age children, but under Rangel's proposal, that age range would be quite broad: ages 18-42. They wouldn't have to all serve in the military, however. Rangel is willing to conscript them into good works.

"He said having a draft would not necessarily mean everyone called to duty would have to serve. Instead, 'young people [would] commit themselves to a couple of years in service to this great republic, whether it's our seaports, our airports, in schools, in hospitals,' with a promise of educational benefits at the end of service . . .