Feeling a Draft?

But isn't that the system we used for decades, including during World War II and Korea?

Right Off The Shore calls the proposal "infuriating. How many times have we heard the Democrats using scare tactics, especially on college campuses or directed towards the youth, claiming Republicans were going to reinstate the draft? How many ways did they use this against Republicans during the last few years? Now one of their own is proposing a draft?

"I'm not quite sure if Rangel is doing this because he actually wants to reinstate the draft, or if this is entirely to advance some ulterior motive. I heard one news station report him as saying that, and I paraphrase, if the draft is reinstated, the United States cannot enter any more wars. He may also be using this as a wedge issue against Republicans in the 2008 elections."

What? People would vote for the Democrats because they want a draft?

The New Republic's Michael Crowley notes the distancing act taking place:

"' Mr. Rangel will be very busy with his work on the Ways and Means Committee, whose jurisdiction is quite a different jurisdiction,' Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters. Ways and Means handles tax matters, not military legislation.

"Good for Pelosi, I say. Rangel's made his point (a not-unreasonable one, I'd add). But Democrats need to start zeroing in on their most popular core issues. It'll be interesting to see whether Rangel follows his leader's fairly obvious cue to pipe down."

In National Review, James Robbins tackles the military question:

"It is odd to even be discussing the draft. The Army announced that it had exceeded its recruitment goals, and the other services are meeting their benchmarks as well. Retention in the armed forces is at historic high levels. Unemployment is down, in some states at record lows. So if the services don't need the manpower, and there is no surplus labor force to draw from, why in the world have a draft?

"According to Rangel and other draft proponents, the central issue is fairness. The people who sign up for military service are disproportionately from lower-income groups, those with nowhere else to turn; thus we have what Senator Kennedy described in 1971 as 'poor people fighting rich men's wars.' The volunteer is undereducated -- perhaps not even understanding what it means to sign up, maybe not knowing there is a war on. This is inherently unfair because these people do not know any better . . .

"In addition, some aver that the All Volunteer Force (AVF) creates racial inequities, that a disproportionate number of people of color are dying overseas. The draft will cure these ills by making military service an equal-opportunity burden, one shared by all income groups, all education levels, all races. In turn, so the argument goes, this will have a moderating effect on national-security policy. A president or Congress will be less likely to go to war with a military drawn from every neighborhood, every district.

"Let's set aside for a moment the set of objections based on notion of involuntary servitude -- not because they are erroneous, which they surely are not. There is nothing fair about the government hijacking the lives of young people for its own purposes. It is antithetical to values and freedoms on which this country was founded."