A Stitch in Haste

Michael Kinsley echoes much of what I said in my debut post about the draft:

But replacing the volunteer Army with a draft is an odd way to address [society's] unfairness. The practical effect might be to deny a poor kid the opportunity he or she is currently taking, without creating new opportunities to replace it. Meanwhile, someone else who doesn't need or want this opportunity would be forced into it. Result: Two people doing something they don't want to do.

Another problem. Even if we need more soldiers in Iraq, we don't need as many as a universal draft would produce. ... Draft enthusiasts have two solutions to this dilemma. One is a universal mandatory service program for young people in which military service would be just one option. This is truly the tail wagging the dog. You start with demographic concerns about the military and end up with a vast new government bureaucracy dedicated to forcing people against their will into jobs that mostly have nothing to do with the military.
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If you're lucky enough to be born prosperous or well connected, you don't have to serve. The advantage of a draft lottery is that it would redistribute the luck for at least this one occasion. The disadvantage is that it's still luck, and still unfair. Arbitrary unfairness is better than systemic unfairness. But now you are disrupting lives and closing off opportunities in pursuit of a goal far short of actual fairness.

...Any kind of draft allows the government to pay less for soldiers than they would cost in the free market. It is, in essence, a tax on young people. Or a pay cut for those who would have volunteered anyway. What kind of fairness is that?

...A draft ensures that decision makers have a personal stake in a war. On the other hand, a volunteer Army puts war-and-peace decisions to the test of the market: Can people be induced voluntarily to fight it? A volunteer Army could become a mercenary force operating at the president's whim. But a draft Army, always at the ready, also encourages imperial whimsy.

When we have a government that is willing to spend money -- lots and lots and lots of money -- on just about anything, it is not a huge mental leap to demand that it pay for the military it needs (why do people like Charlie Rangel never talk about "drafting" Boeing or Lockheed Martin -- or dare I mention Halliburton?).

And let's not forget that the draft is the most flagrant, contemptuous, in-your-face violation of the Constitution ever contemplated in modern times, no matter what "original intent" sophistry draft supporters concoct.   More on this here and here.

UPDATE: An op-ed in today's New York Times brilliantly shatters just about every argument put forward by the advocates of involuntary servitude in the military:
 

Renewing the draft would be a blow against the men and women in uniform, a dumbing down of the institution they serve. The United States military exists to win battles, not to test social policy. Enlarging the volunteer force would show our soldiers that Americans recognize their hardship and are willing to pay the bill to help them better protect the nation. My view of the citizen-soldier was altered, but not destroyed, in combat. We cannot all pick up the sword, nor should we be forced to - but we owe our support to those who do.

The whole piece is definitely worth reading.

The New York Times picks up where CBS left off:

In the worried steel town of Weirton, W.Va., last week, the first question from the crowd that came out to hear Senator John Edwards was not about the economy, tariffs or health care. It was about the draft: Is a new one coming?

The Democratic candidate for vice president was unequivocal. Not in a Kerry-Edwards administration, he replied.
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Though President Bush and Senator John Kerry talk about it in only the most glancing ways - the president pledged to defeat terrorism with "an all-volunteer army" during Thursday's presidential debate - many people across the country are wondering just who will fight the nation's wars.
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Of course, enacting a draft has historically been a matter of political will, democratic ideals and high passion, as much as military need. Some have long argued that citizenship is enhanced by having all young people serve; others contend that forced conscription violates democratic ideals.
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During a prolonged war like that in Iraq, units sent to the front have to be rotated out and replaced with an equal number while they rest and retrain.
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But the most striking shortcoming in both plans, experts say, is their lack of allowance for another major conflict - if war erupts on the Korean Peninsula, or tensions with Iran boil over, or the United States suffers a major terrorist attack.
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Experts say that getting Congress to approve a draft would probably be more difficult than implementing one. Draft boards exist, and 18-year-olds must register. All that would be required would be to determine who is eligible.
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Yet at other times, politicians have also been willing to use the draft to appease another potent constituency, the families of National Guard and reserve troops, said George Q. Flynn, a retired history professor and the author of three books on the draft. ...Professor Flynn is among those who believe a draft would be a good thing.

Some hasty stitches:

1. Nowhere in the piece does the Times mention that Donald Rumsfeld has publicly and repeatedly insisted that there will not be a draft in a second Bush Administration. That is not, as the Times puts it, "the most glancing ways." But of course Edwards' position is described as "unequivocal."

2. Also no mention that the "some" who "have long argued" for the draft as a form of civic responsibility are almost exclusively Democrats. Note also the vague reference that "forced conscription violates democratic ideals," with no mention that the draft is specifically prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment (at least the way this lawyer reads it).

3. What exactly does the Times mean when it describes Iraq as a "prolonged war"? Does it know something we don't regarding just how long this war may last? Reconstruction of Iraq will certainly take a long time -- look at Germany and Japan. But who says combat will necessarily be "prolonged," a sneaky synonym for the q-word.

4. As for "another major conflict" changing the military landscape: well, certainly something unforeseen may arise in Korea, Iran or elsewhere. It's also possible that the aliens may attack tomorrow. We'll probably need a draft then too.

5. Notice how the Times piece highlights that "draft boards" exist, but quickly glosses over the question of determining who would be eligible. No discussion of the major equal protection issues that would arise if the draft or mandatory public service were initiated: would women be drafted (the exemption is for peacetime registration, not a draft itself)? What would become of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"? Would those with America's new favorite condition, ADD, be exempt because Ritalin would impede they're ability to serve in combat?

6. Of all the just plain dumb things I've ever heard regarding the draft, the claim by the (pro-draft) retired professor that the draft is necessary to appease families of Reservists and Guard troops takes the cake. You want to avoid war, stay out of the military and pay for college some other way.

7. How come nobody, absolutely nobody, ever mentions the single most obvious alternative to the draft, namely paying a market-clearing salary? I guarantee that if the Army were to raise the base salary of an E-1 buck private to, say, $150,000 per year (plus benefits, etc.), then recruits would be lined up around the block several times over. Wouldn't that help the poor kids that Charlie Rangel claims to be so concerned about? (More on "market-clearing" military policies at Cafe Hayek, by way of Marginal Revolution.)

So let's see...first CBS and now the Times...who's next? WaPo? LAT? CSM?

It's bound to be somebody.

Related Posts:
Draft-Dodging
Trust Your Instincts...Not His
How to Read the Constitution
Edwards: No Draft (Someone Please Tell the Democrats)
Draft Dodger Monument: Only Half Daft
CBS Draft Story: A Quick Sidebar

(Cross-linked at Outside the Beltway.)

Dear Representative Rangel:

Regarding your desire to reinstate the draft:

2-402.

Please shut up now.

Sincerely,
KipEsquire

cc:
Wall Street Journal
BeldarBlog

encl:

Draft-Dodging
Trust Your Instincts...Not His
How to Read the Constitution
Edwards: No Draft (Someone Please Tell the Democrats)
Draft Dodger Monument: Only Half Daft
CBS Draft Story: A Quick Sidebar
NYT Perpetuates Draft Hysteria

A former top-ranking Australian military official has publicly called for that country to reinstate the draft:

Admiral Chris Barrie, who retired in 2002 after 41 years' military service, the final four as chief of the defence force, said Australia's young work force would substantially shrink in the decades ahead due to lower birth rates. "In such a climate, we will not be able to attract the number of people we need, even if we attempted the usual financial incentives schemes," Barrie told a conference.

"For these reasons, I consider that we ought to begin to think how and when Australia should shift to a universal national service structure to train young people for our armed forces," he added.
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"We need to have young people join the military," he later told Sky News. "We can put in place all the financial incentives we like but the real fact of the matter is, we're going to run out of people."

This is, of course, utter nonsense. On several levels in fact.

First, if Australia is experiencing a declining birth rate, then the easiest solution is to foster net immigration. Is the potential for conscription likely to increase or decrease an Australian's willingness to remain in his home country, or might he get out while the getting's good? By the same token, would a family with adolescent children be more or less willing to relocate to Australia if it implements a draft?

Second, if declining birth rates mean that there aren't enough young Australians to serve in the military, then there's also probably not enough young Australians to do lots of other things, like become engineers or police officers or nurses or teachers or accountants or cabaret singers. If labor is scarce, then the opportunity cost of conscription becomes higher, not lower, and a draft becomes a worse, not a better, idea than if birth rates were high.

Third, if Australian faces declining birth rates, then it becomes even more important that young Australians maximize their productivity so they can then maximize their income and the Australian economy can maximize its potential and competitive position in the global marketplace. Does a draft catalyze undergraduate, graduate and professional education, or hinder it? (Remember, we're not talking about a "G.I. Bill," but a life-disrupting mandatory interregnum of one's college years.)

Fourth, the idea that young Australians will not serve at any salary is hogwash, just as it is hogwash here in the U.S. Pay a raw recruit a starting salary of, say, $150,000 per year plus benefits, and any supposed "shortage" of recruits would instantaneously vanish. Even for the military, it's as simple as supply + demand = equilibrium price.

Finally, the whole concept of conscription in an otherwise free society exposes an obnoxious contradiction. If you start conscripting people to defend the Australian — or the American — "way of life," then what exactly has that "way of life" become?

For Discussion: Israel, another "free society" with a "way of life," has a draft. Does its unique circumstance warrant a bye? Why or why not?

"Because they needed the votes."
--House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel

Here, meanwhile, is the "Democratic Congressional Leadership" Question of the Day:

The House voted for funding for the war with a date certain, March of '08, to begin a withdrawal of U.S. troops. But in that bill was $20 billion of so-called pork, money for cricket infestation, tours of the Capitol, security at the National Convention, peanut crops. Why would the Democrats put that kind of money in such a serious bill?

So, here is the apparent "responsible governing" way of doing business under the Democrats in Congress: Just buy the votes.

Whatever the leadership wants passed, they'll simply buy from the backbenchers. Have a Democratic congresswoman who's just a little too independent? Toss her some cricket infestation money. A holdout senator? Slide some peanut crop subsidies his way.

Welcome to the "new and improved" Democratic Capitol Hill -- which is remarkably similar to the old and corrupt Republican Capitol Hill.

All politicians are, by definition, moral defectives.

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Meanwhile:

I want people to recognize that when a nation goes to war, there should be shared sacrifice.

Of course, Rangel's idea of "shared sacrifice" is sending young -- and only young -- men -- and presumably only men -- to fight, bleed and die against their will for a cause that they may or may not believe in.

And when there isn't war?

But I'm telling you that a mandatory national service first would give us an opportunity to give these kids an education. Why we don't do it at a time where education is a part of our national security I don't know. Another thing is patriotism. When you serve and you put that flag on your shoulder, whatever the emblem is, it makes you a better American.

It's a bizarre worldview -- one that once was associated with dictatorships -- that presumes dragging youths, kicking and screaming -- either to the draft office, the "national service camps," or jail -- will instill patriotism. Teaching the young that their lives are the property of politicians -- the state -- "makes them better Americans"?

Strange days indeed.

The Pentagon was quick to deny the statement by the Iraq War Czar* that a draft is "an option on the table."

Meanwhile, I wonder whether — as a matter of simple pragmatics — a draft can ever again be an option on the table in this country.

Putting aside the political and judicial questions, there are two major differences between (hypothetical) draft evasion in 2007 and draft evasion in, say, 1967: prisons and passports.

Take the latter first. Today it would be far harder for a draft evader to simply "flee to Canada." It would be harder for him to even get into Canada, with our new "War on Tourist" rules for international travel. It would also be far more difficult for family members to transmit funds to loved ones on the run. The government would freeze their credit cards and bank accounts. And that's even assuming that Canada didn't involve itself (i.e., turned a blind eye to U.S. draft evaders on its soil). How realistic is it to assume that the U.S. would not pressure, or haggle with, our largest trading partner to get them to intervene?

More important, I think, would be the prison question. Assume that 100,000 — or 500,000 or 1,000,000 — draft evaders simply said, "To heck with Canada. Here I am, arrest me. I'll surrender, plead guilty and promptly report to my jail cell."

Just one problem: What jail cell? We have no jail cells left, thanks to the War on Drugs. Our prisons are already overcrowded to the point where courts are finding constitutional inadequacies in how prisoners are housed. And we will simply throw another few hundred thousand draft evaders in on top of that? Impossible.

And even if space could somehow be found or built — so what? Jail in 2007 is not jail in 1967, especially for nonviolent offenders. No picnic, to be sure, but still: three hots and a cot, health care, education, recreation and entertainment. And, shanks and sodomy notwithstanding, at least you don't get blown up by a roadside bomb.

There would be offsets: As with all felons and "criminals of moral turpitude," a convicted draft evader would likely be ineligible for several occupations — law and law enforcement, Wall Street, etc. But there would also be the possibility that the first anti-war president to come along would simply pardon all draft evaders, even if after they served their sentences (cf., this story).

Netting it all out, I think the cost-benefit analysis of draft evasion has changed dramatically since Vietnam, and throngs of draftees would simply say, "Better jail than Iraq." I'm pretty sure that would be my decision, were I younger and drafted today.

More thoughts from Eric Kleefeld, Slate.

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*I always thought that the president, qua Commander-in-Chief, was the "war czar." Go figure.