LAST WEEK, after a nine-month investigation, the blue-ribbon Iraq
Study Group offered several recommendations that attempt to realistically address the problems of America's involvement in the war. On another front, military and political leaders are engaged in a debate about how best to extricate the United States from the war, with some experts calling for immediate withdrawal and others recommending sharp increases in troop levels to help quell the violence.
But simmering beneath these debates is a dispute over who should fight the war, and a new twist in the military class war. Enter Charles Rangel, the veteran New York Democratic congressman, whose recent proposals to reinstitute a military draft in order to spread the burden of combat service to the rich and upper middle class has sparked wide debate, especially in the Bay Area.
On a Nov. 19 appearance on CBS News' Face the Nation, Rangel said he believes the Bush administration would never have invaded Iraq if there had been a universal draft in place and young people from White House politicians' own communities would be placed in harm's way.
But critics says this almost reverse-psychology strategy is a trap. David Ewing, a San Francisco immigration lawyer and organizer for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, called Rangel's proposition "well-meaning, but misguided." Ewing, who was himself drafted in 1970 and hoped to organize soldiers to oppose the Vietnam War (he was later stationed in Germany), said that a draft would actually make it easier for the United States to engage in war, not harder.
"One of the main things that I think is staying the hand of the government is that they don't have enough soldiers," he said. "If we have a draft, there will be more soldiers available, so we'll have more of the kind of wars that Congressman Rangel doesn't like."
"It's being sold as a way to end the war, but in fact it's the exact opposite," said Snehal Shingavi, a U.C.-Berkeley Ph.D. candidate and activist for the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition.
A CBS News poll released in March found that 68 percent of Americans oppose a military draft, while 25 percent favor it. When asked specifically about the use of a draft to provide soldiers for the Iraq War, the spread widened—76 percent opposed and only 20 percent favored the idea.
The legislation Rangel hopes to put on the calendar next year, known as the Universal National Service Act, calls for mandatory military or civilian defense and security-related service for all U.S. residents between the ages of 18 and 42, the age range military recruiters target. College deferments, commonly used during the Vietnam War, would not be allowed.
"The idea is that it's not your daddy's draft. There are no exemptions for folks in college or graduate school. It's two years of service. The only deferment is to finish high school, and that's only to the age of 20," said Elbert Garcia, a Rangel spokesman.
Who's Over There
The college-bound in the United States tend to come from middle and upper-income brackets. As a result, it's widely believed that due to difficult economic circumstances, poorer people are lured to the military with the promise of education bonuses and other benefits and wind up doing the bulk of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Two organizations recently addressed the validity of such assumptions. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank, found that areas with median household income levels between $35,000 and $79,999, along with the $85,000 to $94,999 range, were actually overrepresented among active-duty military recruits during the war years 2003-2005.
The National Priorities Project analyzed active-duty Army recruits only. The organization found that for 2004 and 2005 the overrepresented group fell between median household income levels of $30,000 and $59,999, a less wealthy range than Heritage findings. The U.S. median household income, according to Claritas Inc. data, is $47,837.
By comparison, the national median household income in Census 2000 was $41,994 (in 1999 dollars). Heritage found that wartime military recruits were actually slightly better off than the United States as a whole.
Santa Clara County Recruit Pool?
To give it a more local perspective, Census 2000 lists the median household income for Santa Clara County at $74,335. According to Heritage data, nearly 97 percent of wartime recruits came from neighborhoods with incomes below $75,000.
Ewing said that when people find themselves in difficult economic circumstances, the military becomes one of the only real opportunities for advancement.
"I feel very sorry for that unit from West Virginia that did the torture at Abu Ghraib," he said, referring to the April 2004 scandal in which U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi detainees at the infamous Baghdad prison. "They went in because they had few other options."
Edward Hasbrouck, a San Francisco travel writer who resisted registering for the draft in 1980, and now runs a website focused on draft issues, calls the allure of military service to lower-income people a "poverty draft." But he is concerned about Rangel's proposition, despite his seemingly noble intentions.
"If people like [incoming House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi claim that there is no chance they would support a draft, then the only logical move she could make would be to pre-empt Rangel's move and just hold some hearings," said Hasbrouck.
Pelosi, the Democrat from San Francisco who will become the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House next month, could not be reached for comment but in a statement said the bill was not about a draft, but about "shared sacrifice for our country."
A Brief History
During the Civil War, both the Union and Confederate armies drafted soldiers to supplement their volunteer forces. In July 1863, frustrated over President Lincoln's calling for the registration of all able-bodied young men between the ages of 20 and 45, a mob took to the streets of New York City. The gang of mostly poor Irish immigrants targeted military and government officials and seized Second Avenue Armory. The also sought out blacks, who were murdered, tortured and brutalized by the scores. Approximately 1,000 people were killed during the four-day Draft Riots.
Race was certainly a factor in New York, said George Giacomini, an associate professor of history at Santa Clara University, but the notion that the Civil War was a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight" stimulated much of the chaos.
If drafted, Northerners could pay $300 to the federal government or hire a substitute to fight in their stead. The equivalent amount in today's dollars would be about $5,500.
The government used a draft during World War I, but conscription in the United States entered a new phase in 1940 when Franklin D. Roosevelt, concerned about tensions abroad and the increasing likelihood of American involvement in a global conflict, signed the Selective Training and Service Act. The law created America's first peacetime draft and set up the Selective Service System as a federal agency. As a result, over 10.1 million men were drafted for service in World War II.
The law expired in 1946, but President Harry Truman reinstated it in 1948. Soviet gains in influence, the rise of Maoist China and a series of military coups in Europe heightened U.S. concerns and forced Truman to call for the renewal, said Richard Abrams, a history professor at UC Berkeley.
While the public broadly supported the World Wars and Korean War, opposition to the Vietnam War surged in the Bay Area and elsewhere in the country. Conscription was only one of the focuses of the resistance. Males of college age were most vulnerable to being drafted, but the majority of them were exempt as long as they stayed in school.
"That was a real source of agitation among the non-college-going population," Abrams said.
Deferments ended in 1969 when President Nixon instituted the lottery draft, but the well to do were still free to use connections to find domestic placements in the Army National Guard or Army Reserves.
The United States converted to an all-volunteer military in 1973 and registration for the draft ceased to be a requirement in 1975. It remained dormant for five years until President Carter, citing concern about Soviet aggression in Afghanistan, reinstated the Selective Service System in 1980.
Military's Choice
Despite Rangel's promise to introduce legislation and mounting tensions abroad—not dissimilar from the kinds that led Roosevelt, Truman and Carter to take action related to the draft—the Department of Defense still supports continuing with the all-volunteer approach.
"It has resulted in a higher caliber of people serving our country. The people serving are doing so because they want to, and it is more cost-effective than a conscripted force," said Maj. Stewart Upton, a spokesman for the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Army spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said that two out of three soldiers opt to return to the military after their initial term of service, further lessening the need for a draft.
In an Oct. 10 press conference at the Pentagon, Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Dr. David S.C. Chu announced that all four military branches met their recruiting goals for fiscal year 2006. Chu credits an increased number of hard-working recruiters and patriotism as reasons for success.
"They're not coming in because they want to serve their country. That's not going to get people out of the ghetto," Abrams said.
Henry Wadahara, 65, a 2 1/2-tour Vietnam veteran and current commander for a San Jose Veterans of Foreign Wars post, admits that he was "kind of disappointed" when the government did away with the draft.
"We don't have the patriotism that we used to have because people don't have the chance to serve their country anymore," he said. Wadahara added that even a short stint in the military can do much for an individual by teaching discipline and fostering leadership.
But he also wondered if in fact military recruiters were meeting their numbers. If they were, the Defense Department would not be sending National Guard troops and Reservists to Iraq.
"They're not highly trained for the job that needs to be done in Iraq," he said. "Most of the Reserves are prepared to handle disasters and things within the United States, and you send someone over to Iraq and he's a 50-year-old tank commander? He can't run around like the young guys can."
Wadahara said he doesn't think that a military draft alone is politically feasible at present, but he wouldn't mind seeing some sort of service requirement for the nation's young people. Rangel's legislation includes such a plan.
Medical Draft
Hasbrouck said that surface debate about the draft being used as a political tool or idle chat about how not enough wealthy people are facing the dangers of battle fails to get to the heart of more important issues.
People should not so much worry about a "cannon fodder draft of young people," he said, as much as one that will draft medical and health care personnel for military purposes.
"It will be sold as, 'We have a crisis. We have wounded soldiers dying on the battlefield, and not enough doctors,'" Hasbrouck said. "No one would dare oppose this."
As for the politicians, Wadahara said, "if they wanted to get their son out of it, I don't think they'd have a problem."
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