Conscription in the United States

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Conscription in the United States has been employed several times, usually during war but also during the nominal peace of the Cold War. The United States discontinued the draft in 1973, moving to an all-volunteer military force, thus there is currently no mandatory conscription.

However, the Selective Service System remains in place as a contingency; young men between the ages of 18 and 25 are required to register so that a draft can be more readily resumed. The U.S. armed forces are now designated as "all-volunteer", although, starting with the 1991 Gulf War and continuing since the 1990s, some personnel were kept on active duty longer than they expected; this was consistent with enlistment contracts by a clause that permits retention based on the needs of the military. In 2003, legislation to reintroduce general conscription was introduced by Senator Ernest Hollings (Democrat of South Carolina) and Representative Charles B. Rangel (Democrat of New York); their bill was defeated in the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 2-402 and was not considered in the United States Senate. A similar bill has been introduced in 2007 called the Universal National Service Act of 2007 (H.R. 393), but it has not received a hearing or been scheduled for consideration.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Early drafts 1.2 World War I and World War II 1.3 Cold War/Korean War 1.4 Vietnam War 1.5 End of conscription 1.6 Post-1980 draft registration 1.7 Health Care Personnel Delivery System 2 Legality 3 Conscientious objection 4 Selective Service reforms 5 Perception of the draft as unfair 6 Conscription controversies since 2003 7 Civilian service 8 Non-citizens 9 See also 10 References 10.1 Sources 10.2 Notes 11 External links

[edit] History

[edit] Early drafts

In colonial times, the Thirteen Colonies used a militia system for local defense. For long-term operations, conscription was occasionally used when volunteers or paid substitutes were insufficient to raise the needed manpower. During the American Revolutionary War, the states sometimes drafted men for militia duty or to fill state Continental Army units, but the central government did not have the authority to conscript. President James Madison unsuccessfully attempted to create a national draft during the War of 1812.^[1]

The United States first employed national conscription during the American Civil War. The vast majority of troops were volunteers, however: of the 2,100,000 Union soldiers, about 2% were draftees, and another 6% were paid substitutes.^[2] Resistance to the draft touched off the New York Draft Riots in July 1863. The Confederate States of America instituted conscription in 1862, and resistance was both widespread and violent, with comparisons made between conscription and slavery. Both sides permitted conscripts to hire substitutes. In the Union, many states and cities offered bounties and bonuses for enlistment. They also arranged to take credit against their quota for freed slaves who enlisted.

[edit] World War I and World War II

Conscription was next used after the United States entered World War I in 1917. The first peacetime conscription came with the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, which established the Selective Service System as an independent agency. The duration of service was originally twelve months. It was expanded to eighteen months in 1941. When the United States entered World War II, service was required until six months after the end of the war.

As manpower need increased during World War II, draftees were inducted into the U.S. Marine Corps as well as the U.S. Army. During this time period the US lowered the draft age to 17.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Cold War/Korean War

The wartime draft was extended by Congress, but it expired in 1947. In 1948 the draft was re-instated. It was expanded by the Universal Military Training and Service Act in 1951, in response to the manpower needs caused by the Korean War.

In the only instance of U.S. conscription during a major peacetime period, the draft continued on a more limited basis during the late 1950s and early 1960s. While a far smaller percentage of eligible males were conscripted compared to war periods, draftees by law served in the U.S. Army for two years. Elvis Presley and Willie Mays were two of the most famous people drafted during this period.

[edit] Vietnam War

There was some opposition to the draft even before the major U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The large cohort of Baby Boomers who became eligible for military service during the Vietnam War also meant a steep increase in the number of exemptions and deferments, especially for college and graduate students. This was the source of considerable resentment among poor and working class young men, who could not afford a college education.

As U.S. troop strength in Vietnam increased, more young men were drafted for service there, and many of those still at home sought means of avoiding the draft. For those seeking a relatively safe alternative, service in the U.S. Navy, Air Force or Coast Guard was an option (provided one could meet the more stringent enlistment standards). Since only a handful of National Guard and Reserve units were sent to Vietnam, enlistment in the Guard or the Reserves became a favored means of draft avoidance. Vocations to the ministry and the rabbinate soared, because divinity students were exempt from the draft. Doctors and draft board members found themselves being pressured by relatives or family friends to exempt potential draftees. Some conscientious objectors objected to the war based on the theory of Just War. One of these, Stephen Spiro, was convicted of avoiding the draft, but given a suspended sentence of 5 years. He was later pardoned by President Gerald Ford.^[3]

[edit] End of conscription

During the 1968 presidential election, Richard Nixon campaigned on a promise to end the draft.^[4] He had first become interested in the idea of an all-volunteer army during his time out of office, based upon a paper by Professor Martin Anderson of Columbia University.^[5] Nixon also saw ending the draft as an effective way to undermine the anti-Vietnam war movement, since he believed affluent youths would stop protesting the war once their own possibility of having to fight in it was gone.^[6] There was opposition to the all-volunteer notion from both the Department of Defense and Congress, so Nixon took no immediate action towards ending the draft early in his presidency.^[5]

Instead, the Gates Commission was formed, headed by Thomas S. Gates, Jr., a former Secretary of Defense in the Eisenhower administration.^[5] Gates initially opposed the all-volunteer army idea, but changed his mind during the course of the fifteen-member commission's work.^[5] The Gates Commission issued its report in February 1970, describing how adequate military strength could be maintained without having conscription.^[4][7] The existing draft law was expiring at the end of June 1971, but the Department of Defense and Nixon administration decided the draft needed to continue for at least some time.^[7] In February 1971, the administration requested of Congress a two-year extension of the draft, to June 1973.^[8][9]

Senatorial opponents of the war wanted to reduce this to a one-year extension, or eliminate the draft altogether, or tie the draft renewal to a timetable for troop withdrawal from Vietnam;^[10] Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska took the most forceful approach, trying to filibuster the draft renewal legislation, shut down conscription, and directly force an end to the war.^[11] Senators supporting Nixon's war efforts supported the bill, even though some had qualms about the ending the draft.^[9] After a prolonged battle in the Senate, in September 1971 cloture was achieved over the filibuster and the draft renewal bill was approved.^[12] Meanwhile, military pay was increased as an incentive to attract volunteers, and television advertising for the U.S. Army began.^[4] With the end of active U.S. ground participation in Vietnam, December 1972 saw the last men conscripted, who reported for duty in June 1973.^[4]

[edit] Post-1980 draft registration

In 1980, Congress re-instated the requirement that young men register with the Selective Service System. At that time it was required that all males, born on or after January 1, 1960 register with the Selective Service System. Currently, male U.S. citizens and many male aliens living in the U.S., if age 18 through 25, are required to register with the Selective Service System on their 18th birthday. The Selective Service System describes its mission as "...to serve the emergency manpower needs of the Military by conscripting untrained manpower, or personnel with professional health care skills, if directed by Congress and the President in a national crisis."^[13] Registration forms are available either online or at any US Post Office.

The Selective Service registration form states that failure to register is a felony punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment or a $10,000 fine. But in truth, this is little or nothing more than a paper tiger. No one has been prosecuted for failure to comply with draft registration since 1986, in part because prosecutions of draft resisters proved counter-productive for the government, and in part because of the difficulty of proving that noncompliance with the law was "knowing and willful". Many people do not register at all, register late, or change addresses without notifying the Selective Service System.^[14]

[edit] Health Care Personnel Delivery System

On December 1, 1989, Congress ordered the Selective Service System to put in place a system capable of drafting "persons qualified for practice or employment in a health care and professional occupation", if such a special-skills draft should be ordered by Congress.^[15] In response, Selective Service published plans for the "Health Care Personnel Delivery System " (HCPDS) in 1989 and has had them ready ever since. The concept underwent a preliminary field exercise in Fiscal Year 1998, followed by a more extensive nationwide readiness exercise in Fiscal Year 1999. The HCPDS plans include women and men ages 20-54 in 57 different job categories.^[16] As of May 2003, the Defense Department has said the most likely form of draft is a special skills draft, probably of health care workers.^[17]

[edit] Legality

In 1918, the Supreme Court ruled that the World War I draft did not violate the United States Constitution. Arver v. United States, 245 U.S. 366 (1918).^[18] The Court summarized the history of conscription in England and in colonial America, a history that it read as establishing that the Framers envisioned compulsory military service as a governmental power. It held that the Constitution's grant to Congress of the powers to declare war and to create standing armies included the power to mandate conscription. It rejected arguments based on states' rights, the Thirteenth Amendment, and other provisions of the Constitution.

Later, during the Vietnam War, a lower appellate court also concluded that the draft was constitutional. United States v. Holmes, 387 F.2d 781 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 391 U.S. 936 (1968).^[19] (Justice William O. Douglas, in voting to hear the appeal in Holmes, agreed that the government had the authority to employ conscription in wartime, but argued that the constitutionality of a draft in the absence of a declaration of war was an open question, which the Supreme Court should address.)

During the World War I era, the Supreme Court allowed the government great latitude in suppressing criticism of the draft. Examples include Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919)^[20] and Gilbert v. Minnesota, 254 U.S. 325 (1920).^[21] In subsequent decades, however, the Court has taken a much broader view of the extent to which advocacy speech is protected by the First Amendment. Thus, in 1971 the Court held it unconstitutional for a state to punish a man who entered a county courthouse wearing a jacket with the words "Fuck the Draft" visible on it. Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).^[22] Nevertheless, protesting the draft by the specific means of burning a draft registration card can be constitutionally prohibited, because of the government's interest in prohibiting the "nonspeech" element involved in destroying the card. United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968).^[23]

In 1981, several men filed lawsuit in the case Rostker v. Goldberg, alleging that the Military Selective Service Act violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment by requiring that men only and not also women register with the Selective Service System. The Supreme Court upheld the act, stating that Congress's "decision to exempt women was not the accidental byproduct of a traditional way of thinking about women," that "since women are excluded from combat service by statute or military policy, men and women are simply not similarly situated for purposes of a draft or registration for a draft, and Congress' decision to authorize the registration of only men therefore does not violate the Due Process Clause," and that "the argument for registering women was based on considerations of equity, but Congress was entitled, in the exercise of its constitutional powers, to focus on the question of military need, rather than 'equity.'"^[24]

[edit] Conscientious objection

According to the Selective Service System,^[25]

A conscientious objector is one who is opposed to serving in the armed forces and/or bearing arms on the grounds of moral or religious principles.

...

Beliefs which qualify a registrant for CO status may be religious in nature, but don't have to be. Beliefs may be moral or ethical; however, a man's reasons for not wanting to participate in a war must not be based on politics, expediency, or self-interest. In general, the man's lifestyle prior to making his claim must reflect his current claims.

The Supreme Court has ruled in cases United States v. Seeger^[26] (1965) and Welsh v. United States^[27] (1970) that conscientious objection can be by non-religious beliefs as well as religious beliefs; but it has also ruled in Gillette v. United States^[28] (1971) against objections to specific wars as grounds for conscientious objection.

There is currently no mechanism to indicate that one is a conscientious objector in the Selective Service system. According to the SSS, after a person is drafted, he can claim Conscientious Objector status and then justify it before the Local Board. This is criticized because during the times of a draft, when the country is in emergency conditions, there will be increased pressure for Local Boards to be more harsh on conscientious objector claims.

There are two types of status for conscientious objectors. If a person only objects to combat but not to service in the military, then the person is given noncombatant service in the military without training of weapons. If he objects to all military service, then he is given "alternative service" with a job "deemed to make a meaningful contribution to the maintenance of the national health, safety, and interest", see Alternative Service Program.

[edit] Selective Service reforms

The Selective Service System has maintained that they have implemented several reforms that would make the draft more fair and equitable.

Some of the measures they have implemented include:

• Before and during the Vietnam War, a young man could get a deferment by showing that he was a full-time student making satisfactory progress towards a degree; now deferment only lasts to the end of the semester. If the man is a senior he can defer until the end of the academic year.
• The government has said that draft boards are now more representative of the local communities in areas such as race and national origin.
• A lottery system would be used to determine the order of people being called up. Previously the oldest men who were found eligible for the draft would be taken first. In the new system, the men called first would be those who are or will turn 20 in the calendar year or those whose deferments will end in the calendar year. Each year after the man will be placed on a lower priority status until his liability ends.

Because there has been no draft since 1973, it remains to be seen how any future drafts would be conducted.

[edit] Perception of the draft as unfair

Some people feel that the draft is fundamentally unfair (or illegal in a way) because only males must register with the Selective Service. Many masculists as well as feminists hold this view. For example, the National Organization for Women, a feminist organization, passed a resolution in 1980 opposing males-only draft registration as discriminatory, and the ACLU's Women's Rights Project provided aid to the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case Rostker v. Goldberg, in which the plaintiff unsuccessfully challenged males-only draft registration. Congress retains the right to conscript women and considered doing so during the Second World War.

Other discriminating factors regarding conscription include age, with a preference for younger draftees, and residency, since only those in the U.S. may be drafted.

The draft has been perceived by some as unfairly targeting the poor and lower middle classes. Because of college deferments, children of wealthy and upper middle class families that could afford to send them to college could avoid the draft. The fact that President Bill Clinton had been attending college during the time period in which conscription was active and received a collegiate deferment caused controversy during his campaigns and during his time in office. Similar controversy has surrounded prominent figures in the Bush Administration, such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz.

During the Vietnam War some children of wealthy families wished to avoid a perception of avoiding military service. Those individuals often signed up for the National Guard, which at the time seldom sent troops overseas. The fact that some were able to use their family's connections to gain a position when spots in the Guard were limited also led to a perception that the wealthy were using the National Guard to ensure that their children were assigned low-risk duty in the U.S. Much as President Clinton's obtainment of a deferment based on his attendance of college caused controversy, President George W. Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War also attracted controversy during his election campaigns.

During the Vietnam Era it was often quite easy for those with some knowledge of the system (or from guidance by draft counselors and draft attorneys) to avoid being drafted, or to defend prosecutions by submitting themselves to induction after indictment, and then being found disqualified. A simple route, widely publicized, was to get a medical rejection. This was possible because the draft laws after World War II mandated that the medical standards for conscription should not be less stringent than they were during the war. However, advances in diagnostic medicine lead to a much larger pool of young men being subject to disqualification. (Homosexuality was also a disqualifying condition, although most men did not wish to assert this status during that era.) Men who received induction notices could often manipulate where they were examined by showing up at induction centers far away from their actual residences on the mandated date for examination (either for a pre-induction physical or the induction physical examination). It was advantageous to be examined in induction centers adjacent to heavily populated metropolitan areas, where it often was not worth the Army's time to dispute their claims.

One scene in a film that accurately^{[citation needed]} captures the chaotic situation in the lower Manhattan draft center where people slipped through the cracks is in "Alice's Restaurant." In this case the young man was rejected for having a criminal record (for littering). Conversely the poor and uneducated were often conscripted without any understanding of how to escape the system. However, many law schools, notably Harvard University, had draft counseling centers where law students helped young men in poorer areas assert their rights and seek exemptions from induction.

U.S. Representative Charles Rangel argued in 2004 that poor men were far more apt to enlist for military service. He called for a reinstatement of the draft to ensure service in the Iraq War was spread equally among the rich and poor. After the November 2006 elections, Rangel again suggested the draft be renewed, this time because he thought it was less likely that a democracy with conscription would engage in pre-emptive wars such as the current American military involvement in Iraq.

The provisions for conscientious objection to the draft have also been viewed as unfairly discriminatory, favoring religious objection over non-religious objection. Alternative mandatory service can assuage objections based on peace and non-violence but does nothing for those whose objections arise from strongly held convictions about freedom.

[edit] Conscription controversies since 2003

No attempt to reinstate conscription, since the effort to enforce Selective Service registration law was abandoned in 1986, has been able to attract much support in the legislature or among the public.^[29] However since early 2003, when the Iraq War appeared imminent, there have been attempts through legislation and through campaign rhetoric to begin a new public conversation on the topic.

In 2003, several Democratic congressmen (Charles Rangel of New York, James McDermott of Washington, John Conyers of Michigan, John Lewis of Georgia, Pete Stark of California, Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii) introduced legislation that would draft both men and women into either military or civilian government service, should there be a draft in the future. The Republican majority leadership suddenly considered the bill, nine months after its introduction, without a report from the Armed Services Committee (to which it had been referred), and just one month prior to the 2004 Presidential & Congressional elections. The Republican leadership used an expedited parliamentary procedure that would have required a two-thirds vote for passage of the bill. The bill was defeated on October 5, 2004, with 2 members voting for it and 402 members voting against.

In 2004 the platforms of both the Democratic and Republican parties opposed military conscription, but neither party moved to end draft registration. John Kerry in one debate criticized Bush's policies, "You've got stop-loss policies so people can't get out when they were supposed to. You've got a backdoor draft right now."

This statement was in reference to the Department of Defense use of "stop-loss" orders, which have extended the Active Duty periods of some military personnel. All enlistees, upon entering the service, volunteer for a minimum eight-year Military Service Obligation (MSO). This MSO is split between a minimum active duty period, followed by a reserve period where enlistees may be called back to active duty for the remainder of the 8 years.^[30] Some of these active duty extensions have been for as long as two years. The Pentagon stated that as of August 24, 2004, 20,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines had been affected.^[31] As of January 31, 2006 it has been reported that more than 50,000 soldiers and reservists had been affected.^[32]

Mentions of the draft during the presidential campaign led to a resurgence of anti-draft and draft resistance organizing.^[33] One poll of young voters in October 2004 found that 29% would resist if drafted.^[34]

In November 2006, Representative Charles Rangel again called for the draft to be reinstated.^[35] Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has rejected this proposal.

On December 19, 2006, President Bush announced that he was considering sending more troops to Iraq. The next day, the Selective Service System's director for operations and chief information officer, Scott Campbell, announced plans for a "readiness exercise" to test the system's operations in 2009, for the first time since 1998.^[36]

On December 21, 2006, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, when asked by a reporter whether the draft should be reinstated to make the military more equal, said, "I think that our society would benefit from that, yes sir." Nicholson proceeded to relate his experience as a company commander in an infantry unit which brought together soldiers of different socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels, noting that the draft "does bring people from all quarters of our society together in the common purpose of serving." Nicholson later issued a statement saying he does not support reinstating the draft.^[37]

On August 10, 2007, with National Public Radio on "All Things Considered," Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, National Security Adviser to the President and Congress for all matters pertaining to the United States Military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, expressed support for a draft to alleviate the stress on the Army's all-volunteer force. He cited the fact that repeated deployments place much strain upon one soldier's family and himself which, in turn, can affect retention.^[38]

[edit] Civilian service

Conscription has been used nationally only to provide men to the military. The most common form of compulsory civilian service in the U.S. is the much shorter obligation of jury duty.

Mandatory public service of a non-military nature is required as part of the high school curriculum in many school districts across the nation. Since 1992, the state of Maryland has required a total of 75 hours of "developmentally appropriate service-learning activities" over the course of grades 6 through 12.^[39] During the 2004 campaign, Kerry proposed a similar program nationwide, to be implemented by each school district but federally funded. He added an additional voluntary option for students to receive four years of college tuition in exchange for a commitment to two years of national service.

Mandatory full-time service on a national scale has been proposed many times and was backed by, for example, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Recent proposals have been modeled after the Americorps program, but necessarily much larger in scale when made mandatory. Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution estimates the cost for a program of one year for all high school graduates at $25 billion.^[40][41]

[edit] Non-citizens

The Selective Service (and the draft) in the United States is not limited to citizens. Non-citizen males of appropriate age in the United States, who are permanent residents (holders of green cards), seasonal agricultural workers, refugees, parolees, asylees, and even illegal immigrants, are required to register with the Selective Service System.^[42] Refusal to do so is grounds for denial of a future citizenship application. In addition, immigrants who seek to naturalize as citizens must, as part of the Oath of Citizenship, swear to the following:

... that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the armed forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law;^[43]

The USCIS website also states however:

In some cases, USCIS allows the oath to be taken without the clauses: ". . .that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by law. . ."

Non-citizens who serve in the United States military enjoy several naturalization benefits which are unavailable to non-citizens who do not, such as a waiver of application fees.^[44] Permanent resident aliens who die while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces may be naturalized posthumously, which may be beneficial to surviving family members.^[45]

[edit] See also

• Conscription crisis
• Draft lottery (1969)
• Universal National Service Act
• National service
• Peace Churches
• Charles B. Rangel
• Selective Service System

[edit] References

[edit] Sources

• Halstead, Fred. GIs Speak out against the War: The Case of the Ft. Jackson 8. 128 pages. New York: Pathfinder Press. 1970.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Selective Service System - official website
• Resisters.info - information and resources on the draft, draft registration, and draft resistance; includes statistics on draft registration compliance and enforcement since 1980
• MedicalDraft.info - FAQ's on the medical draft ("Health Care Personnel Delivery System")
• Is Conscription Slavery?
• Brigham Young University Law Review - analysis of proposals based on Americorps
• "troops in Iraq... enlistment has been extended until December 24th, 2031" - by Rolling Stone magazine, The Return of the Draft 2005
• "PUBLIC SERVICE, Making Americans, New push for national service Sept. 11 revives interest in citizenship duty for youth" - includes a review of public service programs in other countries too
• How To Beat The Draft Board: A wikibook on the subject by a draft board member.
• http://members.aol.com/vetschoice/100-1.htm
• The draft would weaken the world's best military, The Wall Street Journal editorial, November 25, 2006
• Reinstating the military draft by Walter E. Williams
• "The U.S. needs to institute a military draft immediately" argument diagram at HonestArgument.com
• Are You Going to be Drafted? by Rod Powers. Discusses the improbability of the draft returning.
• How Stuff Works - The US Draft
• William Kristol confronted on CSPAN by a caller