Will the Draft Be Reinstated

As the need for more troops is on the rise with the war continuing in Iraq, and other potential threats on the rise, there is much talk of an impending draft. Recruiters are forced to accept less qualified candidates and are using some unsound methods. The Army National Guard, Army Reserve, and regular Army troop’s contracts have been extended beyond their agreed terms of service. Is there a need for a draft, or is one already in place in the form of a backdoor or economic draft?

The first military draft was enacted during the Civil War in 1863, for the Union army which led to riots in New York City. The draft has come and gone several times since then, only being in effect during wartime. Three million men were drafted into the service for World War One, ten million in World War Two, and two million for the war in Korea. During the Vietnam War, about 1.7 million men were drafted, but not without often violent protesting and draft dodgers. In 1969, President Nixon proposed a plan be developed to convert the armed forces into an all volunteer military force, but this would not come until 1973, after the Vietnam war had ended.

When Iran took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, President Carter reinstated draft registration but Congress never allowed actual conscription. From 1945 to 1989, the reserve and National Guard troops were only brought into active duty four times. Since the Persian Gulf War, 240,000 reservists have been activated, and after September 11, 2001, 490,000 National Guard members and reservists have been activated.

The military is having a hard time recruiting new members to serve with the death toll in Iraq climbing to above 1,800. The Army is spending 177 million dollars on advertising, but came up 7,200 recruits short of its goal of 80,000 in July.

“The average Army recruiter is only producing one recruit per month,” says Thompson, of the Lexington Institute, “This is a very hard product to sell.”

Now recruiters are making more and more exceptions to who they recruit and whether or not they are actually qualified. This year, the percentage of recruits with a high school diploma dropped from 92.4 percent to 89 percent. A high school student in Arvada, Colorado, named David McSwane, 17, posing as a dropout with a drug problem, said that recruiters showed him how to create a fake diploma and offered to help him pay for a detox kit so that he could pass a drug test.

“I was shocked,” McSwane told CBS news, “I’m standing there looking at a poster that says ‘Integrity, Honor, Respect,’ and he is telling me to lie.”

This and other accounts like McSwane’s prompted the Army to suspend recruiting for a day to make sure that recruiters know what they can and can not do, and to make sure they are recruiting qualified candidates. The Times reported that two recruiters signed up a 21 year old man who had just been released from a mental hospital, knowing that his bipolar disorder disqualified him from military service.

The Army is even increasing the sign up bonus by double to 40,000 dollars, and providing up to 50,000 dollars in home mortgage help for signing an eight year contract. College scholarships have been increased to 70,000 dollars and enlistment periods have been shortened to fifteen months instead of four years in order to attract more recruits. They are offering more bonuses to those that are already in active service to stay on.

Many think that bribing new recruits with large bonuses is an equivalent to a draft. Republican Rangel calls the monetary enticements “An economic draft,” and questions these methods to recruit the poor and unemployed.

The Bush administration claims that the troops that we have are more than enough to maintain stability in Iraq, fight terrorists, in Korea, or Iran if necessary. He said, during the presidential debate, “We are not going to have a draft so long as I am President.”

By involuntarily extending enlistments, critics say that we already have an informal, backdoor draft because of the stop-loss policy. This allows the military to keep personnel after their contracts expire. A soldier cannot leave their unit until 90 days after it has been demobilized, meaning, they may be called up again within that time if needed. About 50,000 Army, Reserve, and National Guard troops have been served stop-loss orders according to Army spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty.

“Stop-loss