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September 29, 2004
Will the Draft be Back?
Is a resurrection of the military draft in the works? According to some that might depend on who wins the presidency on November 2nd.
When John Kerry was asked if he believed Bush would reinstate the draft at a campaign rally, he stated:
"If George Bush were to be re-elected, given the way he has gone about this war and given his avoidance of responsibility in North Korea and Iran and other places, is it possible? I can't tell you."
Howard Dean was a little more blunt a few weeks ago:
"I think that George Bush is certainly going to have a draft if he goes into a second term," he told students at Brown University yesterday. "And any young person who doesn't want to go to Iraq might think twice about voting for him."
If Kerry and Dean are serious about putting an end to any chance that the U.S. returns to a military draft, they might want to look to legislation currently sitting in Congress authored by two politicians in their own party.
Sen. Hollings (D-SC) has sponsored the The Universal National Service Act of 2003 in the Senate while Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) has put the same bill onto the floor of the House. Granted, the bills are going nowhere and were described as “collecting dust” in the WSJ. Still, it would be nice for a Kerry/Dean combo to use some political weight to get these bills removed from the floor entirely.
On the Republican front, in addition to denying that his administration has any plans to bring back the draft, President Bush should condemn recent comments by Senator Hagel of the GOP along with the bill mentioned above.
Fortunately, no matter who is elected this November, a return to military conscription is pretty far fetched. The tyranny of the status quo is currently on the side a volunteer army and for that reason alone the current debate over conscription seems more like an act of scoring political points than anything else.
Posted by Peter Mork at September 29, 2004 4:51 PM
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