Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Philadelphia Inquirer
December 3, 2006
By Adam Fifield, Inquirer Staff Writer
It's hard to imagine that Oskar Castro could find any common ground with the Pentagon.
But one issue has emerged on which the antiwar organizer and the military agree: bringing back the draft is a bad idea.
Raising the specter of conscription, even with the intention to deter war, is a grave risk, said Castro, who heads the Youth & Militarism Project, a Quaker-run program that tries to counteract the presence of military recruiters in high schools.
Mandatory service is immoral, Castro said, a practice that is not "consistent with the principles of a democratic republic."
The U.S. military prefers a volunteer force because retention is greater and it attracts a higher-caliber soldier, a Defense Department spokesman said.
Resurrecting the draft, which ended in 1973, has become a hot topic since Rep. Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.) pledged to introduce a bill next month that subjects all 18- to 42-year-olds, male and female, to the possibility of mandatory service.
The outspoken critic of the Iraq war says his goal is to force lawmakers to think more about the human cost of going to battle and to spread the burden of service more fairly across the population.
Democratic leaders say the bill, similar to earlier Rangel proposals, will go nowhere. But the congressman is unfazed.
"As long as Americans are being shipped off to war, then everybody should be vulnerable, not just those who, because of economic circumstances, are attracted by lucrative enlistment bonuses and educational incentives," Rangel, a Korean War veteran, said in a statement.
Among teens, the possibility of a draft has inspired more exasperation than introspection.
It is a "drastic measure to maybe sway a few members of Congress," said Matt Schreffler, 18, of West Chester High School East, who has applied to the U.S. Naval Academy. Schreffler said he would hate as an officer "to lead a bunch of kids who don't want to be there."
"I think if they put the draft in, Bush would use it," said Derek Burkholder, 17, of Cherry Hill High School West.
It makes no sense, said fellow Cherry Hill senior Bonnie Kelly, 17, who opposes the war: "If there are people who feel strongly, they can volunteer."
Z'Andrea English, 17, a Pemberton Township High School senior and ROTC cadet, is not hesitant to serve. She would prefer, however, to stand alongside soldiers who are there willingly.
"If you don't want to be there, you're not going to do your job right," English said. And "if you're not going to do your job right, we really don't need you."
According to a preelection poll by Muhlenberg College's Institute of Public Opinion, almost 80 percent of likely young voters in Pennsylvania oppose a military draft.
The Army exceeded its recruitment goal in the just-ended fiscal year. Nonetheless, the Selective Service System maintains a record of potential male draftees 18 to 26. Nationally, 76 percent of 18-year-olds are registered, as required by law, an agency spokesman said.
Locally, the number is lower, especially in Philadelphia, where 39 percent have registered with the Selective Service.
Rangel, whose Upper Manhattan district includes Harlem and Washington Heights, argues that minorities and the poor carry a "disproportionate burden" in Iraq. His office cites a study by the nonprofit National Priorities Project that found an increasingly disproportionate number of middle- and low-income Army enlistees in 2005 compared with 2004.
The Defense Department disputes Rangel's charge. It offers Heritage Foundation findings that recruits in 2004 and 2005 "came primarily from middle-class areas" and that the volunteer force reflects the race, income and education of the general population.
The military has become more representative in the last 30 years, but children of the affluent are still largely absent, said Temple University professor Beth Bailey, who is writing a history of recruitment and the draft in the 20th century.
"It's not people who have no other options who the military wants or gets," Bailey said. But recruits are rarely "those who are going to the elite colleges, who come primarily from the top 20 percent of income."
Rangel's plan would offer no college deferments, a spokesman for the legislator said.
ROTC cadet Joshua Dempsey, a Pemberton senior, said he might enlist to attend college, "because my family is not that privileged." While he doesn't think we need it "this second," he is not opposed to a draft.
Rangel's philosophy of equal sacrifice appeals to him. "It should be a shared thing," Dempsey, 18, said.
Karen Porter of the Chester County Peace Movement appreciates Rangel's larger point, too.
He "knows full well" that his effort will not be what revives the draft, said Porter, who strongly opposes mandatory service.
"What he's trying to do is get the American public to know that if this government doesn't shape up, we're going to be in a situation where it will happen."
But Castro, of the Philadelphia-based American Friends Service Committee, fears "a worst-case scenario" in which the bill is eventually passed.
Then the poor and minorities will have no say about their service, Castro said, while "the CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations, their sons and daughters, will find ways out."
Pemberton senior and ROTC cadet Wessley Square, 17, would hate for that to happen.
"Putting unhappy people and loaded weapons together is never a sound approach," he said.
December 3, 2006
By Adam Fifield, Inquirer Staff Writer
It's hard to imagine that Oskar Castro could find any common ground with the Pentagon.
But one issue has emerged on which the antiwar organizer and the military agree: bringing back the draft is a bad idea.
Raising the specter of conscription, even with the intention to deter war, is a grave risk, said Castro, who heads the Youth & Militarism Project, a Quaker-run program that tries to counteract the presence of military recruiters in high schools.
Mandatory service is immoral, Castro said, a practice that is not "consistent with the principles of a democratic republic."
The U.S. military prefers a volunteer force because retention is greater and it attracts a higher-caliber soldier, a Defense Department spokesman said.
Resurrecting the draft, which ended in 1973, has become a hot topic since Rep. Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.) pledged to introduce a bill next month that subjects all 18- to 42-year-olds, male and female, to the possibility of mandatory service.
The outspoken critic of the Iraq war says his goal is to force lawmakers to think more about the human cost of going to battle and to spread the burden of service more fairly across the population.
Democratic leaders say the bill, similar to earlier Rangel proposals, will go nowhere. But the congressman is unfazed.
"As long as Americans are being shipped off to war, then everybody should be vulnerable, not just those who, because of economic circumstances, are attracted by lucrative enlistment bonuses and educational incentives," Rangel, a Korean War veteran, said in a statement.
Among teens, the possibility of a draft has inspired more exasperation than introspection.
It is a "drastic measure to maybe sway a few members of Congress," said Matt Schreffler, 18, of West Chester High School East, who has applied to the U.S. Naval Academy. Schreffler said he would hate as an officer "to lead a bunch of kids who don't want to be there."
"I think if they put the draft in, Bush would use it," said Derek Burkholder, 17, of Cherry Hill High School West.
It makes no sense, said fellow Cherry Hill senior Bonnie Kelly, 17, who opposes the war: "If there are people who feel strongly, they can volunteer."
Z'Andrea English, 17, a Pemberton Township High School senior and ROTC cadet, is not hesitant to serve. She would prefer, however, to stand alongside soldiers who are there willingly.
"If you don't want to be there, you're not going to do your job right," English said. And "if you're not going to do your job right, we really don't need you."
According to a preelection poll by Muhlenberg College's Institute of Public Opinion, almost 80 percent of likely young voters in Pennsylvania oppose a military draft.
The Army exceeded its recruitment goal in the just-ended fiscal year. Nonetheless, the Selective Service System maintains a record of potential male draftees 18 to 26. Nationally, 76 percent of 18-year-olds are registered, as required by law, an agency spokesman said.
Locally, the number is lower, especially in Philadelphia, where 39 percent have registered with the Selective Service.
Rangel, whose Upper Manhattan district includes Harlem and Washington Heights, argues that minorities and the poor carry a "disproportionate burden" in Iraq. His office cites a study by the nonprofit National Priorities Project that found an increasingly disproportionate number of middle- and low-income Army enlistees in 2005 compared with 2004.
The Defense Department disputes Rangel's charge. It offers Heritage Foundation findings that recruits in 2004 and 2005 "came primarily from middle-class areas" and that the volunteer force reflects the race, income and education of the general population.
The military has become more representative in the last 30 years, but children of the affluent are still largely absent, said Temple University professor Beth Bailey, who is writing a history of recruitment and the draft in the 20th century.
"It's not people who have no other options who the military wants or gets," Bailey said. But recruits are rarely "those who are going to the elite colleges, who come primarily from the top 20 percent of income."
Rangel's plan would offer no college deferments, a spokesman for the legislator said.
ROTC cadet Joshua Dempsey, a Pemberton senior, said he might enlist to attend college, "because my family is not that privileged." While he doesn't think we need it "this second," he is not opposed to a draft.
Rangel's philosophy of equal sacrifice appeals to him. "It should be a shared thing," Dempsey, 18, said.
Karen Porter of the Chester County Peace Movement appreciates Rangel's larger point, too.
He "knows full well" that his effort will not be what revives the draft, said Porter, who strongly opposes mandatory service.
"What he's trying to do is get the American public to know that if this government doesn't shape up, we're going to be in a situation where it will happen."
But Castro, of the Philadelphia-based American Friends Service Committee, fears "a worst-case scenario" in which the bill is eventually passed.
Then the poor and minorities will have no say about their service, Castro said, while "the CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations, their sons and daughters, will find ways out."
Pemberton senior and ROTC cadet Wessley Square, 17, would hate for that to happen.
"Putting unhappy people and loaded weapons together is never a sound approach," he said.