During the years the draft was in effect, it was not uncommon for judges to let young criminal offenders choose among reform school, prison, and the Army. Most chose the Army, a decision I should like to see made by the gang members who now menace the streets of my city, Chicago, and other major American cities. As a totalitarian institution—that is, one that has total control over the people in it—the Army in my day had a remarkably high success rate in rehabilitating young offenders and even wayward jerks. In the Army, you shaped up or—well, there really wasn’t any alternative but to go to prison or have your life permanently stained by a dishonorable discharge.
Arguments against reinstituting the draft, though not trivial, are mainly technical. Training volunteer soldiers is said to be hard enough, given the complexity of military hardware—training reluctant conscripts would be even more difficult. Yet far from all military tasks are technological; clerks, cooks, infantrymen are always needed. Having lots of soldiers who have gone through college and professional schools would also leaven the enlisted ranks in a useful way.
At a time of defense-budget cutting, as military bases are threatened with closure and new weapons systems are abandoned for lack of money, the Pentagon may not be interested in having to increase personnel dramatically with conscripts who would serve for only two years. Yet President Obama has said, and no one of any authority has disagreed with him, that this war is going to be a long one, a matter not of months but of years, possibly even decades. The reinstitution of the draft would make our country’s participation in this lengthy struggle not merely more just but possibly more efficient, by conscripting better-educated young people. It is time, I would argue, for a serious consideration of returning to compulsory military service in America.
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