Conscription in the United States
In the United States of America, military conscription, commonly known as the draft, has been employed by the U.S. federal government in six conflicts: the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The fourth incarnation of the draft came into being in 1940, through the Selective Training and Service Act; this was the country's first peacetime draft.[1] From 1940 until 1973, during both peacetime and periods of conflict, men were drafted to fill vacancies in the U.S. Armed Forces that could not be filled through voluntary means. Active conscription in the United States ended in 1973, when the U.S. Armed Forces moved to an all-volunteer military. However, conscription remains in place on a contingency basis; all male U.S. citizens, regardless of where they live, and male immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, residing within the United States, who are 18 through 25 are required to register with the Selective Service System.[2][3] United States federal law also continues to provide for the compulsory conscription of men between the ages of 17 and 44 who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, U.S. citizens, and additionally certain women, for militia service pursuant to Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution and 10 U.S. Code § 246.[4][5][6]
Health care personnel[edit]
In 1951, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention created the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), a two-year program to train doctors, veterinarians, statisticians, and other health workers in epidemiology. Eligible health workers drafted into general military service during the Korean and Vietnam Wars could instead enlist in the EIS to guard against potential biological warfare.[97][98]
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.[99] 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.[100] 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.[101]
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:[121]
Conscription controversies and proposals since 2003[edit]
The effort to enforce Selective Service registration law was abandoned in 1986. Since then, no attempt to reinstate conscription has been able to attract much support in the legislature or among the public.[123] Since early 2003, when the Iraq War appeared imminent, there had been attempts through legislation and campaign rhetoric to begin a new public conversation on the topic. Public opinion since 1981 has been largely negative.[124]
In 2003, several Democratic congressmen (Charles Rangel of New York, Jim 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 bill was defeated on October 5, 2004, with two members voting for it and 402 members voting against. Of those who introduced the bill, only Stark voted in support.[125]
This statement was in reference to the U.S. 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 eight years.[126] 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.[127] As of January 31, 2006 it has been reported that more than 50,000 soldiers and reservists had been affected.[128]
Despite arguments by defense leaders that they had no interest in re-instituting the draft, Representative Neil Abercrombie's (D-HI) inclusion of a DOD memo in the Congressional Record which detailed a meeting by senior leaders signaled renewed interest. Though the conclusion of the meeting memo did not call for a reinstatement of the draft, it did suggest Selective Service Act modifications to include registration by women and self-reporting of critical skills that could serve to meet military, homeland-defense, and humanitarian needs.[129] This hinted at more targeted draft options being considered, perhaps like that of the "Doctor Draft" that began in the 1950s to provide nearly 66% of the medical professionals who served in the Army in Korea.[130] Once created, this manpower tool continued to be used through 1972. The meeting memo gave DOD's primary reason for opposing a draft as a matter of cost effectiveness and efficiency. Draftees with less than two years' retention were said to be a net drain on military resources providing insufficient benefit to offset overhead costs of using them.[27]
Mentions of the draft during the presidential campaign led to a resurgence of anti-draft and draft resistance organizing.[131] One poll of young voters in October 2004 found that 29% would resist if drafted.[132]
In November 2006, Representative Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) again called for the draft to be reinstated; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi rejected the proposal.[133]
On December 19, 2006, President George W. 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 2006, for the first time since 1998.[134]
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.[135]
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.[136]
A similar bill to Rangel's 2003 one was 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.
At the end of June 2014 in Pennsylvania, 14,250 letters were erroneously posted to men born in the 19th century calling upon them to register with the Selective Service. This was attributed to a clerk at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation who failed to select a century during a transfer of 400,000 records to the Selective Service; as a result, the system did not differentiate between men born in 1993 (who would need to register) and those born in 1893 (who would almost certainly be dead).[137] This was compared to the "Year 2000 problem" ("Y2K bug"), in which computer programs that represented years using two digits instead of four digits were expected to have problems beginning in the year 2000.[138] The Selective Service identified 27,218 records of men born in the 19th century made errantly applicable by the change of century and began sending out notices to them on June 30.[138]
On June 14, 2016, the Senate voted to require women to register for the draft, though language requiring this was dropped from later versions of the bill.[139]
In 2020, the bipartisan National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service issued a final report recommending that the military improve enlistment rates through improved outreach and recruiting rather than a renewed draft. However, it also recommended that the U.S. Department of Defense perform regular national mobilization drills to rehearse a recommencement of the draft.[140]
In 2020 and 2021, bills were introduced in Congress either to repeal the Military Selective Service Act[141] or, alternatively, to replace all references to "male" in that act with non-gendered language.[142] Either of these proposals, if enacted, would remove any gender and sex conditionality related to the draft. Neither proposal was enacted.
The dictionary definition of conscription at Wiktionary