University of Virginia Library

Repeal The Draft

John Kerry, leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

If My Lai and the Calley trial ultimately laid
bare an incipient horror story within the
ranks of the army, it was the veterans who
last week showed us the way back to
Washington. There were no victor's speeches,
no spoils, no glory. Instead we noted the grim
awareness that in wars like this one the
lessons must be taking from the victims. The
Vietnam veterans - many of them draftees -
are increasingly prone to count themselves
among the casualties, along with millions of
Asian people.

Yet while the veterans were turning in
their combat medals on Capitol Hill, and as
Nixon planned his lost weekend at Camp
David, preferring not to witness or
acknowledge the April 24 action, the Senate
Armed Services Committee was concluding its
recommendations concerning the future of
military conscription. Those conclusions,
including a two-year extension of the draft,
marked the bill with a seal of approval which
seemed likely to speed passage in the Senate
this spring. Underlying such an ill-thought
move was a fiction no less elaborate - nor
frightening - than those of Kafka, Camus, or
Orwell.

The recommended extension came at a
time when evidence indicated the draft was
collapsing. Aside from a desertion rate
approaching 100,000 men a year, leaving off
the large-scale sabotage within the armed
forces and resistance among enlisted men in
the army an navy, there was ample proof
(including statistics from reliable anti-draft
groups) that the draft itself had become an
insupportable mechanism for raising an army.
As of January, induction centers outside the
South were discovering that 40-75 per cent of
those ordered up for induction were failing to
show. Puerto Rico, where resentment has
been especially strong, led the nation with a
75 per cent-plus rate of no-show. In Chicago,
the U.S. Attorney's office admitted that one
day in January 1971, of 343 men called 203
did not report - a 60 per cent no-show in a
city where the rate runs between 45 and 50
per cent every day.

Moreover, the means of enforcing Selective
Service have fallen far behind as resistance has
grown. Approximately 500 men have been
sent to prison every year on federal charges of
draft evasion. Overall figures show that this
figure would have to increase to more than
10,000 per year in order to bring "justice"
into line with the reality at hand. That would
obviously require more courts and more
prisons.

In considerations of feasibility in
implementing a voluntary military, most
interesting perhaps is the fact that of
3,000,000 American servicemen in uniform
today, only eleven per cent are draftees. The
notion that to abolish the draft would
undercut national defense fails to convince us.
As for Indochina, Secretary of Defense Laird
has promised an end to the U.S. ground
combat role next month. A Congressional
decision not to renew the draft authority in
June 1971 would not affect the flow of new
soldiers to Vietnam until December, since a
minimum of four or five months of training
is required between a draftee's induction and
his assignment to Vietnam.

Sen. Edward Kennedy has argued that to
create a volunteer army would be to
guarantee a military composed of poor people
and blacks, whose only economic recourse is
to enlist. What this denies is that those of the
lower class hate being drafted just as much as
anyone. They are more susceptible because
they lack the money and information it takes
to successfully dodge the draft. Sen. Kennedy
should consult with Black leaders like Edward
Brooke and John Conyers in the Congress,
Mrs. Martin Luther King, and Roy Wilkins if
the true interests of Black people are his main
concern. All of them, and others, favor an
immediate end to military conscription.

Repeal, not "reform," is the answer. The
draft, as its former director (and champion)
Gen. Lewis Hershey told us, cannot be made
fair. The power to draft has no place in a free
society, which by definition should defend
itself by popular consent and support. "One
does not reform inequity," said Sen. Mark
Hatfield, "One abolishes it." One could hope
the Senate will heed. Should it fail to put an
end to the draft, once more the burden of
action will fall on those most directly affected
- ourselves.

And in that case, it may be a long, hot
Spring.