The Return of the US Military Draft?

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The United States military has not utilized a draft to fill its ranks since the early 1970's when it was  pumping young men into the jungles of Vietnam at furious pace - except, of course, those who had the means to buy their way out of military service like that Trump kid with the bone spurs in his golf shoes.

But just because the draft is not currently being used doesn't mean that it  has gone away or been forgotten.  The military draft in the United States still exists, and young men in this country between the ages of 18 and 25 are still required to register for that draft - and most do.

But there are some who never get around to registering.  They feign ignorance of the legal obligation, forget,  or just ignore the law - and in the event Congress ever activates the draft for military service recruitment, they would miss their opportunity to be ordered into uniform.  Their absence from the pool of available young men makes it more likely that others will have to put on a uniform and mcarch off to war in the place of the artful dodgers who never got around to registering.

That unfair situation is about to be remedied, not by eliminating the draft entirely and increasing wages and benefits to entice young people to join the military, but rather by increasing the size of the draft pool in an effort to draw in more of those who decline to register.  Starting this December, the Selective Service will no longe require young men to regisster for the draft, and instead the government will perform the registration for them - automatically.  In yet another assault on our personal privacy, the federal government will begin combing through all available government databases (things like income tax returns, census records, driver's license databases, and the like) to ferret out the names of young men in the 18-25 year age range.

(Elon probably already has a more comprehensive list on his personal laptop than the one currently available to the Selective Service.  Big Balls would have seen to that!)

And if we are still mired down in Trump's War on Iran in December - and why wouldn't we be - longer lists of fresh meat for the war effort would certainly come in handy.   I'm sure they will all be as eager to fight as Arlo Guthrie was when he talked to the "shrink" at his draft in-take physical in his 1967 recording of "Alice's Restaurant Massacree."  Arlo told the psychiatrist:

"Shrink, I want to kill.  I mean I wanna kill.  I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth.  Eat dead, burnt bodies.  I mean kill, kill, kill, kill!"

The shrink ultimately joined in shouting "kill, kill, kill" with the involuntary recruit, and wound up congratulating him by declaring "You're our boy!"

Many of our sons and grandsons could end up fighting involuntarily for Our God and Their Oil in Iran, but even with a government-generated draft list, they should not expect any Trumps to be serving beside them.  As Trump's friend, Leona Helmsley, might have put it, "Wars are fought by the little people."

Some things never change.