The Backdoor Draft

[galtgulch]

>>>"Aaron Emery writes a column on The Nolan Chart entitled "Plain Truth" and is currently serving as a volunteer advisor to 2010 Congressional candidate Jake Towne. He lives in Alexandria, VA.

The Backdoor Draft

By Aaron Emery

Published 05/20/09

In 1940, President Roosevelt signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. This established the country's first peacetime draft and established the Selective Service System at the federal level. Men had been drafted from 1948 to 1973 in both peacetime and during conflict in order to fill positions that could not be filled with volunteers. The last time a military draft was active in the U.S. the Vietnam War was in full swing. A "lottery draft," the first since 1942, took place on December 1, 1969 and determined the order in which men would be drafted in the 1970 calendar year. Lottery drafts, a method of selecting 18 -- 26 year old men by birth date, were also conducted in 1970, 1971 and 1972 for the years following.

These drafts caused outrage amongst the general populace and for good measure. According to the Selective Service over 10 million men were drafted during World War II, 1.5 million were drafted during the Korean War, and 1.8 million were drafted during the Vietnam War. These numbers add up to roughly 2/3 of all service members during World War II and Korea and 1/5 during Vietnam. Those are staggering numbers to anyone.

Many intense protests and riots took place during the Vietnam era and the draft was the central controversy surrounding these. In 1973, President Nixon wisely ended the draft due to public outrage. According to the influential John Locke a person has the natural right to life, liberty, and property. These rights are not given by any government; they are inherent and as natural as your right to breathe. Any way one may attempt to construe this, a draft is a direct violation of all the above. Forced service strips one of his life, if even for a short period. It is a violation of his liberties as he is not able to choose for himself what he will do, and it is a violation of his property as one's body is the ultimate form of private property. No property or possession is more important than that. Any draft is an egregious act against a person's natural rights and liberty and should only be viewed as that.

In a time of conflict a citizenry will naturally gravitate toward military service, so long as the people feel that it is in line with their values and that their service is justified. As such, it is a general indication of the level of support of the country. If enlistment levels drop during this time it should be viewed as a lack of support and belief regarding said conflict. Support amongst the people is always the telling tale of military intervention. Currently less than 3 million or fewer than 1% of Americans are serving in the military (active duty and reserves). If those numbers were to drop steadily over the course of a few years we could conclude that on average Americans do not support the cause, hence they do not join and serve. You can easily see why the draft has been a hotly debated topic throughout the past several decades, servitude has never been popular.

We've been fortunate to have avoided a draft in the U.S. since the early 70's (if you consider not having forced servitude fortunate). The federal government and white house take great pride in the fact that today we have an all-volunteer military. Well. . . sort of. All members of the Armed Forces upon enlistment join for a period of 8 years. The amount of time served in active duty or the reserves is subtracted from that time and, unless that individual reenlists, the remainder of those eight years is served in the Individual Ready Reserve, otherwise known as the IRR. The standard length of a military contract is four years, so someone who serves four years is still in the "IRR pool" for four more years. According to the U.S. Army Human Resources Command website:

"Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) Soldiers are a group of trained, experienced military professionals who stand ready to individually augment Army units. IRR Soldiers live, work and study in the civilian community, but they are military members with an existing service obligation. The Army accesses the forces and capabilities of the IRR as necessary to fight and win our nation's wars."

What that basically means is that for the remainder of 8 years these individuals can be recalled and forced to serve again for a period of up to 24 months. This is covered under U.S. Code 12302.

As of March, 2009 orders had been issued to 26,954 members of the IRR since September, 2001. These numbers only reflect that of the Army, not the other services. Only 48% of those recalled have actually reported for duty.

The rest face punitive measures ranging from downgrading of discharge status to imprisonment. Technically, since we are in a time of "national emergency" they are considered deserters and are also subject to the death penalty. This is important to note because all of these individuals are veterans, many of whom have served overseas and in combat. This is not a group of naïve college kids protesting the war, these are our young men and women who have served and who now refuse to take part in our military interventionism. This should lend even greater clarity to the idea that America does not support this war. When our own veterans are against military intervention, maybe we should consider that.

The fallacy that we maintain an all-volunteer service should be blown apart. Recalling veterans is a "backdoor draft," a hushed way of coercing more people into service without publicly declaring a draft. Yes, all service members sign a contract upon enlistment and this provision is included. How many 18 year olds would decide not to serve due to this clause though? If you expect a kid to understand the implications of their actions, especially when joining the military, you are sorely mistaken. Had this been a civilian contract you can bet that it wouldn't stand, people would simply sue for entrapment and they would win. Fat chance of a soldier being able to sue the government though. The honest truth is that most soldiers don't even know what the IRR is and how it may affect them. If you were to ask a soldier a few years ago or even today about the IRR you would probably get one of two replies: "What's the IRR?" or "My recruiter told me I would only be recalled if World War III happened." The latter is a pretty common answer. Thank God World War III hasn't happened!

How do I now all of this you might ask? Because I am one of those recalled soldiers. I served on active duty for five years and was honorably discharged in June, 2007. Less than a year later I received orders recalling me to service with one month's notice and I am currently deployed in the Middle East. I was definitely not alone, serving with me are more than 70 others who were recalled. All had been honorably discharged and most had been out of service for two to four years. All of us were hesitant to come back and only did so through fear of imprisonment, loss of civilian jobs, or simply guilt. I can speak with authority when I say this IS a draft. A very convenient one in which veterans who no longer wish to serve can be discredited and their lives turned upside down if they fail to comply with "federal wisdom." This is how we treat our vets? Maybe we should consider the level of support for this intervention before coercing veterans, of all people, to serve again.

For anyone that may declare; "You knew what you were signing up for," the point is missed. For those who feel that mandatory service is a great thing, the notions of personal liberty and property are lost. For those who would say; "Better you than me," ignorance is their only haven. Let's recognize this for what it is and starting holding our government accountable. Call it a backdoor draft, call it entrapment, call it obligation, but don't call it an all-volunteer military.

Copyright © 2009 Campaign for Liberty"<<<

www.campaignforliberty.com 20May 9PM 153,492

HR1207 Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 now has 169 cosponsors and the pressure is on for others to become cosponsors. You may help by going to www.DownsizeDC.org click on Campaigns, scroll down to the Audit the Fed, enter your info and add comments to letter to your very own Congressman and Senators Companion Senate legislation is S604

gulch

[kiaer.ts]

[BaalChatzaf]

........ draft .....

As they say in Hebrew, "Ayn Chadashot Tachat Ha'Shemesh" There ain't nothing new under the sun. There was the New York City draft riots in 1863. Several dozen people were killed and hundreds injured. The Irish immigrants were being pressed into service and they blamed the Negroes, so many black folk were killed.

Delenda Cartago Est.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited May 21, 2009 by BaalChatzaf

[tjohnson]

According to the influential John Locke a person has the natural right to life, liberty, and property. These rights are not given by any government; they are inherent and as natural as your right to breathe.

Although I am as much against the draft as you I think there is a contradiction here. Just because John Locke says something does not make it so any more than if a government says so. Unfortunately the rights of man have been determined by force for millennia and will continue this way until mankind "grows up" and learns to resolve his differences without fighting. In short, we don't have rights by some god-given source, we should have rights out of mutual respect but unfortunately we often do not.

[Brant Gaede]

According to the influential John Locke a person has the natural right to life, liberty, and property. These rights are not given by any government; they are inherent and as natural as your right to breathe.

Although I am as much against the draft as you I think there is a contradiction here. Just because John Locke says something does not make it so any more than if a government says so. Unfortunately the rights of man have been determined by force for millennia and will continue this way until mankind "grows up" and learns to resolve his differences without fighting. In short, we don't have rights by some god-given source, we should have rights out of mutual respect but unfortunately we often do not.

Rights are a human invention, hence artificial. However, they are validated by reference to what a human being actually is and needs, hence they are natural. Created by philosophers they are put into law--imposed by (philosopher) politicians. The moral justification for that is if the laws do not violate rights a citizen cannot say he did not agree to that government--that he wants another government-- because all he is arguing for is his own right to do whatever he wants and to get whatever he wants, but rights in human society delimits human activity for the sake of social harmony. The anarchist can argue against the existence of the state which is government that is (grossly) rights' violating, but not government per se. We will always have government. What we need is our state--the United States--on the premise of moving to greater and greater freedom: a smaller, contracting state, but thanks to state education and cultural blindness, most citizens have little or no knowledge of individual rights, freedom and liberty, much less have the thinking skills to figure things out for themselves or be assertive individuals against inappropriate expressions of authority.

As for this "backdoor draft" it's merely the imposition of an aspect of the original enlistment contract. When I left the army after three years I went into the inactive reserve for three more years. I did not receive my honorable discharge until six years after my enlistment. I was never recalled because the real draft kept supplying the army with fresh meat for the battlefields of Vietnam. The army always goes first for the fresh meat. It's easier to get it butchered up for state purposes than someone like me who finally figured out what was going on. Today there is no draft and the fresh meat is in dearer supply, so recall whom you can when you need 'em.

--Brant

Edited May 21, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Ross Barlow]

Regarding that first draft lottery of the Vietnam era (December 1, 1969), I will always remember one thing. At the time I was living in a hole on Hill 55 (Quang Nam Province) and first heard about it through a letter from my father a few weeks later. My birthday came up in the lottery at around number 3, and my father wrote with his understated humor: “Better lay low, son, they’re going to draft you.”

When I enlisted in the summer of 1968, the Marines had just lowered the time of a volunteer’s hitch to 2 years. As Brant said, there was an overall 6-year military obligation then for combined active duty, active reserves and inactive reserves. For the 4 years immediately after I got out of active duty, I was considered to be in the “inactive reserves,” and I was supposed to update them yearly on my address, etc. But I never contacted them or answered any letters if I got them. As far as I was concerned, I was finished.

I did carry my inactive reserve ID-card with me for a while back in civilian life, and it saved my friends and me from an arrest for under-age drinking. The state cop looked at my ID and said, “What’s this?” I explained that I’d just come home from Nam and active duty. 20 years old and a veteran, but I still could not legally drink in Pennsylvania. It was a ridiculous situation, and the officer thought so too, because he radioed back to his station and told them that he just couldn’t arrest us. He let us go with a warning. But he did take our beer.

-Ross Barlow.