48 Time October 21–28, 2019
posturing against Iran, against North Korea, it
is also easy to imagine our country sleepwalking
into another major theater war. To avoid those
outcomes—a major theater war, the continuance
of our “terror wars,” the attendant loss of life—we
must move the issues of war and peace from the
periphery of our national discourse to its cen-
ter. And the only way to do that, I increasingly
believe, is to reconsider the draft.
Congress has also taken a renewed interest in
the draft, having created in 2016 a bipartisan Na-
tional Commission on Military, National and Pub-
lic Service charged with two missions. The first
is to determine “whether the Selective Service
registration requirement should be extended to
include women”—this in light of the 2015 reforms
that allow women un-
restricted military ser-
vice. The second is to
“explor[e] whether the
government should re-
quire all Americans to
serve in some capac-
ity as part of their civic
duty and the duration
of that service.” The
commission is slated to submit these recommen-
dations to Congress and the President in March
- This past January, while it continues to hold
hearings in communities across the country, it
released its first interim report.
The report found that Selective Service is “a
mystery to most Americans,” who were not aware
that all men ages 18 to 25 have a legal obligation to
register in case of a draft. Although the draft was
abolished in 1973, the Selective Service registra-
tion requirement was resumed in 1980, when after
the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, a capabil-
ity to conscript was again deemed critical to the
national defense. The system for registering for
Selective Service is passive: it occurs when you
apply for your driver’s license or federal student
aid. Most American males aren’t even aware that
they’re registered for the draft. Furthermore, the
commission’s interim report deals explicitly with
the numbers we’d be talking about if a draft ever
again occurred. Under the military’s current stan-
dards, 71% of Americans ages 17 to 24 do not meet
the physical or mental qualifications for military
service. People often assume the draft was compul-
sory for an entire generation, but this was never the
case. Of those killed in Vietnam, the war most inex-
tricably linked to the draft, 69.3% were volunteers.
to wage war, America has always had to cre-
ate a social construct to sustain it, from the co-
lonial militias and French aid in the Revolution,
to the introduction of the draft and the first-
Nation
The burden of nearlytwo decades of war hasbeen largely sustainedby 1% of our population>
CIERRA SMITH, 18
PORTLAND, ORE.
“In my school we didn’t
talk about war much.
Portland is a place where
we don’t talk about the
military. Growing up,
it never felt to me like
a war was going on.
The first time I remem-
ber learning about
9/11 was around seventh
grade. 9/11 all feels
like history to me.”