2019-10-21_Time

54 Time October 21–28, 2019

Nation

Those whose families

fall into the top income

tax bracket would be

the only ones eligible

able to finagle exceptions. Under rules promoted
by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, draft
boards across the country were required to call up
men with IQ scores below the military’s minimum
standards to offset the recruitment deficit caused
by college student deferments. Take for instance
Harvard College, in which 19 alumni were killed
in Vietnam, compared with Thomas Alva Edison
High School, in lower-income northern Philadel-
phia. Despite being ap-
proximately one-quar-
ter the size of Harvard,
Edison high school suf-
fered 64 alumni killed
in action. Of the Har-
vard alumni killed, only
one was a draftee.
Who gets drafted
has always been just
as important as whether or not there is a draft.
In conflicts like Vietnam and the Civil War, the
draft exacerbated social inequalities by provid-
ing exemptions for the wealthy and influential.
A certain type of draft could, however, become a
tool to promote greater equality. It could create
greater social cohesion. And, lastly, it could cre-
ate greater accountability between our policies
and our population. In the era of the 1%, of hyper-
partisanship, of identity politics and divisiveness,
a reverse- engineered draft could prove a power-
ful tool to counteract these corrosive forces.

here’s what a reverse-engineered draft could
look like:
The Department of Defense would annually
set a certain number of draftees for induction
into the armed forces for two-year enlistments,
which is half the typical enlistment of a volun-
teer. This number would be kept small as a per-
centage of the overall active-duty force, let’s
say 5%, or 65,000 people, which is roughly the
size of the Coast Guard. By keeping the num-
ber small, we would retain the culture of pro-
fessionalism born after the troubles of the post-
Vietnam military. Upon induction, new service
members are typically assigned military occu-
pational specialties, like medic, truck driver or
radio operator. However, in the past, another
way people gamed the draft was to gain cushy
assignments through influence within the mil-
itary. In a reverse- engineered draft, inductees
would only be eligible for military occupational
specialties within the combat arms— infantry,
tanks, artillery and the like. And with the recent
integration of women, the gender divide would
no longer be an issue as women would also be
eligible not only for the draft but also for front-
line service.

>

DENYA SWEET, 18

CHARLOTTE, N.C.

“9/11 really changed a

lot of people’s lives. We

moved out of New York

City two years after 9/11.

My mom didn’t tell me

the reason why we left.

But my mom had

a friend who died in the

attack, and I’ve always

wondered if that’s why.”