CONSOLIDATED FOOTNOTES for DADT
CHAPTER 2
This includes the notes in the 1997 publication and additional notes added since. In the iUniverse printing, the endnotes start with number 20. Note numbers in this text start from 1, as they did in the original print run in 1997.
There is a table of draft regulations since 1948 at the end of this file.
Chapter 2
Ch 2 - general comment
In the 60's, I heard the comment, "all young men should be instructed in things military" all the time. The use of the military to install social policy was nothing new; they tried prohibition on the troops during World War I.
Peter Tauber's The Sunshine Soldiers (New York: Ballantine, 1971) provides another account of the draft.
1 There are five uniformed services capable of combat: Army, Navy,
Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard. The Air Force
became its own department shortly after World War II. The Marine Corps belongs
to the Department of the Navy. The Coast Guard belongs to Treasury, but comes
under control of the Navy during war. (The Public Health Service is uniformed
but non-combatant. But both the Coast Guard and
1a Ch. 2 P. 36, pr 6. . The 2-digit draft classifications roughly could be interpreted as follows: first digit. a '1' mean, available for duty, at least if necessary, down to '4', never to be inducted. The letters also, as they increased, implied a decreasing likelihood of induction. When the lottery started, in late 1969, I recall a friend's calling me in celebration when his number was 309.
The graduate school deferments started a trend that would eventually be repeated in other areas of the economy. There were too many Ph.D.'s, too many people looking for jobs in college teaching, even by the late 1960's. But scientists were "essential."
When I talked to the Army recruiter in
One area where the military needed brains was foreign languages. One could enlist in the Army for four years and be guaranteed language school (Vietnamese). The language has already lost its use of pictographs due to Western influence.
Intelligence personnel were deployed in forward camps, and were often only a few hundred feet away from firefights. They would interview the prisoners and wounded as they were brought back. Sometimes they accompanied units on dangerous "pacification" missions. They pulled guard duty. They certain saw some exposure to combat.
An
1b In
1981, the Supreme Court, in the case Rostker
v. Goldberg, 433
Abraham Rabinovich ran a story, “Israeli Women
Won’t See Combat: They fall short on strength tests” in the
In May 2006 the House considered legislation for the 2006 Defense Authorization bill that would limit further the role of women in combat and ground combat support, further pressuring the need for more male recruits for combat arms.
2 Old medical books used to refer to an entity they called "childbirth fever."
3 Selective Service System, Bulletin #10, Dec. 1990, p. 1.
3a In
May 2000,
4 Memorandum for Director of Selective
Service System, Assistant Secretary of Defense,
5 Ibid. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the male-only draft registration in 1981, with Rostkerv v. Goldberg.
6 During the Revolutionary War, there was enormous social pressure to
"enlist." George Washington actually proposed a national militia of
all adult males. (Tony Blankley, in his 2009 book “American Grit” notes
that some colonies did draft men into their militia.) William James wanted to
draft men to manual labor; Woodrow Wilson used sheriffs for mass round-ups of
conscripts. Even for a gruesome, political war so frivolously driven by
nation-states' "entangling alliances," there was enormous patriotism
among American young men, as demonstrated in the film Legends of the Fall
(1994). In most colonies (like om
Early America has an account of the First National Conscription Act here.
Ken Burns, in his 1999 PBS film
Although civilian conscription has happened as far back in
history as ancient
David R. Sands, The Washington Times,
Before his death, Virginia Rep. Herbert H. Bateman Rep) had suggested that
some form of conscription my be re-instituted if
recruiting shortfalls continue whereas House Armed Services Chairman Flod D. Spence (
The Selective Service System, as of
In 1948, President Truman used the threat of conscription to break a railroad strike! That leverage would not exist today.
6a For World War I, Congress passed
a Selective Service Act in May 1917, requiring registration for military
service by all men 21 to 30 (later 18 to 45). Sedition laws made (however
unconstitutional by today’s First Amendment interpretations) it a crime to
criticize the draft. For World War II, Congress passed another Selective
Service and Training Act on
7 Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (New York: Vintage, 1994), p. 69. Ondaajte's novel explores the conflict between loyalty to loved ones and fidelity to moral values. See also Gregor Zeimer, Education for Death: the Making of a Nazi (London: Oxford University, 1941).
7a. Reuter’s News service has reported on a new
book The Double Life of a Dictator by Lothar Machtan, Modern History Professor
at Bremen University, that Hitler had practice a socially gayish
lifestyle in the 1920s. “Adolf Hitler
was fond of men. He had a homosexual nature," Machtan
told Die Welt daily in an interview
due for publication on Saturday. This
seems at first quite trivial. But it is a detail that helps us to see his biography
from another angle….Machtan,… said the subject had
been taboo among historians, partly because examining Hitler's private life
might be seen as a step towards humanising him and
excusing his crimes.Machtan said there was also no
irrefutable proof that Hitler was gay. "
GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) criticized an
“In one
teaser for the interview, co-host Matt Lauer said, "There have been
120,000 books, give or take a few, written about Adolf Hitler since his
death. The newest one claims that Hitler was actually gay, and that his
homosexuality was at the root of his evil." A complete transcript of
Lauer's interview with Machtan can be viewed at http://www.glaad.org/:
http://www.glaad.org/org/publications/documents/index.html?record=2871
Machtan's speculation about Hitler's sexual orientation is, of course, just
that. By his own admission Machtan's research
and, indeed, the premise for his assumptions are without proof or empirical
verification. But the sensationalistic manner in which the traditionally fair
Lauer introduced and conducted the interview with Machtan
left the important questions unasked, replacing them with innuendo”
This
book has been published (2001) in the United States by Basic Books (ISBN
0-465-04308-9) as The Hidden Hitler,
translation by John Brownjohn and notes translated by
Susanne Ehlert.
But
there is also this item: The essay “Homosexuality and the Nazi Party,” by Scott Lively, co-author of The Pink Swastika:
Homosexuals and the Nazi Party (Keizer, Oregon: Founders Publishing
Company, 1995). The essay was distributed by Stonewall Republicans in an email
in December 2001. According to Lively, The
Pink Swastika is not available through
“In February of 1933, Hitler
banned pornography, homosexual bars and bath-houses, and groups
which promoted "gay rights" (Plant:50). Ostensibly, this decree was a
blanket condemnation of all
homosexual activity in Germany, but in practice it served as just another means
to find and
destroy anti-Nazi groups and individuals. "Hitler," admit Oosterhuis and Kennedy,
"employed the charge of homosexuality primarily as a means to eliminate
political opponents,
both inside his party and out" (Oosterhuis and
Kennedy: 248).
“The
masculine homosexuals in the Nazi leadership selectively enforced this policy
only against
their enemies and not against all homosexuals. Even Rector lends credence to
this perspective,
citing the fact that the decree "was not enforced in all cases"
(Rector:66). Another indication
is that the pro-Nazi Society for Human Rights (
for several years after the decree. In The Racial State, Michael Burleigh and
Wolfgang Wippermann
remind us that Roehm was a leading member of the
Fisher that the
Oosterhuis and Kennedy write that "although he
was well known as a gay-activist, [Adolf] Brand was
not arrested by the Nazis" (Oosterhuis and
Kennedy:7). Some of Brand's files were
confiscated by the Nazis in their attempt to gather all potentially
self-incriminating evidence.
”In 1935, Paragraph 175 was amended with Paragraph 175a which criminalized any
type of behavior that
could be construed as indicating a homosexual inclination or desire (Burleigh
and Wipperman:
190). (Interestingly, the new criminal code addressing
homosexuality deleted the word
"unnatural" from the definition-Reisman,
1994:3.) This new law provided the Nazis with an especially
potent legal weapon against their enemies. It will never be known how many
non-homosexuals were charged
under this law, but it is indisputable that the Nazis used false accusations of
homosexuality to
justify the detainment and imprisonment of many of their opponents. "The
law was so loosely
formulated," writes Steakley, "that it
could be, and was, applied against heterosexuals that the
Nazis wanted to eliminate...the law was also
used repeatedly against Catholic clergymen"
(Steakley:111). Kogon writes that "The Gestapo
readily had recourse to the charge of homosexuality
if it was unable to find any pretext for proceeding against Catholic priests or
irksome critics" (Kogon:44).”
Here is the bibliographic information from
bn.com: authors: Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams: Format: Paperback, 3rd
ed., 280pp. ISBN: 0964760932, Publisher: Founders Publishing
Corporation Pub. Date: January 1998 Edition Desc:
REVISED, some sales volume.
I have a review of Machtan’s The Hidden Hitler at http://www.doaskdotell.com/books/bhitler.htm and a review of the film The Hidden Fuhrer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler’s Sexuality at http://www.doaskdotell.com/movies/mhitler.htm One could speculate that the “upward affiliation” of much male homosexuality could be viewed by many as a rejection by a man of loyalty to his own bloodline and of a desire to affiliate with a “superior” bloodline. This would of course generate enormous resentment. But the modern gay world often rejects the idea that biological lineage has any connection at all to individual self-worth; blood and lineage have almost no meaning in this context.
8 James Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (London: Oxford University, 1996), p. 599 in a footnote from Charles Moskos, "From Citizens' Army," a paper published by the University of Chicago.
9 These were largely the "deferred" draft categories starting with "2"; they listed "civilian occupation" (generically), then patient care and divinity, as well as students.
10 "Effects of
Marriage and Fatherhood on Draft Eligibility, After World War II to Today"
Selective Service System fact sheet.
College students lost their deferments with the lottery at the end of
1969. Fathers lost their
10a Ch 2, P 39, pr 4: In fact, right after World War I, the Army actually turned away men who looked too "feminine" including those (Caucasians) that it thought possessed too little facial and body hair! (Rand, p. 4). No wonder frat houses practiced their tribunals!
10b The History Channel, on
10c Doug Bandow, “What ain’t broker: the renewed call for conscription,” Ideas on Liberty, Febraury, 2000, pp 23-24, keeps the hidden threat alive!.
10d On
10e Maybe
this is a place to answer a queerlaw inquiry: I have
never heard about a controversy over gays in either the Peace Corps or
10f On
10g On
11 Allan Berube, Coming Out under Fire (New York: Plume, 1990), p. 18.
11a Actually,
the first draft number for WWII was drawn by lottery on
11b In 2001, there will be a Japanese film, Taboo, which in part depicts homosexual affairs among samurai warriors, especially with younger warriors. Film critic Roger Ebert stated that this was commonplace in the old Japanese warrior class. Similar stories, of course, are told about Alexander the Great and the militaries of various ancient Greek city-states (especially Sparta).
12 Situational homosexuality, referring to homosexual acts performed by otherwise heterosexual men when women are unavailable.
12a Ch 2, P 41, fn 19: In fact, Japanese camp internees were subject to the draft after January 1944! The camps were ordered closed by the Supreme Court at the end of 1944.
13 Ibid, p. 143.
14 Ibid., p 157.
15 Marvin Liebman, Coming Out Conservative (San Francisco: Chronicle, 1992), p. 42.
16 Very few people knew then that one English gay man, Alan Turing, had almost as a team of one enabled the Allies to break the Nazi codes during World War II, only to be arrested and shamed for gay sex in 1952. The preoccupation with the idea of homosexuality as a security risk (that homosexuals would “protect their own” like an alien tribe) became this absurd—and dangerous.
17 Randy Shilts, Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the United States Military , 2nd Ed (New York: St. Martin's and Fawcett Columbine; 1993, 1994), pp. 101-123.
18 Enrique Rueda, The Homosexual Network: Private Lives and Public Policy (Greenwich, Devin Adair, 1982).
19 Truman, HBO Films, 1995. The second generation Japanese-Americans (Nisei) were kept out of the military until 1942, and then out of combat until the Army's need for manpower overcame prejudice. The internment of civilian Japanese-Americans during World War II was certainly one of our most shameful episodes since Reconstruction, dwarfing even our treatment of African-Americans. Many of them were already American citizen, even native born. There was particular emphasis on removing them from coastal areas.
19a Less well publicized is the fact that during World War II German
and Italian aliens (over one million) were also interned in many camps (or
often monitored at home and prohibited from possessing many items) around the
country, although perhaps better treated. This was covered in the History
Channel film Nazi America: A Secret History on
20 Rand Corp., National Defense Research Institute, Sexual
Orientation and
21 Ibid, p. 7.
22 Shilts, op. cit., p. 70.
23 Shilts, op. cit., pp. 19-21,
24 Shilts, op. cit., pp. 281-283.
25 E. Lawrence Gibson, Get Off My Ship: Ensign Berg vs. The U.S. Navy (New York: Avon, 1978).
26 Rand Corporation, op. cit., p. 85.
27 Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns, Baseball (New York: Knopf, 1994).
28 The second team moved to Texas in 1972. I have always been angered by organized baseball's hypocrisy; it still doesn't want to field a team in the heart of a city whose residents are 70 percent African-American.
In 1958, the Senators lost their last 13 games, including a sequence of 5
out of 6 games in
The “new Senators” were in DC from 1961 (my senior spring in high school) to
1971, and played in Griffith Stadium one year, and then RFK. In June 1961, the
Senators blew a 12-5 lead in
In 1971, the Senators would forfeit their final game at RFK to the Yankees,
when they were ahead 7-5 with two outs in the ninth, as fans ran out onto the
field. That evening I almost took a heterosexual date to the game, in the days
(when I worked as a programmer at the Washington Navy Yard, not far from the
However, baseball returned to DC in 2005 (the Montreal Expos, destroyed by
the 1994 baseball strike, became the new Washington Nationals), and the team
had an 81-81 record in 2005 (71-91 in 2006). The Velvet Nations Club, the
largest in the City with gay disco parties (it replaced Tracks in the 1990s)
closed on
A libertarian issue with baseball is free agency and the Reserve Clause, and the Curt Flood case from 1978, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curt_Flood
29 Patterson, op. cit., p. 632. One of the surveillance operations was called "CHAOS," another was "COINTELPO" (Counter-Intelligence Program). The liberals are just as guilty of this.
30 Patterson, op. cit., pp. 628-633.
31 Charles Murray and Richard Hernstien, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Free Press, 1994).
F32 On
In 2001, more Johnson tapes from 1965 would show that even in early 1965 Johnson had doubts as to whether a guerilla war in Vietnam could be won.
32a Ch 2, P 46, fn 32: LBJ, however, was
schizophrenic enough about his power almost not to run even in 1964! The
Richard Nixon, in an interview on Larry King Live in July 1990, indicates his belief that the American action in Vietnam bought valuable time during the 1960s in preventing the rest of Southeast Asia and maybe other areas from falling to communism, even if American eventually “lost” this road conflict. Communists may have won a unified Vietnam in 1975, but communists eventually lost control of the entire country as it fell.
32b A History Channel series on how many
drugs became illegal maintains that the ante was upped against cocaine during
the Nixon years because Nixon felt that it would undermine the troops in
33 Shilts, op. cit., p. 40. Shilts goes on to tell the story of Danny Flaherty's Army and Vietnam service after his expulsion from college when turned in by a fellow student for consensual homosexual acts (which then were not even illegal in Illinois!) According to Shilts, Flaherty simply just didn't "tell" at his physical, out of patriotism and a fear of embarrassing his family. My motives, by comparison, were more to prove my manliness to myself.
33a A certain African-American went to Britain in 1958 to avoid being drafted, after his (southern) draft board, having turned down his graduate student deferment, referred to him by his first name and without a salutatory "Mr." He still may not enter the United States legally without fear or arrest. So for some of us who grew up during the Cold War era, the draft still seems very real indeed.
34 The United States Chess Federation, in Newburgh, N.Y., sponsors most major tournaments in this country and maintains a computerized rating system ranging from "senior master" down through letters A-E, which rather sound like classroom grades to me!
34a Ch 2, P 48 Michael Ondaatje, in The English Patient, offers the observation that bridge, in comparison to chess, builds character and cannot be mastered by kids.
"Psychoanalyst" Rueben Fine, in The Psychology of the Chess Player (New York: Dover, 1956) claims, on p. 22, that he had heard of only one case of "overt homosexuality" among chess masters.
35 "Rumors" that various commercial foods and drinks are spiked often float in black ghettos today.
35a Apparently the military did resume “asking” (“character and social adjustment”) after the draft was lifted in 1973.
35a, Ch. 2 P. 50, pr. 2. On
36 Michael Lind, "What Bill Wrought," The New Republic,
36a Ch 2, P 53, pr 2: Dean Rusk was expressing the idea that one (communist) country must not be allowed to conquer a (nominally non-communist but not necessarily democratic) country. This reiterates the "nation state" view of modern history. From the point of view of the individual rights of Vietnamese people, the idea makes little sense; both North and South regimes were about equally authoritarian. So in a sense this was a "civil war" but our view of history and "world domination" sucked us in. The Tet Offensive, which finally turned our government's idea around that we couldn't win the war with "normal measures," still cost "the enemy" enormous casualties. So we comforted ourselves in believing that Orientals didn't value individual lives.
37 The Army also has a special class of personnel called Warrant Officers for aviation.
38
38a I’ll add that the road through graduate school was tough at first, learning to work new problems on closed book in-class exams under pressure. I once got a “D” (in graduate school!) on a partial differential equations test (hated those wave equation problems), scary stuff as I vulnerably headed down the road toward the draft myself.
39 "RA" stood for "Regular Army." Since 1969, the military has used social security number as service number.
39a (Ch 2, Pg. 61, pr. 4). Since 1981, the military has
offered and required bacterial meningitis (meningococcus)
vaccination of a recruits. But this is relatively little known among the
civilian population at large. On
40 The treatment of prisoners, such as pilots downed in combat in Iraq, has always been a grave concern and a reason to keep women (and possibly "known" gays) out of combat. The Convention calls for prisoners to give only name, rank, and serial number.
41 See the Red Cross CPR Module, "Respiratory and Circulatory Emergencies."
42 Company; battalion; brigade.
F43 Ted Koppel and
43a On
44 See David Mixner's Stranger Among Friends (New York: Bantam, 1996), pp 106-111 for a harrowing (or, according to one friend of mine, "embarrassing") account of how Nixon's antics against the war protesters ensnared gays.
44a Ch 2, P 69, pr. 5: Marine Corps boot camp today includes a confidence course called "The Crucible," in which the recruit spends 54 hours on bivouac with very little sleep or food. The Marine is supposed to migrate from "self-discipline" to "selflessness."
44b Ch 2, P 71, pr 2: In fact, the
44c PBS
Nova ran a program in late 2004 about the VENONA code-breaking operation of the
late 40s and early 50s, often done by hand, TTY teletype and EAM equipment, to
break a KGB Soviet spy operation stealing atomic bomb secrets from Las Alamos
in the 40s before
45 As in the H.G. Wells story, The Time Machine.
45a. P. 73, para 3. But in a new book by Anthony Summers, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon (New York: Viking, 2000), in an excerpt reprinted in the September 2000 Vanity Fair, an author reports strong evidence that Richard Nixon actually covertly interfered with the proposed Hanoi peace talks—which I had first learned about in the ammo tent in Basic training—during the 1968 elections when Nixon ran against Humphrey. Nixon wanted to leave the impression that he was not above using tactical nuclear weapons against the North, an idea that was sometimes mentioned in the barracks and which many thought could actually end the war. Papers available to me during my own stay at the Pentagon suggested that this policy had been on strategists mind (on both sides) since the time of Korea, so not everything was just some plot to have a war for the sake of war. (And there was real concern that nuclear war with the Soviet Union could come out of Korea, as early as 1953.) But as long as young poor and black men could make cannon fodder, it was easier to run in place than to take severance. Of course, some commentators would call Nixon’s pre-election behavior treason.
45b We can hardly assume that the Cold War is over for good. Joseph A. Bosco, “China’s actions look a lot like Cold War revisited” reports, “During the 1996 missile crisis in the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese defense minister warned of a nuclear attack on U.S. cities if Washington came to Taiwan’s defense.” The possibility of grave consequences over North Korea, and the aid given to antagonists in the Islam world by left wing communist holdovers, as well as terrorist threats, are well known. (The pillaging of religious shrines in Afghanistan by an extremist government is truly appalling.)
45c On
45d In
November 2004, the Pentagon told military bases world wide that they may not
sponsor Boy Scout troops as long as the Scouts insist that members believe in
God. (Mike Robinson, Associated Press,
46 Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum , English translation, most recent is provided by (New York: Knopf, 1993).
46a But the most aggressive Communist of all was probably Pol Pot in Cambodia, who took Chairman Mao Tse Tung’s cultural revolution to a new extreme, not only forcing everyone into the countryside to work for no wages but even forbidding the pronoun “I”. The escape from the Khmer Rouge would become the basis for Bruce Robinson’s 1984 film about Sydney Schanberg’s escape, The Killing Fields. Some historians believe however that Nixon’s intervention in Cambodia actually exacerbated the situation and made Pol Pot’s rise more likely.
46b “Back to the Bay” became a funny slogan within the barracks, just like “O Go Way Butterfly” and Tiny Tim’s “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” Songs on the radio in the barracks at that time included “Simple Simon.”
47 Harry Summers, "Sensible Opinion," op-ed, The
Washington Times,
47a Actually, there was just one occasion
at
48 Stephanie Gutmann, "Sex and the
Soldier," The New Republic,
48a Ch 2, P 76, pr. 3: But as recently as 1965, most gay bars in New York City had found themselves quickly shut down as the mayor tried to "clean up" the city for the remainder World's Fair. (There were “rumors” of at least one gruesome sexual assault at the Fair in 1964, but a reader tells me that he cannot find any written record of such a specific attack in publications or presumably public records. People who lived in the City then tell me that “it was so bad we had to go to Boston to go to clubs.”)
48b Ch. 2, P. 76, pr. 3: Stephen O. Murray (author of American Gay)
reviews (in The New York Times, p. B13,
Ch 2, P 77 Page 459 of the November 1969 Datamation
presents an employment ad from
Recently, however,
Ch 2, additional conclusion:. The Society of Friends has often promoted the idea that the use of federal taxes for military purposes is a form of "conscription." See Linda Coffin, Handbook on Military Taxes and Conscience, Friends, 1988. Legal arguments have been proposed that "conscientious objection" could be made to paying taxes equivalent to military spending. As with the draft CO issue (as it was experienced at the local draft board level), this seems run the risk of giving religious beliefs privilege at the expense of other cultures. Various schemes of tax resistance are proposed, many of them illegal (but not, say, living in a fixer-up house, and pocketing tax-free profits). Some individuals have impoverished themselves, intentionally earning as little as possible or living "off the books" (or, say, by living off of the state-paid expenses for providing foster child care!!) to avoid paying "military" taxes. The "conscription tax" theory does have some credibility since, up through the Civil War, military service could sometimes be avoided by purchasing "bounties." There are some private alternative "escrow" funds which (though technically illegal) have been set up to replace taxes with private, socially reputable escrow funds - a libertarian construct. The government says about 22% of general revenues go towards military spending. Even the federal telephone tax was set up originally for war financing (during the Korean conflict). Should I pay taxes to an institution that deliberately insults me by insinuating I'm "morally" unfit to serve? I wouldn't dare protest!
In addition, some engineers, especially those older than draft age, would refuse to accept military-related jobs on the ethical notion that they shouldn't pay their mortgages by depending upon an effort they saw as immoral.
In 1998, the Selective Service system starts allowing eighteen year-old males register on the Internet.
Draft regulations regarding paternity and marital status
after World War II
|
Date |
Order |
President |
Action |
|
|
9988 |
Truman |
Married
men in bona fide relationships with wives have |
|
|
10001 |
Truman |
Men in 1-A
or 1-A-O selected in reverse birth date order |
|
|
10469 |
Eisenhower |
Except for
men with paternity before |
|
|
10659 |
Eisenhower |
Married
men without children inducted in same order as single men |
|
|
11098 |
Kennedy |
All
fathers with a bona-fide paternity relationship (“Kennedy fathers”) deferred
as |
|
|
11110 |
Kennedy |
Married men
without children {”Kennedy husbands”) not drafted until single men pool
exhausted |
|
|
11241 |
Johnson |
Men
married after this date lose preferential “deferment” |
|
|
|
Nixon |
First draft
lottery held, ending student deferments |
|
|
11527 |
Nixon |
Elimination
of paternity deferment for fathers of children conceived after this date |
|
|
38 Federal Register
13485 |
Nixon |
Active
draft ends; Marital status
no longer affects draft availability. This would be true if draft were
resumed |
|
1980 |
|
Carter |
Selective
service registration resumes |
Males at age 18-1/2 must still register with Selective Service (by Internet
or mail). “If Congress and the President were to reinstate a military draft,
Selective Service procedures currently in place would not treat married
registrants, or those with dependent children, any differently from men who are
single. Regardless of marital or parental status, a man who turns 20 years old
during a year when a draft is in operation, and whose birthday draws a low
lottery number, will probably receive a draft notice. Being married or being a
parent will not, by itself, be grounds for a
The web site for Selective Service is http://www.sss.gov/
Special Posting
The Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (I
believe that I caught the name Carl Levin, D-Mich)
this evening suggested on CNN that the draft should be reinstituted, in answer
to a question posed by a commentator. According to a poll, 66% of Americans
favored resumption of the draft if necessary for the war on terrorism.
-- Two points again: The military needs to fight the war will be very
specific, from very high tech skills to Green Berets, Navy Seals, and the like.
They must be specialized professionals. Personally, I hope that the
DADT problem can be kept out of the discussion. When I was on active duty
1968-1970 nobody was worried about the presence of gays.
-- However, it is clear from the 1993 law that anyone who "admits
homosexuality" (or a "propensity to engage in homosexual acts")
would be "excused." It doesn't take much thought to imagine the
complications for gays in the civilian area that could arise. Turning
this around, however, we know from the past that the military suddenly loses
interest in finding homosexuals when it really needs men and women. This
is well documented in books by Randy Shilts, Joe Steffan, and others (including me).
-- Two people aske me about what would happen
with a draft when I went to the Saloon last night here in Minneapolis. And men
were not looking at pornography on the computer terminals; they were reading
about bin Ladden.
-- Recall, the 1993
law expresses a sense of Congress that formal “asking” at entry is not
necessary (653-d-1) but the Secretary of Defense has the prerogative to resume
it “if necessary…” -- see, http://www.doaskdotell.com/content/append.htm
Appendix 10.
-- One other point about CNN tonight--mention of the possibility of other
unspecified threats and suspects still at large. These might include biological
or chemical weapons (as previously suggested by an
On
On
In Nove,ber 2001, the Washington Monthly published an essay,
“Now Do You Believe We Need a Draft? We’re in a new kind of war, Time for a new
kind of draft,” by Charles Moskos and Paul Glastris. The authors propose a mandatory 18-month draft
(apparently only required of men, although that seems “negotiable”) with
considerable choice as to type of service (homeland law enforcement, maybe even
educational tutoring, as well as military) with varying carrots depending on
the type of service. There was no mention of the military gay ban or of “don’t
ask, don’t tell” in the article. I emailed Moskos
on this, and he wrote back, “Gays must come out for conscription. Then the ban would
be lifted.”
The December 2001 American Enterprise contains, on page
16, a counterpoint on the draft between Charles Moskos
and Lawrence Korb. Here, Moskos
advocates that the military draft remain male-only, that the term be short, that
the pay ratio between established military professionals and recruits increase,
and that draftees could be used in labor intensive homeland defense missions
such as airport security, including screening (perhaps newly mandated screening
of all checked luggage).. Moskos believes that the
economically privileged should be chosen to be the 50% of draft-age men who
would actually be needed. Korb, a Reagan-era
administrator who, because of very principled adherence to his conservatism
turned out to be surprisingly supportive of at least partially lifting the
military gay ban, indicates that the all-volunteer system works and should not
be changed. Again neither writer mentions the military gay ban in this piece,
or the social and political implications of restoring a male-only draft with a
legally-driven “don’t ask don’t tell” in place.
In “Reviving the
Citizen Soldier” in the Spring 2002 (p. 76) issue of The Public Interest, Moskos argues for
the opportunity of short-term military enlistments, and argues that combat
casualties are more acceptable when the “risk” is shared by the more privileged
classes. Towards the end, he writes, “There are only two ways to raise the
acceptance of combat casualties. Bring back a draft that starts conscription at
the top of the social ladder or establish recruitment appeals that will garner
some share of privileged youth.” An
earlier version of that article had appeared in the Summer 2001 issue of Parameters.
It would be logical
to propose that a form of conscription could be used for compelling
labor-intensive social needs, like nursing-home duty or eldercare, for (young)
adults (including females) who do not already have such family responsibilities
(as in One True Thing).
Well, this sounds “counter-libertarian,” doesn’t it. Anyway, I had an email exchange with Moskos, who wrote back: “Gays must come out for
conscription. Then the ban would be lifted.”
On
Tim Cavanaugh made
light of Moskos’s proposal (and mentioned “don’t ask
don’t tell”) in a whimsical missive “Service economy: First-draft suggestions
for a real draft proposal” in the Feb. 2002 Reason,
p. 21.
My own take is that
a second simultaneous second major war front (such as a decision to invade Iraq
should Saddam Hussein be implicated in the anthrax attacks, or maybe problems
in an area like North Korea) could well bring the draft back. The growing
eldercare custodial care crisis could make the idea of mandatory service at
some point more politically palatable. Not very libertarian.
In her book Germs, published just
before
In his State of the
Union address on
So, there is
“volunteering” (closely related to a person’s personal or business interests),
and there is volunteering! It used to be thought that a young person “paid his
dues” before becoming an adult. (Of course, the male-only nature of the draft
in the past and the wide abuse of deferments undermined this notion somewhat.)
Today, you will “pay your dues” throughout a lifetime.
Apparently there is
no outright prohibition against homosexuals “enlisting” in “non-military” volunteer agencies like the Peace Corps (for
example, as an alternative to the military as national service, with or without
a future draft). For example, visit the site http://usembassy.state.gov/ghana/wwwhpcam.html
regarding the Peace Corps. In the Peace Corps volunteers generally live with
families overseas (after training) rather than in barracks. A website dealing
with this issue is Lesbian, Gay and
Bisexual Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. A more important issue for the
Peace Corps, when recruiting older volunteers (5% are over age 50) is the
extent of and commitment to previous volunteer service (a very clear
expectation on the application forms) that should be required. Some seniors,
after a lifetime of corporate “rat race” may see such service as a new chance
to “pay dues.”
On
Nevertheless,
Charles Rangel (D-NY) introduced a bill to reintroduce the draft in early 2003.
This is called the Universal Service Act of 2003. He claimed that his
main purpose was to raise awareness of the risks of war (in Iraq); most
politicians voting on military action do not have children or spouses in the
Armed Forces. He is also concerned about the disproportionate “burden” of
military service borne by the poor, although USA Today (Dave Moniz and
Tom Squitieri, “Front-line troops disproportionately
white, not black,”
The Universal
Service Act would not defer students (“Students part of draft proposal: Draft
would affect all U.S.men and women 18-26,” Christina Galoozis,
On
On
The last half-hour
of the 2002 Gangs of New York weighed
in on the Civil War draft, and made much of the fact that rich young men could
buy their way out with $300 contributions. War was an outside thing, not
supposed to affect real life, or gangs.
According to a
speech given by President Bush at a re-enlistment ceremony on
In November 2003
the Army announced that it would prosecute a Green Beret NCO for cowardice in
Iraq, after freezing on the battlefield because of a “panic attack” which he
reported to his chain of command. Cowardice is defined in the UCMJ as
“misbehavior motivated by fear.” Such a
prosecution had not happened in the military since the Vietnam war.
In October 2003,
“Defend America” posted a routine call for replacements for Selective Service
board members, but then took the call down.
The Capital Gang on
CNN debated the idea of reinstituting the draft on
A related issue is
the recent trend for the Army to involuntarily extend enlistments, especially
for reserves and guard troops called up because of Iraq, under “stop-loss”
orders. See Lee Hockstader, “Army Stops Many Soldiers
from Quitting: Orders Extend Enlistments to Curtail Troop Shortages,” The
Washington Post,
The Selective
Service System began television advertising late in 2003. For example, before a
run of Smallville Beginnings on TheWB on
An increasing
portion of civilian technical jobs these days are predicated on high-level and
specialized military security clearances, partly because they cannot be as
easily outsourced, so even in a quasi-voluntary service environment,
eligibility for military service can affect one’s opportunities lifelong.
Employment agencies in the Washington area tend to regard an active clearance
as an “asset.”
Eric Rosenberg, of
the Hearst News Service, provides a commentary “On the path to draft, leaders
‘can’t imagine’ needing it” in the Houston Chronicle, March 14, 2004, at http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2446912 The story maintains that Pentagon leaders are
quietly preparing a “targeted draft” that they could press for after the
November 2004 elections, especially for language skills or medical skills.
“Talking to the manpower folks at the Department of Defense and others,
what came up was that nobody foresees a need for a large conventional draft
such as we had in Vietnam," said Richard Flahavan,
a spokesman for the Selective Service System. "But they thought that if we
have any kind of a draft, it will probably be a special-skills draft."”
This story was widely mentioned by Advocates for Self Government, Liberator
Online.
On
Aaron Brown also interviewed Sen. Hagel on 4/21 on
CNN “Newsnight” about the ideas for a draft or
mandatory national service. Mr. Brown suggested that if a draft were restored
there should be no exceptions, no deferments (and I presume no gay ban). Mr.
Brown also pointed out that ordinary Americans had not been expected to
“sacrifice” for the war on terror, rather told to “go about their lives” and
Sen. Hagel suggested that a freight train was rolling
in. A period of service would give someone more moral credibility, although it
seems like many young adults today compete without any notion that this might
be expected. Remember, Ross Perot used to talk about “shared sacrifice” in the
1992 presidential campaign. As I indicated back in 1997, well before 9-11 and
the War on Terror, the idea of “social obligations” can affect our thinking on
ideas like gays in the military and family values. A
Presidential candidate John Kerry indicated that he did not favor a draft now, but admitted that it was conceivable that national circumstances could someday justify one, when there would be no exceptions or deferments. Another important argument made by CATO (against the idea that the volunteer military is unfair) is that higher income people really are paying a larger share of a volunteer military with taxes, and generally have more ability to influence the political decisions as to how their tax money will be spent.
In early June 2004 the Pentagon indicated that enlistments of persons
deployed overseas in Iraq or Afghanistan would be extended, and that under this
stop-loss plan soldiers would not be released upon the expiration of their
enlistment contracts. Apparently this provision also applies to individual
Ready Reserves members called up. Presidential candidate John Kerry called this
a “back door” draft, breach of contract, bordering on involuntary servitude. The
Washington Post criticized this in an editorial “Mr. Bush’s Mismatch,” on
In late June 2004 the Pentagon indicated that it was calling up members of
the Individual Ready Reserve, persons who finished tours of duty but who have
time remaining on enlistment contracts. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., of the House
Armed Services Committee, said, ``If there was any doubt that this
administration was conducting a pseudo-draft, this call-up should dispel that
doubt.” Senator John Warner said ``We cannot bring
back a draft now and make some young men and women go into uniform and not
bring in a whole lot of others to do different tasks,'' on NBC's ``Meet the
Press” on
On
The Horatio Alger Association, in a report “The State of the Nation’s Youth” reports that 55% of high school students now believe that the draft will resume during their lifetimes (up from 45% last year). The AP story is at http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&ncid=542&e=5&u=/ap/20040810/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/student_views
On
"The
policies determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred, who would
serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live, were an anti-democratic
disgrace," Powell, a leading black in the Republican administration, said
in his 1995 autobiography, My American Journey.
"I
am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle
slots in Reserve and National Guard units.” Of course, these days these slots
are subject to the “backdoor draft.”
Charles
Hurt provides a story in the
On
Friday
Nicholas
F. Benton reports in The Falls Church News-Press,
However
on
However,
again, on the evening of
On
October 16, The Washington Times sported the banner headline: “Kerry
brings up draft to put down Bush” along with the story “GOP camp calls tactic
desperate bid to win votes.” Mark Thompson provides Time (Oct. 18, 2004) the
story, “Does the U.S. Need a Draft? Both Bush and Kerry say no. But with
America tied down in Iraq, military officials say they may need more troops to
win the war—and the next one.” The article gives some disturbing statistics,
such as that 43% of the troops in Iraq belong to the Reserves or National
Guard. Active duty military now numbers 2.6 million. Thompson quotes General
John Keane (ret. 2003 from Army staff):
“The
volunteer force was the most significant military event of the 20th
Century. But it’s not preordained that it will always be there, or that it is
always going to be successful.”
My
own take now is that the draft issue would get real serious in Congress if
there is another (third) overseas war, especially in Korea (as in the 2002
Wayne
Beson provides The Washington Blade (Oct. 15,
2004) with the op-ed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Draft: If the U.S. reinstates the draft
to support the Iraq warm expect a lot of straight conscripts to play gay.” The
link is http://washblade.com/2004/10-15/view/columns/draft.cfm This was somewhat
true during
The
Bush Administration apparently obtained a cease-and-desist letter against a
journalist for reporting that Bush intended to resume the draft.
On
For my own editorial on the draft (July 2004) visit http://www.doaskdotell.com/controv/draft.htm
Reporters at the Democratic National Convention claim that 3 out of 4 college graduates had military service history as of 1966.
On
On
Despite the difficulties that the service have in meeting enlistment targets in a voluntary system when there is a deadly war, the potential rewards (college and medical or law school scholarships), combined with the increasing student loan debt load, effectively increases the pressure on less affluent students to enlist and risk their lives (and makes the discrimination subsumed by “don’t ask don’t tell” real).
Damien Cave, “Growing Problem for Military Recruiters: Parents,” The New
York Times,
Eric Schmitt, “Army Likely to Fall Short in Recruiting, General Says,” The
New York Times,
The Army has created controversy by rotating its slogans. “Be All You Can Be” got replaced by “An Army of One” which is too individualistic ideologically for unit cohesion. So now we have the vapid “Army Strong” – all picked by professional Madison Avenue ad agencies. The Air Force has “Do Something Amazing”; the Navy, “accelerate your life”; The Marines: “The Few, The Proud.”
Goals for Americans has an ad “A Solution or a Draft”? in
which it proposes a “
On
On Monday,
On
On
Around
In his State of the Union speech on
USA Today reported on
Philip Gold has a new book critical of the concept of selective service; called “The Coming Draft,” commentary here.
Blogger entry on September 2006 issue of Congressional Digest Pro & Con, debate on national service and the possibility of resuming the draft.
On
In April 2009 the Pentagon announced that tours in
In 2009, the Selective Service System plans a “dress
rehearsal” of its machinery in case of a return to the draft. At least one
reader wrote to CNN on
General Douglas E. Lute admits (on National Public Radio “All Things Considered”) that draft could be considered (Aug. 2007), blogger entry here.
Michael Kelley, at the Academic Information Portal for Education and Research, has an interesting perspective of African-American casualties in the Vietnam war here. At one point Blacks were 23% of the dead but the number dropped to 12.5% of the dead. Blacks made up only 13.5% of draftee deaths.
During World War II, and incident known as the Port
It’s interesting to note, that as of the beginning of 2008, females still cannot serve on Navy submarines or as Navy Seals, link here. I actually got into a conversation about this on the Metro returning from a New Years Eve party.
In April 2008, it has been reported that Army stop-loss has increased 43% since the beginning of 2007, despite intention of Secretary of Defense Gates as announced in this memo Jan. 2007 (here), followed by a Secretary of the Army memo mid 2007.
Note
on Northern Illinois University incident,
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