On Tuesday, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) introduced a bill in Congress calling for the revival of the military draft. The proposed draft would apply to all men and women ages 18 to 26, with exemptions granted to high schoolers but not college students. Impaired persons would perform community service instead of military service.
Rangel opposes a strike against Iraq and knows Congress would hesitate to declare a war in which a draft sent many randomly selected citizens to their deaths. His suggestion is a scare tactic which he hopes will prove that Americans in general, and lawmakers specifically, would be less likely to support a war if every young person had an equal chance of going into battle. He also designed his proposal as a tool for speaking out against the disproportionate percentage of minorities and lower-class citizens in the military.
Rangel’s motives are commendable, but his method is flawed. He is right to try to make Congress and all Americans realize the simultaneously broad and individualized loss experienced by a people at war. However, he should not propose a draft just to make this point. Admittedly, his proposal will most likely gain no support; the U.S. military has moved past the days in which the draft produced effective troops. Massive legions of soldiers are of little help in the highly technical world of modern warfare. Even so, conscription is still too serious an issue to propose just to make a point. Furthermore, the bill’s practically unsupportable nature will further fragment the Democratic party. Clear, simple messages work best in the political forum: Rangel’s irony is counter-productive because it will cause disagreement among Democrats and give the Republicans the opportunity to add a powerful “anti-draft” facet to their platform. This bill will also fuel the arguments of those who insist that an immediate strike against Iraq using the existing military will result in fewer casualties overall. This proposal will only discredit the Democrats and eventually benefit the Republican party and war enthusiasts. Proposing a draft that would be heinous if implemented is dangerous and counter-productive. Such alarmist, sarcastic techniques are inappropriate.
