Young Americans beware, Uncle Sam may ask you to join him soon on a worldwide adventure to exotic places to see fascinating sights and to meet interesting people and kill them or be killed by them.  This week as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen were testifying before the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, its chairman, Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), asked the question he said no one wants to ask:  “Is the cost of maintaining an all-volunteer force becoming unsustainable and, secondly, do we need to consider reinstituting the draft."  As a stunned audience gasped for air, Gates indicated that the escalating costs of maintaining an all volunteer armed forces were worth it.  Mullen was not so hopeful.  The exchange brought out in the open an issue that has been ignored by politicians this election year - military conscription.

Why would politicians want to discuss an issue in public as controversial and loathsome as the draft in any year let alone one in which a new congress and president will be chosen?  Inouye’s reference that no one wants to ask about the draft on Capital Hill can be construed as an admission that he has had discussions in private with other members of Congress to reinstitute the draft.  In public, the two major presidential contenders, Barack Obama and John McCain, have also steered clear of this political hot potato in their speeches and pronouncements.  However, verbiage on both men’s official campaign websites raises troubling questions about their position on converting the all volunteer military into a conscripted one.

While both men never mention the word draft or anything related to it, they both directly state that the U.S. military must be enlarged.  Obama’s site states, “We have learned from Iraq that our military needs more men and women in uniform to reduce the strain on our active force. Obama will increase the size of ground forces, adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.”  These are strange words from a candidate that has repeatedly pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq.  If under Obama, we would withdraw troops from Iraq, why do we need more?  Additionally, how is the increase going to be achieved?  The site does not specify.  Will Congress and President Obama provide more inducements by way of higher pay and better benefits for troops to reenlist and potential recruits to sign-up?  Or are we looking at a draft?

John McCain’s site, while also avoiding the use of the word draft or anything close to it, is much more vociferous about the need to “enlarge” our military force.  The national security section of his site states:  “The most important weapons in the U.S. arsenal are the men and women of American armed forces. John McCain believes we must enlarge the size of our armed forces to meet new challenges to our security. For too long, we have asked too much of too few - with the result that many service personnel are on their second, third and even fourth tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. There can be no higher defense priority than the proper compensation, training, and equipping of our troops”.  Does proper compensation, training, and equipping our troops apply to those few that we have asked so much of or does McCain want to use these benefits to induce new recruits to sign up? The statement is not totally clear.

The section goes on to address how our overseas security interests need to be handled, “John McCain believes that the answer to these challenges is not to roll back our overseas commitments. The size and composition of our armed forces must be matched to our nation's defense requirements. As requirements expand in the global war on terrorism so must our Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard be reconfigured to meet these new challenges. John McCain thinks it is especially important to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps to defend against the threats we face today”.  Again, it is stressed that the U.S. military must be enlarged, but no specifics on how to accomplish that are given.

Rest assured that politicians of both major parties have been talking about the draft in private given their thirst for worldwide military adventure and a declining recruitment and retention rate of our voluntary force.  Call me cynical or even paranoid, but the draft is a big enough issue to demand straight answers from our leaders.  With a draft, Washington would not be limited by personnel concerns when considering military adventures around the globe.  The military would be expanded, thus increasing federal outlays for defense and further exasperating the national debt.  Most importantly, the draft would be a violation of the Constitutional rights of those drafted.  Specifically, the draft violates the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition against involuntary servitude and the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of life and liberty without due process of law.

Senator Inouye’s question should incite the electorate, especially those members between the ages of 18 and 25, to question the political establishment on their individual positions on the draft.  It is one thing to have been denied a debate this presidential campaign season on whether the U.S. should or even can continue to support a worldwide empire?  It is another thing to be denied a debate on who will shoulder the burden of that worldwide empire?

Kenn Jacobine teaches History and English for the American International School of Lusaka, Zambia.  Send him email at lovesliberty@gmail.com.