Revive the Draft
Time for some serious preparedness.

Mr. Kurtz is also a fellow at the Hudson Institute
September 11, 2001 9:30 a.m.

aybe now, in the wake of this terrible act of war, we can break our great taboo and at least consider a revival of the draft. We've been having our cake and fairly stuffing our mouths with it for three decades now. We managed a victory in the Persian Gulf with minimal casualties; won the war in Kosovo from the air; and now depend almost entirely on machines to do our spying. It's all worked marvelously well, until now.

I was at the dentist Tuesday afternoon. First thing he said was, "As soon as I saw how they did it, I realized they weren't Americans." We don't want to imitate our enemies, but no nation can stand whose citizens are unwilling to defend it with their lives. We Americans have become far too recognizable as a people afraid to risk casualties.

The terrorists who commandeered those planes were more than suicide bombers; they were probably also trained pilots, recruited with the aid of some government hostile to the United States. Is our military prepared to take on such a foe and still carry out our responsibilities worldwide? And now that our vulnerability has been exposed, the threats will surely multiply.

The truth is, military recruitment has been in a state of crisis for some time now, and it has seriously affected our readiness. The all-volunteer military would be unsustainable — even in its current troubled state — without the women who compose 14% of the force. Yet in order to admit enough women to keep force levels adequate, we have seriously undermined physical standards, the quality of training, and morale. Simply restricting ourselves to the small number of women who can meet traditional military standards would force a restoration of the draft. And that's without taking into account the increased demands on our armed forces that the war against terrorism will surely impose.

Of course, it would be better to make do with an all-volunteer military, and maybe Americans will rise to the occasion and come forward in greater numbers. The military is not chomping at the bit for a revived draft, and for good reason — draftees mean motivation and discipline problems. Yet there may be no other way out. So the matter must at least be seriously debated.

Having our military in its current ramshackle state already restricts the options available to the president for responding to any states that might be sponsoring this terrorism (or building weapons of mass destruction). But what really has our government in a box is our national unwillingness to risk casualties or permit a draft. Politicians from either party are desperately afraid of even uttering the "D" word. Yet it's downright dishonest, at this point, not to at least raise the issue.

Plans have been floated for a national-service program that would include, besides the military, the option of some form of domestic service. The requirement could be attached to college loans, or could simply be universal. Such a program would cultivate the much-needed sense that we owe some debt of service to our country. And these cultural changes matter, for without the will to fight, our military might counts for little. For too long now, we've indulged the fantasy that we can have our way in the world without cost. Our readiness has suffered significantly as a result.

But now we see that Americans can be killed, whether or not they intentionally put themselves in harm's way. Now we see that our military is not a place to play at androgyny, but an instrument we must call upon to defend ourselves. Now we see that machines alone cannot do our work.

We Americans are rightly jealous of our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Understandably, we are reluctant to surrender our freedom, even temporarily, in order to defend it. Yet defend it we must. And we are not as soft as all that. We may not be a nation of suicide bombers, but the fire-fighters who lost their lives rescuing civilians from the tower lacked no courage. Then there's the crash of that plane outside of Pittsburgh, perhaps brought down by a pilot who preferred to die at his own hands before allowing his captors to succeed in their plans.

Or maybe you think we can still get away with it — that a few more high-tech listening devises, a few more cruise missile strikes and bombing raids, will be enough to make the terrorists and their sponsors back off. After all, it's worked just fine, until now.