Draft Riots Feared

No Matter Who Wins in November, Draft Will Return

 

By Mike Blair

 

Regardless of the outcome of next November’s presidential election, the federal government will initiate a military draft in 2005, unless there is a dramatic slackening of the need for U.S. troops for the ongoing war in Iraq and for “peacekeeping” duties around the world.

Last June, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill to increase the size of the Army by 20,000 persons, and a month earlier the House voted to add 30,000 soldiers and 9,000 Marines by 2007.

If current trends continue, several military experts have told American Free Press, voluntary enlistments will not even dent the number of troops America will need for its global over-commitments.

What is going to happen in late August at the Republican National Convention in New York City many will see as a precursor of what will take place when the nation starts drafting young men, and perhaps even women, for the military.

It is expected that hundreds of thousands of demonstrators will converge upon New York to protest the Bush administration’s involvement in Iraq, a situation that may become similar to what happened in Chicago in 1968, when the Vietnam War and the selection of Vice President Hubert Humphrey for the presidency at the Democratic convention there sparked massive protests that turned violent.

There are already signs that there will be massive demonstrations against the Bush administration’s war in Iraq at the New York convention, and with the possibility of terrorist acts a major consideration, federal, state and local police officials are clearly concerned that the massive demonstrations they expect may turn very ugly.

When the federal government initiates a draft to meet its military manpower needs, which it no longer can do under an all-volunteer system, something the Pentagon clearly knows, there will be an outpouring of public sentiment against it.

Drafting means that a government program to conscript young men, and probably women, taking into account the inefficient and unworkable unisex military, is likely to cause a flap that will dwarf the Vietnam War protests, by example, and may equal the Civil War-era draft riots in New York in ferocity. Those riots required military force to control.

Already campus protesters are warming up to fight the coming draft.

As an example, a recent article in The Daily Texan, the student newspaper of the University of Texas, President Bush’s home state, compared the draft to slavery, because “someone else owns your body and mind.”

Actually, the Pentagon has already instituted a sort of draft, called “stop-loss orders.”

It has blocked the retirement of 40,000 soldiers, many from the National Guard and reserves, both of which have been drawn down to dangerous levels by extended deployments, which has wrecked the recruitment process to procure the needed manpower.

The Pentagon currently has in place a recruitment program to find 11,000 volunteers to reactivate 2,000 local draft boards around the nation, which should make it obvious that there is a draft looming just down the road.

Neither President Bush nor the Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry, is likely to bring the matter up until after the presidential election. That would, they realize, be a political “no-brainer.”