Feeling a draft

Rep. Charles B. Rangel of Harlem, N.Y., the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, has called for a return to a military draft. Neither President Bush nor Congress will take this unpopular step, of course, in the current run-up to the 2004 presidential election. But Congress should respond to Rangel's call by at least thinking about how our military force should be changed to meet the new and unforeseen demands of the post-9/11 world.

As Rangel rightly pointed out, who should bear the burden of defending the nation is a life-and-death question. You would never know this, though, from what senators and representatives spend most of their time talking about when they discuss national defense. Mostly, they wail about their home states not getting enough money for weapons-building factories, or about their need for more homeland security money to protect their local bridges and airports against terrorists.

Politicians worry most about greasing the squeaky wheels, especially the loudest ones. But they don't hear much squeaking from the all-volunteer military because most of them are personally no more connected to today's military than French politicians were connected to their Foreign Legion of old. Rangel made this point tellingly in his December 31 op-ed piece in The New York Times, writing: "The Congress that voted overwhelmingly to allow the use of force in Iraq includes only one member who has a child in the enlisted ranks of the military-just a few more have children who are officers." The Korean War veteran could have added that, according to the Military Officers Association of America, only 35 percent of senators and 27 percent of representatives in this Congress have ever served in the military.

The draft got a bad name during the Vietnam War. And deservedly so. The well-connected could escape serving at all or could at least find a safe berth at home. Vice President Cheney is among the tens of thousands who got exempted, and President Bush is one of those who stayed home as a flier in the Air National Guard. But that doesn't mean that the draft has to be unfair or that Rangel is wrong in trying to reinstill a sense of obligation to defend the country.

Congress should use Rangel's political incorrectness as a takeoff point for examining the old system of conscription and fixing its inequities. My own idea is that young people should still be encouraged to join the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard through the use of a limited recruiting budget. But when the services cannot fill their ranks with high-quality volunteers, they should be able to turn to a draft that would allow no exemptions. Every 18-year-old, male and female, would be subject to being drafted by lottery for 18 months of service. The physically unfit and the conscientious objectors whose lottery numbers were called would serve 18 months in some other form of national service. There would be no exemptions for anybody whose number was drawn out of the hat.

Congress should also take a hard look at today's mismatch of demands placed on our active-duty troops and our reservists. If terrorists were to mount attacks with weapons of mass destruction in several American cities simultaneously, perhaps in retaliation for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, who would control the panic, stop the looters, and tend to those stricken by poison gas or deadly germs? Local police and firefighters would be overwhelmed. And the governors might have no National Guardsmen because they would all be overseas, backing up the active force.

John R. Brinkerhoff, a retired Army colonel who was a civilian manpower executive at the Pentagon and an associate director at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is among the many experts worrying about that scenario. "Thousands of armed, disciplined, trained soldiers will be needed to preserve order" and to augment the local and state police, he contends. "The time is now to revive state guards," which would be composed of volunteers and reserved exclusively for a governor's use. The National Guard put state guards out of business in most states. But to Brinkerhoff and others looking at America's new military manpower needs, two things-9/11 and Bush's efforts to be the world's policeman-have given fresh appeal to the concept of state militias.

Congress should also address the possibility that National Guardsmen and reservists will start quitting their units in droves because call-ups have interrupted their lives too many times. And their civilian employers might be getting fed up, too.

Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have already dismissed Rangel's idea about resuming draft calls, declaring that the all-volunteer military is in great shape. But it would be foolish to assume that this rosy picture is permanent. Recruiting for the military is always easier when jobs are hard to come by, as is the case in today's ailing economy.

It's also time for Congress, which under the Constitution must provide for the common defense, to think about the unthinkable: America's sons and daughters in uniform dying horrible deaths from the poor man's armaments of choice-chemical and biological weapons. Suicidal zealots and Bush's doctrine of pre-emption have increased the odds of this happening. This prospect, as much as we don't want to confront it, is another reason that Rangel's question of who among us should be put in harm's way is both timely and urgent.