The Draft: Part I

However you feel about the Iraq War, in one respect it is a more moral war than any other war fought by the United States. In Iraq every American soldier fighting today is a volunteer, an enlistee, a professional soldier. Every soldier on the ground in Iraq chose their difficult and dangerous work. Even the American Revolution was fought in part by soldiers who had been conscripted into military service, forced to fight against their will.

In fact, the United States government drafted soldiers to fight in the U.S. Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Any drafted soldier who was injured or died fighting during any of those wars, died a victim of his government’s immoral use of force.

Forced service, whether it is military service in wartime or community service in peacetime, is an immoral use of government power in a free society…but especially military service that could result in the forfeiture of your life. If you have a right to your life, then government can not force you to put your life in peril.

Americans recognize a human beings unalienable right to his own life. It is what our volunteer army is fighting to preserve. Unalienable means that the right can not be taken away without due process of law. Selective Service law is not objective law. It is subjective, i.e. subject to the needs of an administration in crisis, to hell with man’s unalienable right to his own life. Consistent with the altruistic justification of every immoral law, the rights of draftees are sacrificed in the name of some “greater good.”

If there is a greater good, I’m sure people would be enlisting to defend it.

Most would agree that the American Revolution, the Civil War, WWI and WWII were fought for just causes. Victory in each instance was imperative. U.S. interests—even the existence of the United States—were undeniably on the line. The same cannot be said for the Korean War or the Vietnam War. These wars were fought to stop the spread of an ideology, an economic system, communism. No such war need ever be fought. Communism destroys the lives of any people who adopt it. Americans never had anything to fear. Communist regimes across the globe were doomed to fail from the beginning. We should have known this. [Ayn Rand knew. She told them so. Our political leaders should have listened to her.] Over one hundred thousand young Americans would have survived the 50’s and 60’s. With regards to the other wars listed above, the just wars, there are always alternatives to government’s use of immoral force.

If some country were foolish enough to attack the US, we’d have no problem finding 21st Century minutemen. We’d all volunteer.

The issue of the draft is, in my opinion, no longer even relevant. The days of huge standing armies facing off against each other on the battle field are long since over. Technology makes the need for million-man armies a thing of the past. If the U.S. insists on policing the world, then we must do it the same way we police our own streets: hire people willing to do the dangerous work and pay them well.