A military draft that makes no exceptions for women or higher education could start as early as June 2005, according to an article from the Project Censored newsletter.

The Pentagon quietly has begun to fill draft board positions and appeals boards, while $28 million has been added to the Selective Service System. Congress also has brought forward the Universal National Service Act of 2003, which requires that “all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.”

Reinstating the draft is not necessary or a good idea. The motivation for it is what Donald Rumsfeld termed the “long, hard slog” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the apparently permanent war on terrorism. The war in Iraq especially has been controversial, and to force young people to serve in a war they don’t agree with – a la Vietnam – is wrong. To handle terrorist pockets in the United States, existing military personnel should be retrained to take out individuals and small groups, instead of dragging in citizens.

While including college students and women in the draft takes care of some inequalities in gender and economic class structures, one of the country’s greatest resources is its educated citizens. To uproot college students and ship them off for a year to get shot at is not going to improve the nation. Likewise, while many women would be able to serve competently in the military, what happens when both parents are called?

People who sign up for military service often have a different mindset than most civilians; they go in knowing they might die. To ask civilians to make the same sacrifice for a cause they do not support is not going to produce an exemplary armed force. The war in Iraq is already unpopular, and, as the Bush administration must know, this draft would make it even more unpopular.