Did we lose a war? Despite the fact that America is the unchallenged, pre-eminent superpower of the world, even today we maintain an antiquated system of registering males for a potential draft — a process known as Selective Service. The penalties involved for non-compliance — fines of up to $250,000, jail terms of up to five years and disqualification from all federal student loans and employment — along with a registration requirement that ranks in the echelons of sex offender registries (all males must notify the federal government within ten days of any address change) — make offenses like tax evasion look trivial.

Who can we thank for this massive boondoggle? None other than Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter, who during his term reinstated the draft after the Soviets invaded Afghan-istan to demonstrate America’s resolve in the Cold War. Naturally, the fact that the Cold War has long since ended (which, as a reminder, we won) has done little to deter calls to maintain the status quo. Ironically, the president who did the most to evade conscription, Bill Clinton, — who burned his own draft card and fled to Canada during Vietnam — also proved in office to be one of the main proponents of maintaining Selective Service. In a speech to Congress on May 18, 1994, President Clinton argued, “As fewer and fewer members of our society have direct military experience, it is increasingly important to maintain the link between the all-volunteer force and our society at large.”

Yet arguments like this — as well as arguments that the draft serves as an “insurance” policy against a disastrous attack upon the United States — neglect to account for the changed nature of the armed forces today. For one, it is well-known that America maintains the most highly trained, educated and technologically advanced military in the world. Secondly, if such individuals are concerned about the overburdened nature of our military forces, perhaps then it would be wise to ask why 37,000 U.S. troops still patrol the Demilitarized Zone on the Korean Peninsula, despite the fact that South Korea is a First-World nation with an economy 40 times the size of its communist neighbor — an aggressor which cannot even manage to feed its own people.

Further adding to this are the thousands of troops stationed in far-flung places such as Germany and Japan, long since placated as threats to American peace and perfectly capable of maintaining their own defenses. Add to the mix thousands of American troops still perform peacekeeping duties in the Balkans as well, an area which serves no American interest and could be better handled by its European neighbors, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

In light of such, if individuals are concerned about the readiness of our forces to face unexpected crisis, perhaps the answer lies not in drafting more (vastly inexperienced) forces but rather in more economical uses of the forces we already maintain.

Furthermore, utilizing a draft in a case of emergency would prove far less efficient than simply tapping into reserve forces, whose numbers are plentiful and can quickly be mobilized. Instead of pulling untrained (and possibly unwilling) members out of the general population and pressing them into military service, reservists already possess the requisite training and desire to serve, thereby cutting down on both problems of logistics and discipline.

More insidious, though, are calls to render the draft into a vehicle for mandatory national service, especially in light of the tragedies of Sept. 11. Yet plans like this fundamentally undermine the values America stands for — namely, that patriotism and civic pride come not from governmental force but from voluntary action. Using an institution designed for national defense to simply advance trivial political ends is not only an outrageous abuse of governmental power, it stands fundamentally against the principles on which it was founded — namely that of individual liberty. To press young Americans into civic service on threat of force smacks of the Soviet-era regimes that we fought to deter.

Yet America’s strength comes from the very opposite principle: It is the willingness to answer the call of service freely that makes America great. For evidence of this, one need not look any further than the record enlistment numbers into the armed forces following Sept. 11. Indeed, as Justice Jackson wrote in the opinion of West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, “To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds.” The same is true with civic service: To believe that young people will not respond of their own accord in a time of national crisis is to betray a lack of faith in the strength and value of our American institutions to begin with.

Given the fact that we are currently embroiled in a war against those who supposedly hate our values of freedom and plurality, now more than ever it makes sense to live up to those values as a nation. Coerced service — even the threat of such — runs counter to these very ideals and is less effective than systems currently in place.

It’s time to burn the draft once and for all.

Steve

Skutnik

is a graduate student in nuclear physics from Ames.