Conscription in The United States - Perception of The Draft As Unfair

Perception of The Draft As Unfair

Some people feel that the draft is fundamentally unfair (or illegal in a way) because only males must register with the Selective Service. Many masculists as well as feminists hold this view. For example, the National Organization for Women, a feminist organization, passed a resolution in 1980 opposing males-only draft registration as discriminatory, and the American Civil Liberties Union's Women's Rights Project provided aid to the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case Rostker v. Goldberg, in which the plaintiff unsuccessfully challenged males-only draft registration. Congress retains the right to conscript women and considered doing so during the Second World War.

Other discriminating factors regarding conscription include age, with a preference for younger draftees, and residency, since only those in the U.S. may be drafted.

The draft has been perceived by some as unfairly targeting the poor and lower middle classes. Because of college deferments, children of wealthy and upper-middle-class families that could afford to send them to college could avoid the draft. The fact that President Bill Clinton had been attending college during the time period in which conscription was active and received a collegiate deferment caused controversy during his campaigns and during his time in office (however, Clinton did not come from a rich family). Similar controversy has surrounded prominent figures in the Bush Administration, such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz.

During the Vietnam War, some children of wealthy families wished to avoid a perception of avoiding military service. Those individuals often signed up for the National Guard, which at the time seldom sent troops overseas. The fact that some were able to use their family's connections to gain a position when spots in the Guard were limited also led to a perception that the wealthy were using the National Guard to ensure that their children were assigned low-risk duty in the U.S. Much as President Clinton's obtainment of a deferment based on his attendance of college caused controversy, President George W. Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War also attracted controversy during his election campaigns.

During the Vietnam Era it was often quite easy for those with some knowledge of the system (or from guidance by draft counselors and draft attorneys) to avoid being drafted, or to defend prosecutions by submitting themselves to induction after indictment, and then being found disqualified. A simple route, widely publicized, was to get a medical rejection. This was possible because the draft laws after World War II mandated that the medical standards for conscription should not be less stringent than they were during the war. However, advances in diagnostic medicine led to a much larger pool of young men being subject to disqualification. (Homosexuality was also a disqualifying condition, although most men did not wish to assert this status during that era.) Men who received induction notices could often manipulate where they were examined by showing up at induction centers far away from their actual residences on the mandated date for examination (either for a pre-induction physical or the induction physical examination). It was advantageous to be examined in induction centers adjacent to heavily populated metropolitan areas, where it often was not worth the Army's time to dispute their claims.

Conversely the poor and uneducated were often conscripted without any understanding of how to escape the system. However, many law schools, notably Harvard University, had draft counseling centers where law students helped young men in poorer areas assert their rights and seek exemptions from induction.

U.S. Representative Charles Rangel argued in 2004 that poor men were far more apt to enlist for military service. He called for a reinstatement of the draft to ensure service in the Iraq War was spread equally among the rich and poor. After the November 2006 elections, Rangel again suggested the draft be renewed, this time because he thought it was less likely that a republic with conscription would engage in preemptive wars such as the current American military involvement in Iraq.

The provisions for conscientious objection to the draft have also been viewed as unfairly discriminatory, favoring religious objection over non-religious objection. Alternative mandatory service can assuage objections based on peace and non-violence but does nothing for those whose objections arise from strongly held convictions about freedom.