There has been much kerfuffle in recent years (ok, recent decades) over whether or not women should be included in the draft. From a Supreme Court ruling against the idea in the 1980’s due to now irrelevant non-combat position arguments, to a bill being batted around in congress earlier this year, people have been arguing as to whether women should be subject to the involuntary participation in the horrors of war which every young adult male must always fear. While I am normally a huge advocate of women’s equality, and support every effort to even the pay scale and to reduce the sexualized image that society throws on women, in this specific scenario I believe that the correct answer is no, women should not be included in the draft. And neither should men.
The Selective Service System should be abolished. The last time the draft was active was during the Vietnam War in 1973, and there was much disdain for the war effort. Student protests were a constant source of attention as the war raged on for years on end, and people saw their friends pulled away from a happy life to fight for a cause they did not support. Many people disagreed with Vietnam, and many people disagree with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and though the draft hasn’t been active in decades and is not likely to be reactivated, as a 19 year old male I am terrified of what could be if it were to come back.
Our country was founded with the statement
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. … Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Woven into the Declaration of Independence. It is my belief that a government which legally binds its citizens to fight for a cause that may very well be unjust, is a government which does not deserve to exist. If not enough people voluntarily subscribe to join the armed forces during a time of war to support the war effort, then the war should not be waged. To think any differently in a democratic “free” republic, such as ours, is beyond hypocrisy. I hope that someday the draft will never need to be dodged because the draft will be done away with, and maybe then the government will think twice about the validity of violence.
