Nothing About the Draft Makes Sense
Washington D.C. – When the government issued its cattle call for the cold war in July 1980, it assumed that every eighteen-year-old male, save for a few malcontents and backwoods cranks, would dutifully report to the post office and register for the draft. After all, he only had to sign a card telling the government where he lives. This wasn’t a real draft or mobilization for a real war. It was a cheap way to bluster at the Russians and show them America is at the ready.
Now, two years later, draft registration has degenerated into a national joke. Instead of a symbolic gesture of strength, it resembles a lame exercise in nostalgia, attempting to recreate the great struggle between citizens and government during the war in Vietnam. Only this struggle, I’m afraid, is hollow, the moral equivalent of shadowboxing.
On one side, the government huffs and puffs and threatens. It is staging a series of show trials to scare the offenders. It is creating a maze of bureaucratic machinery to snoop by computer and locate violators. On the other side, a national resistance movement has blossomed, with networks of committees and coalitions campaigning passionately against a nonexistent draft, flying squads of defense lawyers, ever a fledgling underground of fugitive resisters.
Registration is not working. For whatever reasons, hundreds of thousands are not signing up. Collectively, they confront the government with one of the grossest episodes of mass defiance of the law since Americans decided to drink their way through Prohibition. In this case as well, the only practical solution is repeal.
The Selective Service likes to look on the bright side: 8 million young men, eighteen to twenty years old, have registered. But that evades the monstrous law-enforcement problem that draft registration has created. Even the government concedes that nearly 700,000 eligible men have declined to register. The entire war in Vietnam produced only an estimated 570,000 draft evaders.
But there are more: another million men, based on census estimates, are violators because they have moved since registering and have failed to notify the government of their new addresses, which is also a felony. That makes roughly 1.7 million eligible for prosecution. Since federal prisons only hold about 28,000, it’s going to be a tight squeeze.
None of this is necessary. Draft registration was dreamed up by Jimmy Carter back in early 1980 as a symbolic gesture in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Commies were supposed to shudder when they saw American youth streaming into their post offices. Ronald Reagan, espousing his best libertarian values while running for president, denounced the gimmick and promised to scrap it.
The external evidence suggests that Reagan almost kept his word. By the early winter of 1981, when the Justice Department was prepared to indict the first crop of unregistered young men, the White House told the prosecutors to hold off. Reagan was still evaluating the system. If registration were going to be junked, it made no sense to send a few to jail. A few days later, martial law was imposed in Poland, and the cold warriors concluded it was no time for faint hearts. The next month, Reagan embraced the registration scheme –– and now he is stuck with it.
So far, four resisters have been indicted and one convicted –– all young men who have been most out front in articulating their opposition to registration and the draft. Given the legal flaws in how the registration system was implemented and the moral arguments that some conscientious objectors will offer in defense, it is not at all certain the feds will win convictions in every case. Even if a handful go to prison, it’s not clear that the hundreds of thousands of others will be frightened into registering. Because the defendants are all visible opponents of the system, willing to stand trial and voice their principles, the unintended message from their prosecutions may be: keep your mouth shut, and the government won’t mess with you.
Back in April, the president’s Military Manpower Task Force held a meeting at the Pentagon, with Defense Secretary Caspar Weinbeger presiding, to discuss the delicate problem of prosecuting draft resisters. A transcript of that private meeting, later unearthed by George Wilson of the Washington Post, revealed both the flippancy of the president’s advisers and their fear that the draft trials might inflame public opinion against the cold-war program.
“When is the first felony prosecution planned?” John Herrington, assistant navy secretary for manpower, asked.
“You want to be there?” presidential counselor Edwin Meese wisecracked.
“You should be on Phil Donahue, John,” said Selective Service Director Thomas Turnage.
The ensuing conversation showed they were bothered by the potential for bad headlines. Herrington worried that perhaps the draft trials would add fuel to the growing antinuclear movement in the country. Turnage suggested that maybe the Justice Department could give light sentences as a way to soften the controversy. Meese said the kids would still have to face felony convictions. Finally, Herrington proposed that they keep the trials as quiet as possible. Bring the young men to the bar of justice in out-of-the-way places, he said, like Omaha, where there will be less national news coverage.
The first trial was held in Roanoke, Virginia— – not exactly a center of media coverage –– but the government has failed to arrange for quiet cases. A young Christian named Enten Eller, whose pure religious scruples made bad press for the prosecutor, was convicted and sentenced to three years’ probation, and instructed to register within ninety days. Eller says he will not register, which means he faces up to six years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
Meanwhile, the wonders of bureaucracy (which Ronald Reagan promised to eliminate) are at work, tracking down offenders, in case the prosecutions don’t work. The Selective Service bought a million names from a Long Island mail-order house and sent out warning letters to people who were thought to be nonregistrants. The names included a three-year-old girl and a ten-year-old beagle. Even Turnage admits it was a flop.
Next, with approval from Congress, Selective Service began delving into forbidden government records –– social security rolls and the Internal Revenue Service’s tax returns – —trying to match names and addresses and birthdays. The IRS, which is a more intimidating agency than Selective Service, intends to send threatening letters to 250,000 young men.
That won’t work either, probably, so Congress is preparing to enact a provision that means real hard-ball for college students – —it is threatening to cut off federal loans or scholarships from anyone who hasn’t registered. Counselor Meese liked this idea when Turnage proposed it at the April task-force meeting. “You could have a line on each of the applications: have you registered for the draft?” Meese enthused. “And if they put no, then you withhold their benefits. If they put yes, then you get a few that have done it fraudulently; you kick them off their benefits and prosecute them.”
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