World>Terrorism & Security
posted February 22, 2005, updated 12:00 p.m.

Will there be a draft?

As military recruiting stumbles and needs grow, some say draft may be impossible to ignore.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

The US Army is beginning to face the same sort of recruiting problems that have already plagued the National Guard and Reserve, The Washington Post reported Monday. Since the Army's fiscal year began last October, it has only signed 18.4 percent of its target of 80,000 new recruits. That's less thanlast year's and well below the 25 percent target the Army had set for itself to meet by this time.

"Very frankly, in a couple of places our recruiting pool is getting soft," said Lt. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, the Army's personnel chief. "We're hearing things like, 'Well, let's wait and see how this thing settles out in Iraq,' " he said in an interview. "For the active duty for '05 it's going to be tough to meet our goal, but I think we can. I think the telling year for us is going to be '06."

While Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush have repeatedly said there is no need for a draft, and one of the military's top recruiters said only last week that a draft " would not improve the quality" of soldier, Delaware Online reports that several well-known conservatives and moderates sent congressional leaders a letter in January that said, "the United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume."


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In that letter, retired military leaders such as Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey joined with defense analysts such as Michele Flournoy and political commentators such as William Kristol in asking Congress "to take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps. ... it is our judgment that we should aim for an increase in the active-duty Army and Marine Corps, together, of at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years."

While the letter contained no explicit call for a draft, peace activists in particular say there is no way for the military to reach these numbers without instituting a draft. Some have started campaigns to teach young people of military age about "conscientious objection, the possibility of a draft, and countering military recruitment in schools."

Rolling Stone magazine reported in late January that two of Mr. Rumsfeld's deputies met with the head of the Selective Service Agency in February of 2003 to " debate, discuss and ponder a return to the draft." According to a memo from that meeting made public under the Freedom of Information Act:

"Defense manpower officials concede there are critical shortages of military personnel with certain special skills, such as medical personnel, linguists, computer network engineers, etc." The potentially prohibitive cost of "attracting and retaining such personnel for military service," the memo adds, has led "some officials to conclude that, while a conventional draft may never be needed, a draft of men and women possessing these critical skills may be warranted in a future crisis." This new draft, it suggests, could be invoked to meet the needs of both the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.

Meanwhile, US military recruiters are trying a variety of new options to entice more recruits into both the active force and the National Guard and Reserve. The Connecticut National Guard is planning to start a magazine, launch a show on local cable TV, double its current 32 member recruiting team, and make many more visits to local high schools in its efforts to "boost its ranks." Recruiters say they are ready to promise that new recruits won't be sent overseas for a year.

USA Today reported Monday that the US Army and some elite commando units "have dramatically increased the size and the number of cash bonuses they are paying to lure recruits and keep experienced troops in uniform." For some special elite units, the Pentagon is offering up to $150,000 in bonuses, while more than 49 percent of the job categories in the Army can now receive $15,000 bonuses, and "16 hard-to-fill job categories, including truck drivers and bomb-disposal specialists" are eligible for $50,000 bonuses.

But Rolling Stone also reports that military recruiters agree that, unless "America's elites" are willing to join the military, it will be harder for them to persuade "average Americans" to make the same sacrifices.

In a recent meeting with military recruiters, [Charlie Moskos, a professor of military sociology at Northwestern University] discussed the crisis in enlistment. "I asked them would they prefer to have their advertising budget tripled or have Jenna Bush join the Army," he says. "They unanimously chose the Jenna option."

Recruiters face other problems in convincing National Guard and Reserve soldiers in particular to reenlist or for new recruits to join. The Baltimore Sun reports that 41 percent of these soldiers are losing " thousands of dollars" through a pay gap between civilian salary and military pay.

And National Public Radio's Morning Edition reports that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says "hundreds of injured Army reservists and National Guard members – including many wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan – have lost medical care and pay because they were dropped from active duty status."

Finally, Time Magazine Canada looks at US troops who have chosen not to return to Iraq or Afghanistan and have fled to Canada instead. Still, the US military notes that the actual number of deserters has fallen to less than one percent of the total force, the lowest total since 1998.