When former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean visited Brown on Sept. 9, he told The Herald that college students should mobilize against the possibility of a military draft.
"(Bush) has now dug himself into a really deep hole, and I think a draft is inevitable if he's reelected," Dean said.
The comment might have seemed shocking at the time, but just three weeks later, James Carville, co-host of CNN's Crossfire and famed Democratic consultant, swung through Rhode Island and echoed the sentiment.
"The army is in a near state of mutiny - they're calling people up who aren't showing," Carville told pro-choice advocates at a Planned Parenthood event in Warwick. "We're one conflict away from a draft," he warned, naming humanitarian crises and possible conflicts in North Korea, Iran and Pakistan as events that could require a large deployment of U.S. troops at a time when the military is already strained in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One month after Dean's visit to Brown, the New York Times' Oct. 3 Week in Review section featured a story about the draft and the attempts by John Kerry's campaign to assuage voters' fears about conscription. Times columnist Paul Krugman took the issue up on Oct. 22, arguing that President George W. Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive warfare "leads to the justified suspicion that after the election, Mr. Bush will seek a large expansion in our military, quite possibly through a return of the draft."
Over the past four years, the media has been full of stories of how successful Republicans are in defining their opponents and controversial issues. But in the weeks leading up to the presidential election, Democrats seem to have successfully defined the draft as a campaign issue, despite the fact that both candidates have categorically denied considering a draft. On Oct. 5, the House of Representatives defeated a bill to reinstate conscription, 402-2. The last draft, instated during the Vietnam War, ended in 1973.
Perhaps more than any other issue, military conscription appeals to the imaginations of young voters dissatisfied with the Bush administration; according to an Annenberg Center poll conducted in early October, 51 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 believe Bush favors reinstating a draft, while only 8 percent believe Kerry does.
Jeremy Russo '07 is part of that 51 percent. Russo said although he recognizes the draft is a remote possibility, he fears it. "I just hope Kerry's elected so I don't have to worry about it," he said.
To Assistant Professor of Political Science Jennifer Lawless, who teaches PS 114: "Public Opinion and American Democracy," the draft issue is a perfect example of clever political rhetoric. But the strategy is limited, Lawless noted, because while a wide segment of the population is receptive to Republican talking points on national security, fear of the draft is most cogent among people in their teens and twenties, "and young people are the least likely to go to the polls."
Lawless and Associate Professor of Political Science Wendy Schiller both said the draft issue was unlikely to be a determining factor in voter turnout next Tuesday.
"If any military issue would drive somebody's vote, it would be the fact that we're currently in Iraq and things aren't going so well," Schiller said. "It's about what has happened thus far in Iraq and how long we're going to be there. But the candidates haven't differentiated on that issue."
Lawless conceded, however, that the draft is a useful political tool for the Democrats. "It's at least calling to attention that it's something that's possible," Lawless said. "It makes the military issue real to a lot of people for whom it might not have been."
One Brown student for whom the "military issue" is always real is Scott Quigley '05, commander of the Providence College battalion of the Reserve Officer Training Corps. Quigley said he and his fellow cadets have not discussed the possibility of a draft, although they are committed to the idea of a volunteer army in which every solider wants to be serving.
"The bottom line is, as a soldier, all I would ask is that whoever wins this election come Nov. 2, whoever is president, just make sure to take care of the soldiers," Quigley said. "I don't care about rhetoric. Are you taking care of the people who are helping to preserve freedom around the world, who are answering the call of whatever any administration asks them to do?"
Schiller emphasized that, in fact, any administration - even a Kerry administration - could find itself faced with the need to put out such a call, though she considers the possibility unlikely. Like Carville, Schiller said a major humanitarian crisis, especially if the United Nations decided to intervene, could pressure an American president to commit more troops than the military currently has available.
"We are very overextended right now. We do not have enough troops to meet our needs," Schiller said. "We're not going to North Korea. That kind of conflict won't be solved on the ground with force. ... But we can't stop genocide right now, for example, in Sudan. And that has traditionally been one of our responsibilities."
Schiller said the details of future conflicts would determine whether the American public would support a president who instated a draft. During the Vietnam War, for example, it was not the draft itself that mobilized young people against the war, Schiller said, but the circumstances surrounding the conflict.
"Most Americans had supported the draft up until then, and I would venture that most Americans support the draft in principle today," she said. She added that she did not think the American public would support a draft in order to fight the war in Iraq. But today, political decision-makers and much of the population are removed from the sacrifices of the armed forces, because our volunteer military is disproportionately made up of the socio-economically disadvantaged, Schiller said.
Xander Boutelle '05 said that because he would like to see the military become a more "egalitarian" institution, he would not necessarily oppose a draft if another conflict were to occur during the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
"I support the Israeli system of every 18-year old, male or female, having to serve for one to two years," Boutelle said. "At our age, they're so much more responsible and dedicated to the ideals of their country."
A 21st-century draft would very likely include women, Schiller said, but perhaps give them different assignments. As for class issues, "there would be enormous political pressure to deny deferments," she noted. "However, we still have a conscientious-objector deferment, which I assume would be upheld."
But considering the improbability of conscription, the more immediate concern for this election is what Kerry has called the "back-door draft" of inactive reservists and National Guardsmen who expected to serve domestically for only a few weeks out of each year.
Lawless said the issue is another example of how the Democrats have used the fear of forced military service to their advantage, pointing out that all reservists are aware of the fact that at any given point, they might be asked to serve overseas.
Quigley had this to say to reluctant reservists: "People go into that because the military provides many benefits. ... The bottom line is they know what they're getting into. They're signing their name on the dotted line because they're going to be called to serve their country. It's one of the bottom lines of the military and anything you commit to."
