DOWN WITH CONSCRIPTION
JSCOPE 2006
CITIZEN RESPONSIBILITY AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
SPRINGFIELD, VIRGINIA
BY
CADET JACKIE L. CHANG ’07, CO F4
UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY
WEST POINT, NEW YORK
10 JANUARY 2005
The importance
of a nation having a way in which to defend its borders and protect its rights
is not much of a debate. However, many
disagree on who should be chosen to provide this protection. Should we continue with our current system,
the all volunteer force, or make military service compulsory for all citizens
of a certain age? Many countries of the
world, including Sweden and Switzerland, continue the policy of mandatory
service for male citizens. Because
compulsory military service establishes a sub-standard military, creates deep
resentment among the public toward the government, and violates the individual
rights that form the foundation of this country, citizens should not be
obligated to serve in their nation’s armed forces.
By forcing
citizens to serve in the military, we significantly reduce the effectiveness of
our armed forces. The effectiveness of
military units is a vital element of our nation’s status as the top military in
the world. Members of the armed forces
represent the ideals of teamwork, courage, and a desire to serve their
country. If citizens forcibly enter the
military, there will inevitably be conflict among those who voluntarily joined
to give back to their country and those who were forced to provide their services. “Since the Civil War, volunteer soldiers’
position has been that unwilling soldiers make poor fighters (Emert).” Such conflict will destroy the strong
teamwork that the military is famous for.
Without a strong sense of teamwork, units will not be able to accomplish
the mission as effectively. Our military
will gradually become sub-standard. Instead,
we want our nation’s defense system to improve and become more efficient,
especially given the current conflicts in which we are heavily involved. We do not want it to digress and lose our
position as having the supreme military in the world. Also, when citizens are obligated to serve,
they will be more reluctant to put their best efforts into the tasks to which
they are assigned. In the Vietnam War,
which is our most recent conflict that involved forced military service, “acts
of mutiny took place on a scale previously only encountered in revolutions
(Geier).” Mutiny became so common that
the army attempted to disguise its frequency by talking instead of ‘combat refusal’
(Geier). This type of disobedience
endangers the entire unit and can often result in the unnecessary deaths of
fellow soldiers. When you go to war, you
expect that the soldiers next to you will fight to the best of their abilities. If you cannot rely on this, the motivation to
protect the ideals of the United States decreases dramatically. Forcing citizens to serve in the military
will increase the size of the military, but when only a “small minority of
youth are called to serve, conscription cannot avoid destroying morale (Folsom).” The negative effect that it will have on
soldiers’ attitudes and military effectiveness makes such a decision
detrimental.
Compulsory
military service will create large amounts of resentment among both citizens that
will be drafted to serve and those who will not have to serve. It is obvious that those who are unwilling to
serve will feel great resentment toward the national government that created
such a law mandating that they provide such services to the nation. The effects of this resentment were mentioned
in the previous paragraph. However, those
of the general public who will still not have to serve despite the new policy
of compulsory service will also feel resentment toward the administration that
drafted and enacted such a policy. As in
Vietnam, there will be protests throughout the country. There could even be riots depending on the
severity of missions/conflicts that the military is involved with at the time,
similar to the urban riots in Detroit during the Vietnam War (Bexte). All this resentment also reduces the
effectiveness of our government. The
public will no longer trust the government to protect its rights, undermining
the entire infrastructure of our governing body. Some experts believe that the military draft
during the Vietnam War helped to start “a cycle of civic disengagement, leading
to a drop-off in voting and in the faith in the institutions of government
(Jones).” Perhaps the most severe and
most frightening consequence of obligatory service is the potential resentment
toward the service members who are dragged into the politics of the
situation. As constantly emphasized
during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, we should
applaud the effort and sacrifice of the service members no matter what opinion
we hold on the war. In Vietnam, soldiers returned from the
battlefield with few congratulations or gratitude from the public. "They weren’t regarded as heroes, but as
“baby killers (Bexte).” There were no
parades or huge celebrations like those for the soldiers who returned from
World War II. The soldiers, both who
volunteered and who were drafted, were unappreciated by the vast majority. Such an outcome is not worth creating a
policy that obligates citizens to serve in their nation’s armed forces.
The
unconstitutionality of forcing citizens to serve in the United States military is the strongest argument
against the creation of such a policy.
Such a policy violates the principles upon which our Founding Fathers based
our system of government. Dr. Ron Paul,
a Republican member of Congress from Texas, states it perfectly in that “the
basic premise underlying conscription is that the individual belongs to the
state, individual rights are granted by the state and therefore politicians can
abridge individual rights at will.” Such
mentality goes against all that the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence stand for. The Founding
Fathers, using a philosophy based on the writings of John Locke, created a
system of government that establishes certain unalienable rights that are
guaranteed by the government. By forcing
citizens into the military, we are in direct violation of the philosophy of the
Founding Fathers. During the War of
1812, Daniel Webster eloquently argued against military conscription with
“Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it
contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from
their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any worth, in which the
folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it (Paul)?” If we simply ignore the foundation of our
unique form of government, upon what else can the American people rely? If we should ever enact a policy that makes
military service mandatory for all citizens, America will no longer be known for its
protection of the rights of the individual.
We will become more like a country where the state decides, “who shall
have what values and who shall do what work, when, where, and how in our
society (Paul).”
While there
are numerous opponents to compulsory military service, proponents of military
conscription argue that citizens of this country should be required to protect
all the freedoms that we enjoy. Steve
Yuhas, a conservative freelance writer argues that “everyone should have to
give to the nation to take from it and it is all of our responsibilities to
defend the United States.”
Our society gives so much to us, so we should be willing to protect
it. They cite the numerous services,
such as public work projects and the defense system, and the superior quality
of life that we enjoy with freedom of expression and abundance of free or
low-cost education. They also cite the
numerous other countries of the world that currently require male citizens to
serve in the military. These countries
have no major problems as a result of compulsory service and are successfully
helping by giving their services to society.
To those who argue with such evidence, I would like to offer this to
counter. There are numerous ways for a
citizen to serve our society and give back what society has given them. Serving in the military is not the only way
to give back to society. In this time of
heavy military action, it is indeed true that military personnel are spread
thin, but our country still has numerous reserve forces that we can employ
before we need to severely expand our forces to include all male citizens of a
certain age. These soldiers will most
likely not be as properly trained and as combat effective when compared to an
all volunteer force. There are many
other countries, such as Denmark and Taiwan, that require military service for
men, but look at the sizes of these countries.
Their populations are significantly smaller than the population of the United States.
Normally, we can meet our national defense needs solely based on
volunteers, while others can only do so with mandatory service. However, in times of conflict, such as the
one we are currently involved in, the size of our armed forces may seem
inadequate. Active duty, reserve, and
National Guard units are being deployed to Iraq three or four times over. These organizations are also finding it
difficult to meet established recruiting goals.
Such facts, however, still would not justify the implementation of a
draft. Instead of resorting to
conscription, the leaders of our national government might take a step back and
see this as a lack of support for the conflict by the people. When the American public has believed the
cause to be just, there has been little difficulty finding citizens to fill the
ranks of the armed forces. In fact,
there were many cases in our nation’s previous wars where young men lied to
recruiters about their age in order to enter the military and join the fight earlier. Perhaps, the government should concentrate on
methods to resolve the conflict rather than how to best increase the size of
the military. Also, our country is
unique based on how we created our system of government. Other countries do not have a Declaration of
Independence or a Constitution that demanded the preservation of individual
rights. Because of these differences,
forced military service will not be effective or beneficial for the United States.
By
obligating citizens to serve in our nation’s armed forces, we will reduce the
effectiveness of our armed forces, create resentment among our citizens, and
violate the individual rights that form the foundation of our country. All these reasons explain why our country
should not establish a policy of military conscription. Is it really worth such severe consequences? Ayn Rand in her Capitalism: The Unknown
Ideal expressed the argument against forced military service very
appropriately: “If the state may force a man to risk death or hideous maiming
and crippling, in a war declared at the state’s discretion, for a cause he may
neither approve of nor even understand, if his consent is not required to send
him into unspeakable martyrdom—then, in principle, all rights are negated in
that state, and its government is not man’s protector any longer. What is there left to protect?"
Works Cited
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Emert, Phyllis Raybin. “All-Volunteer Army or Military Draft: Does
Uncle Sam Want You?” New Jersey State Bar Foundation. 28 April 2005. < http://www.njsbf.com/njsbf/student/eagle/
winter05-1.cfm>.
Folsom, Roger Mils. “Can Conscription Work?” The Cato Institute. 15 May 1981.
28 April
2005. < http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa001.html>.
Geier, Joel. “ Vietnam: The Soldier’s Rebellion.” International
Socialist Review, Issue 09. Fall
1999. 27 April 2005. <http://www.marxists.de/war/geier/vietnam.htm.>.
Jones, Tim and Michael
Tackett. “Some Wounds of Vietnam Have Healed – Many Others Won’t
Go Away.” Chicago Tribune. 28 April 2005. <http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansas
city/news/politics/11511810.htm>.
Krembs, Peter. “An Idea Not Worth Drafting: Conscription is
Slavery.” 20 January 2003. 20
April 2005. <
http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2346>.
Paul, Congressman Ron. “Against Military Conscription.” 23 March 2002. 20 April 2005.
< http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul24.html>.
Yuhas, Steve. “Compulsory Military Service for All.” Politics.com. 27 April 2005. < http://
www.politics.com/editlist.html?cid=3&mid=8&page=1>.