Word: drafted
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Congressional subcommittees studying abuses of the federal grant system are reviewing the draft audit, which was released simultaneously in Washington and Boston...
...some Congressmen have recently challenged the success of the AVF and the ability of the United States to respond adequately in the event of a conventional war. Nine bills now pending on the House and Senate floors suggest everything from reinstitution of registration for the draft as early as October of this year to compulsory "national service" for young people. The rationale behind most of the legislative barrage is symbolically simple-minded--we don't have enough men (and women) to fight in the event of war. Says Sen. John D. Stennis (D-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services...
While it is clear that the AVF is not the panacea that many thought it might be, reinstituting draft registration is a misguided attempt at solving a complex problem. Registration supporters base their arguments on Pentagon studies that envision a scenario something like this: The Soviet Union (for some unexplained reason) sends massed troops into Western Europe. This sudden development--the United States intelligence community evidently knew nothing about it--mushrooms into "a prolonged war with extensive casualties." It seems that some of our representatives--who never speak in terms of the Vietnam debacle--forgot that the Department of Defense...
Restoring draft registration procedures also threatens to increase the likelihood of United States intervention in foreign wars. Knowing that manpower is available would free planners in the Defense Department (and maybe even in the White House) to develop plans for large-scale intervention. It is not a very hard argument to follow: it's easier to play bully when you're the strongest guy on the block...
Bills that move us closer to the draft are clearly not based on a rational assessment of the audience they are aimed at. A generation born and raised on the monolithic visions of World War II and the Korean War, some analysts say, is trying desperately to convince itself that its sons and daughters feel the urge to serve. "Duty, honor, country and a sense of obligation to serye the Nation and mankind are very much a part of the ethic of today's youth," says Korean war veteran Rep. Paul J. McCloskey (R-Cal.). He insists the "young idealist...