Should the U.S. Reinstate Conscription?

Re “Conscription Is the Wrong Prescription,” Commentary, April 28: Conscription may or may not be wrong at this time, but Michael O’Hanlon’s commentary is wrong. So is the bill advanced by Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) to reinstate the draft. The need for conscription rests entirely on the assessments of our professional military leadership of the size of our forces needed to respond to changing security threats. When a need for forces is in excess of the level that volunteer enlistment can meet, there is no alternative, and conscription is the only way to ensure our security.

What is especially repugnant in O’Hanlon’s commentary is the premise that the quality of our military would deteriorate. I was a draftee in World War II, and so were the vast majority of the men in my airborne division. The transition to military life and all its hardships was wrenching for us, but with rigorous training we became professional soldiers.

Larry Kaufman

Los Angeles

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O’Hanlon fails to grasp that every American needs the opportunity to serve his or her country by crawling in the mud; conscription provides that opportunity. But it can’t be your father’s draft system, filled with exceptions to the rules for college students or sons of the privileged. No, this opportunity is just too good to be shared by just the minorities and the poor rural whites. We need a universal draft that includes the sons and daughters of our federal officials so they too can serve on the ground in Iraq.

I ask you this: If President Bush’s daughters were required to serve in the Army in Iraq, if there were no “senators’ sons,” would America be there? Would we be conducting the war as we are today? As long as our leaders get to send men and women into battle who are not of their blood, injustice will continue.

Pete Alberini

La Mirada

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Sixty years ago, thousands of draftees were going into the military buoyed by the knowledge that we’d be fighting a necessary war against our country’s attackers. What will buoy the new draftees when they realize they’re being conscripted to salvage Bush’s Iraq war?

Pat Higgins

San Diego

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The practice of arbitrarily extending reserve troops out to 20 months is pretty illuminating. Supposedly we have the finest standing Army in the world but, all of a sudden, there aren’t enough regular Army people to take care of little, dinky Iraq. Who’s kidding whom?

It’s certainly no laughing matter for the many reservists now on active duty who will come home to no job because their companies cannot hold jobs open for two years. I always thought the reserves were set up so they could augment the regular Army in case of a national emergency, not take its place. I guess political agendas take precedence over common sense and forward planning.

Tom Reinberger

Glendora