pentagon

Recently, commentators from various places on the US political spectrum have discussed and even called for the reinstitution of mandatory conscription. Meanwhile, plans are underway to automatically register all 18-year-olds via the computer database where their names are stored. In Germany, tens of thousands of young people marched against parliamentary moves towards reinstating mandatory conscription there. Some of those who support conscription do so because they believe that people (including politicians) will oppose wars their government starts if they face the possibility they or their child will be forced into the military to fight those wars. Others demand a return to mandatory conscription because citizens of the nation they live in need to be reminded that living in that nation means they must be an active part of its defense. Of course, both of these arguments require an acceptance that this nation for which the conscripts might give their lives holds the lives of the conscripts in the same regard as it does those making and profiting from its wars. From where I sit, that’s a mighty hard sell.

An aspect of the argument that a draft would make politicians think twice before allowing a war to take place because politicians’ children might get drafted into the war is not really much of an argument when considered historically. Looking at the last war where US citizens were drafted—the war in Vietnam, it is more than apparent that those draftees who did most of the killing and dying in that war were working class men. If those men were Black, they were even more likely to end up as nothing but cannon fodder. According to the Oxford Companion of Military History, “During the height of the US involvement, 1965-69, Blacks, who formed 11% of the American population, made up 12.6% of the soldiers in Vietnam. The majority of these were in the infantry, and although authorities differ on the figures, the percentage of Black combat fatalities in that period was a staggering 14.9%.” In addition, they accounted for almost 20% of all combat-related deaths in Vietnam from 1961-1965 and in 1968, they frequently contributed half of the men in frontline combat units. Meanwhile, men like Donald Trump evaded the draft, just like many other wealthy young men during the Vietnam War and every US war back to the Civil War.