The End of the Draft, and More - military service abating

National Review, August 9, 1999 by Stephen E. Ambrose

A common identity is lost.

Mr. Ambrose is the author most recently of Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals.

The U.S. armed services are falling short of their recruiting goals, despite the highest pay scales ever, plus the most generous post- service benefits ever. A booming economy plays a part in this. Today, nearly all teenagers and people in their early twenties can find better jobs in civilian society than in the military, jobs with a brighter future and the opportunity to live where one wants and to work shorter, more dependable hours. As a result, many of today's recruits come from the poorer end of our society. They stay in the services longer. This tends toward a situation that Americans have long feared: a standing army that consists of enlisted men (and women) who have little stake in the society.

Not that there is any danger in the services' taking control of the society. No one in the officer corps has designs on the president or the congressional leadership. Most enlistees are grateful to the society for the chance to move up and learn something. The quality of the enlistee has risen steadily, and today we have the best military in our history. There are problems, of course, but the units we have in Bosnia, Kosovo, Korea, Germany, and elsewhere are the finest in the world. And they are all volunteers.

Conscription, or the draft, as it was known, started in 1940 and ended in 1973, with the conclusion of the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon was president. He had promised in the 1968 campaign that he would end the draft as soon as he ended the war, explaining that, in the future, there would be no more large conventional wars, only nuclear wars or guerrilla struggles. The first would not require big armies; the second would require special skills.

Though the end of the draft is something most Americans celebrate, it has repercussions that go beyond a standing army and need to be discussed. One is the loss of a common bond. A majority of American men over 50 did two or more years in the services. There, they were thrown in with other young people from across the nation. Lumberjacks from Oregon slept in bunks next to fishermen from Louisiana. After 1950, African-Americans were in the same squads as Italian-Americans.

Today, Cajuns from the Gulf Coast have never met a black person from Chicago. Kids from the ghetto don't know a middle-class white. Mexican- Americans have no contact with Jews. Muslim Americans have few Christian acquaintances. And so on. But during World War II and the Cold War, Americans from every group got together in the service, having a common goal-to defend their country-and, of course, a common experience. They learned together, pledged allegiance together, sweated together, hated their drill sergeants together, got drunk together, went overseas together. What they had in common-patriotism, a language, a past they could emphasize and venerate-mattered far more than what divided them.

Now, however, youngsters emphasize their entitlements-what they have coming to them, not because of something they have done but because of their skin color or religion or gender. It is difficult for them to show their patriotism in an age of international business, when their parents are asking the schools to teach them in Spanish, while they learn nothing of the history of their own country.

American young people of all races and religions tell me there is no point in studying Thomas Jefferson. After all, they mouth, he had children by a slave mistress and never freed her or the children, so he can be dismissed. I tell them, Here are some of the things you owe to Jefferson: the Declaration of Independence, to start with. The Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty, which makes it possible for you to worship as you choose. The Northwest Ordinance, which guaranteed that when western territories had enough population they could enter the Union as states, with full equality. The Louisiana Purchase, which added every state west of the Mississippi and east of the Continental Divide. The acquisition of the Northwest Territory, today's Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

In this age of political correctness, the proper study of history and the reverence it brings are absent. My greatest fear about today's young people is that they grow to adulthood without the sense of a common past or a common experience. In my day, and until the early '70s, men got this in large part through the draft. It is now gone, and Nixon was surely right: We no longer need a large army in which everyone physically able serves. But what we do need is for all of our teenagers to serve in some capacity.

This is accomplished, without great strain but with great effect, in Europe, where most youngsters on turning 18 put in a year of service to their country or community. They serve in the military, or in hospitals, or in schools; they build bridges, dams, levees-whatever. Everyone participates, both men and women. This is a wonderful way to enable Catholic Germans from Bavaria to get to know and work with Protestant Germans from eastern Germany, or to allow French kids from the Alps to unite with those from Normandy.