Why Tom Ricks is dead wrong about reviving the draft

By Maj. David Rittgers, U.S.
Army Reserve

Best Defense guest respondent

From my desk as a trial
counsel (military prosecutor), your "Let's Draft
Our Kids" proposal looks more like a full employment act for military attorneys
than a productive use of taxpayer funds. A few of the hidden costs
associated with your proposal:

1. Not everyone who
starts the program will want to finish, and not everyone who signs up will want
to work all that hard for the generous benefits you're offering. I doubt
this will be a very efficient workforce. Between the malingerers and the
shift toward a pro-welfare state attitude of the young folks who would be stuck
in this program, you've also perpetuated the myth that we can continue to grow
government at a time when we're over a trillion in the hole each year with no
end in sight. The ironic outcome is that your future overpaid janitor is
someone who started in the Defense Service Corps in 2013 and never quite got off
the government dole, staying in a menial labor position with excellent benefits
his whole life.

2. Criminal
prosecutions: I don't know of any data on the topic, but it is my
impression that there is a higher rate of criminal activity and administrative
separation with the 'moral waiver' folks let in during the increase of the
ground forces during the war in Iraq. These folks never would've gotten
in if not for the relaxed standards in place in the mid-2000s. Proposing
to put an extra million or so folks (or more, I'm not sure what the numbers
look like on this) under UCMJ authority with lowered screening standards is a
recipe for courts-martial as far as the eye can see. I suppose we could
exempt them from the UCMJ and put them in some special status where they are
treated like any other person on a federal reservation, but federal courts
already have enough on-post DUI's that we send them and their caseload is
already significant, so that seems like a bad idea. Plus, if you exempt
them from UCMJ, you lose the ability to maintain good order and discipline,
which is implicitly part of the national service rationale under which we're
enacting this program.

What about drugs? Do we
conduct urinalysis screenings on these folks? If not, we're not
maintaining good order and discipline. This is another several thousand
administrative separations a year that major posts would have to do, meaning
more work for both government and defense lawyers. Plus, the other
services besides the Army don't always do separations for drug use, they are
more willing to take a "naked" urinalysis -- no other evidence beside
the positive test -- to a court-martial. That's a lot of work to get rid
of a janitor or gardener. I suppose we could have a lower standard of
discipline with regard to drug use in the service corps, but this double
standard undermines the good order and discipline we're trying to maintain, and
reinforces the perception that the civilian conscripts are second-class
citizens on-post.

3. Plus, do we let them
marry? You refer to them as "unmarried conscripts," but what if
they don't want to stay that way? If they get married, do they
qualify for off-post housing with tax-exempt basic housing allowance? Do
we kick them out? Is there a 14th Amendment substantive due process claim that allows them to
stay in? Do we separate them the same way we do for folks who fail to
maintain a valid family care plan for dependents while deployed? The JAG
attorneys still have to make this happen, in an adversarial process, that takes
months. That's not a lot of bang for the buck if the conscripts only sign
up for 18 months to begin with.

4. Setting aside the
above concerns, this would bring into the armed services a lot of young people
who will require legal assistance -- they're going to buy too-expensive cars,
enter into questionable contracts, and generally make a bunch of legally dumb
decisions. Adding, say, another 25 percent (at least, given the small percent of
the general population currently serving) to the youngest and most legally needy
demographic to major installations will be a nightmare for a JAG Corps already
with plenty to do.

The libertarian opt-out
doesn't solve these issues. We've already got a relatively small
all-volunteer force that has plenty of problems along these lines, and
increasing the population of folks in the military with what will certainly be
lower admission standards will remake the military's purpose from
winning the nation's wars to mentoring a young cohort of folks in
order to instill in them discipline and a positive work ethic. We already
do enough of the latter, and I fear that this proposal would impair our
ability to do the former. 

Which is why, if you ask the
generation of officers who presided over the birth of the all-volunteer force,
we got rid of the draft in the first place.

David
H. Rittgers, Legal Policy Analyst, Cato Institute. Mr. Rittgers is a
Virginia attorney and former Special Forces officer. He is currently
mobilized as a Major in the U.S. Army Reserves. His views do not
necessarily reflect those of the Army or the Department of Defense.