Congress, in predictable fashion, seems poised to slap a band aid on a problem in the nation’s Selective Service system. The smarter long-term solution would end the practice of draft registration once and for all.
Changes to the military’s combat rules would open the Selective Service system to new legal challenges on equal protection grounds. The new rules allow women to serve in previously closed ground combat units, a sensible change in policy that reflects the realities of the modern military. But, given this change, it is unfair to require only 18-year-old males to register for the draft. If the rules remain in place — and they should — women should also be required to register.
The Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed by a wide margin on Tuesday, includes this change. Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of draft registration for women. Some conservatives are now urging the House and Senate conferees to strip the provision, and, if they don’t, to vote against the entire NDAA. But these objections mostly revolve around the changed combat rules, not the inherent unfairness of requiring only men to register.
Congress should instead revisit whether we need a Selective Service, not whether both men and women should register for it. As I explained back in February in an online article for the Washington Post:
The entire draft architecture is anachronistic and unnecessary. We’ve operated with an all-volunteer force for decades; no one, regardless of gender, expects that they’ll be drafted; and the wars that we fight don’t depend upon conscription. Future wars aren’t likely to, either.
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[I]t is highly unlikely that we’ll face threats that require troop deployments on a scale that would necessitate another draft. Policymakers in Washington have chosen to fight wars in the Middle East with smaller, more nimble and highly-trained special operators, along with air power, manned and unmanned, in part because the capabilities are available to them, but mostly because these wars do not engage vital U.S. national security interests or threaten our survival.
In the event that a mass-conscripted army was ever again required to defend our country from attack, Congress could immediately pass a law to make that happen. But any notion that today’s Selective Service System is what stands between us and military defeat is absurd. And the push to expand combat roles to women signals that more, rather than fewer, Americans are willing, voluntarily, to do their part to defend this nation. We should take this opportunity to recognize that we can get rid of the draft altogether.
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