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Part 104: A Universal Draft III:
May 24, 2004:
In two previous essays I outlined my plan for a universal draft in America. I got into some of the details of how the plan would apply, but not into the details for actual service. In this work, I will begin specifying the kinds of service I mean. I will begin with military service because it requires the least detail. Pretty much everyone knows in general what military service is.
At various times in our history we have had need for different levels of military capability. We have different branches of service that look after those needs. The ones I know of are the Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, Marines, and Army. there are also military reserves, but they would not figure into this draft plan. Here I am talking about a full time commitment.
In my universal draft plan, people who became of draft age would be able to select one of these services to carry out their commitment. As I see it now, the term of service would be for two years. That would be to become a basic service person. In the Army, when I was in, that meant a foot soldier. In the Navy, it meant a seaman. I don't know the designation for the other services.
For specializations wherein the person would receive extra training there could be options. For example, the army could offer training in cryptography to a qualified person who was willing to sign on for three years instead of two. This is highly specialized training that has some commercial value. Qualified means a person who has scored high enough on the military aptitude area test to have a reasonable chance of success in the training.
Now, speaking of the aptitude area test, we come to what could be a very emotional issue. It has to do with people's qualifications. We have gotten really crazy in this country about our civil rights. We have a sorry history of civil rights abuses in America. No rational person would deny that. Just the same, we must be clear on what our goals are. If our goals are excellence in America, lowering our standards will not achieve them. Raising qualifications is the only way to do that. That is something we do in education, not in the job market and not in the draft.
If this draft is to work, we must be honest about qualifications. The United States Army has the best method I have ever seen for determining a persons qualifications. It is called the Army Aptitude Area Test. Based on that test, they can determine which of their tasks a person can reasonably be expected to learn. In some cases, the person will not qualify at all. In that case, the military must have the option to refuse the applicant. Especially in the military, unqualified people cannot be tolerated. We cannot risk the lives of our people for the sake of some imagined fairness doctrine.
We can hope a person who was refused by the military would have qualifications that would fit them for some other option in the draft. I am dubious, but I can at least entertain the possibility that a person could be so inept there was no place for them. In that case, we must have a place of last resort for using that kind of person in some capacity. I could suggest a seat in congress, but that is a different kind of incompetence. Here we are talking about a person who really cares and wants to serve. With that, let us set the issue aside until last. I promise I won't let it slip through the crack.
There is one other point to make about the military and the draft. We said the persons we draft would have choices of how to serve. I think that would apply in normal circumstances. There would be enough people who wanted to limit their commitment to two years such that the military could be fully staffed. However, in emergency situations, wherein the military was in need of manpower, they must have the right of conscription. This means, in emergency situations, they would be authorized to call people up for the draft as soon as they reached age 18.
If the last few years have proved anything, they proved we must maintain a viable armed force. We have discovered these touted special forces just do not fill the gap. They are staffed by inherently unstable people. They are bully macho men with highly fragile egos. These are not the personality characteristics we want to reenforce. The citizen soldier is the correct answer for America. Until the threat of terrorism is under control, we must maintain a standing army and it must have the right of conscript.
We have let our armed services degenerate terribly. That is a national tragedy and disgrace, but it is a fact. There is more than enough blame to go around. It goes back several administrations. The military brass is as much to blame as anyone, for making unreasonable demands and for squandering the moneys they did receive. They should be brought to account for the gross waste if nothing else. The companies who are ripping the government must also be brought to account. We can hope the time for that will come. However, now it is time to get beyond blame and undo the damage. Now is the time to build a new citizen army.
For another area of service I realize we have a very important domestic need that is not military in nature. This is one I wrote about in another essay. I now bring it up to date for this series. I have noticed, most of our West is often on fire and we have a perennial shortage of firefighters. This shortage is so severe we sometimes use untrained soldiers as fire fighters. I believe this could be another very important area of service. Thus, I am proposing the United States form another branch of service. It would be like the military except it would be an unarmed, internal emergency, support service. I would call it the United States Emergency Response Service (USERS).
Initially, I proposed that every American citizen must give at least 2 years and no more than 4 years of service to their country between the ages of 18 and 30. For this special emergency service I would propose 3 years of service. The first year would be strictly a training period. The finial two years would be in actual service. I visualize this service as being completely staffed by our draft with idealistic people choosing this particular service.
This service would be equipped to deal with any emergency situation. These would include fires, riots, floods, hurricane, airline crashes, and oil spills. They would have whatever equipment they needed. They would also be adequately staffed to do this effectively. They would also need rapid deployment capability. As in all other services I proposed, the USERS would accept people from all races and both sexes. There can be no discrimination. Women have demonstrated they can be very effective in these capacities.
Now I want to differentiate this USERS branch of service from the national guard. The national guard is composed of citizens who give part of their time to service, but are otherwise occupied most of their time. Most have full time jobs. While they can be called up to deal with emergency situations, they are usually not trained specifically for those things. There are very good at and best fitted for localized law enforcement and peace keeping. They are really not trained or qualified for extended military service or disaster response.
Extended military service belongs to the full time military. No one else is qualified for that. Disaster response is where the USERS come in. They will be specifically train in all classes of domestic disaster response. They are specialized and, just as in the military, they work as teams. They come to know each other and rely on each others expertise. As in soldiering and police work, they must know their buddy is behind them. They must never have cause to hesitate.
I will carry on with this theme in my next essay.
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