OP-ED Beyond the Draft: Rethinking National Service

[fairbanksb]

I didn't think about that in 1963 when I was drafted. I guess I could have went to Canada with the other draft dodgers but that didn't seem right. I won't go to to what I was thinking when carter pardoned them.

Same here. I guess it just depends when you grew up. I grew up in the 60's and the draft just was, period. You turned 18 and you registered, males that is. I didn't like the thought of not having a choice so I tried to enlist in the AF before my number came up. Flunked the physical, eyesight. About 6 months later my number came up and I had to take tha Army physical. Flunked again. Got married in 74 and tried to enlist in the AF again in 75 and passed. Spent 20 yrs and I don't regret it. An all volunteer force is drawing down to insufficent numbers. If we actually had to defend against an invasion of our shores,that by the time they trained sufficient numbers it may be too late.

 

[Russell Crowley]

I agree with TP that our problems have been building over time. Starting with G. Washington calling out the army to collect tax on whiskey. How else could those farmers raise corn and get it to market? Then through "Honest Abe" and all the rest down to now.

I joined the navy in 59. I already knew what it was like to wade mud carrying a rifle. (Hunting) Didn't like the rest of the service uniforms, I hate something tight around my throat.

So I ended up USN.

In retrospect, it was a most educational tour of duty. Learned of other parts of the US and their lives. Also 2 tours of Westpac with all the countries visited there. The stories from senior NCO's about WWII where some were funny but many were educational on doing your job that you were trained for could mean saving your ship. Also that the luck of the draw could happen which meant you survived and your best friend next to you did not.

I made me realize that life was precious and I should enjoy it as long as possible.

I tend to think that Mil service is very good for the most part, but I'm not so sure about friends who went into the Peace Corp later. They seemed to have an attitude that they were better than military, don't know why.

I really resented Carter letting the runaways to Canada back in. It seemed so selfish to run when others were killed. Not that I approve of the draft, it is just that it seems that we should fight and get our people killed only when our country is directly threatened.

I think this is what leads me to like RAH's ideas of who should lead. Those who led. That is not something for everybody. I had no desire to continue to serve because instead of playing with high dollar toys that Uncle had, I would have to become a leader of young men much more so than just being a junior NCO.

Like I say, most educational.

Russell

 

[Housecarl]

Another "idealist's" opinion very likely to be disappointed if he got his way......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.omaha.com/opinion/willia...cle_c14454ae-8ba3-57c0-bede-561e8bf728df.html

Opinion

William J. Byron: A GI Bill for an aimless generation

Young people are not needed today on farms or in factories. But they could be used in meeting unmet societal and environmental needs.

Posted: Wednesday, December 2, 2015 1:00 am

The writer is a Jesuit priest and professor of business and society at St. Joseph’s University. He is an Army veteran of World War II who received his college education through the GI Bill. He wrote this for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

What if there had been one really big idea — not necessarily a new idea, just a big one — on either side during the excessively long and embarrassingly expensive race for the White House in 2012?

National service, for example?

It is ironic that George Romney, father of the unsuccessful Republican candidate and an unsuccessful presidential contender himself, became an advocate for national service long after his political career had ended. He often said, “National service should be as visible as the post office.”

Romney wanted national service in various forms — not just military, but also elder care, child care, conservation of natural resources, and rebuilding of national infrastructure — to become part of our culture, integral to the American way of life.

I think he was right, and it is time to take a good look at the potential for national revitalization associated with a creative program of national service.

There was, as everyone knows, compulsory military service during the Second World War. Later, in exchange for each month spent in the military, veterans of World War II were entitled to two months of higher or vocational education — tuition, fees and books — in independent or public institutions of their choice, paid for by the federal government. This was the so-called GI Bill of Rights.

The GI Bill turned out to be the greatest investment in human capital ever made in this country. And the return to the Treasury — the higher taxes paid over the decades since 1950, thanks to the higher incomes that veterans earned as a result of the higher education they received — has been enormous. In effect, the program benefits proved, over the long run, to be self-financing.

In those days, young men between 18 and 26 years of age had no choice. If they were physically and mentally fit, they had to serve. It was a national emergency. Two words provided the rationale for compulsory service: Pearl Harbor.

It would take a lot more than two words to come up with a rationale for a compulsory national service program today.

But if a national service program were open now to all American men and women ages 18 to 26, and if the areas of service included nonmilitary opportunities such as tutoring low-income children, cleaning up urban slums, and participating in conservation projects, it could have a major impact on this country.

The need for national service — compulsory or voluntary — lies in the evident drift and purposelessness in so many young people today. Their parents see it; those who counsel them in high school or advise them in college see it. The unemployment statistics and the data collected on drug abuse, crime and, to a small but frightening degree, instances of youth suicide point to the problem. Does it all add up to a national emergency? I think it does.

Young people are not needed today on farms or in factories. But they could be used in meeting unmet societal and environmental needs.

Imagine the possibilities. Young people could mature and gain a sense of purpose during their years of service — as those who served during World War II did. And then they could take advantage of educational opportunities that would prepare them for productive careers — as the World War II vets did. The nation benefits, from both the service and the post-service productivity.

Anyone who hopes to succeed President Barack Obama in 2017 should be looking at national service. It would be wise to compute the historical cost and the return on investment associated with the GI Bill, if for no other reason than to anticipate the criticism that will certainly be voiced about the cost of any new national service program.

There is work to be done in figuring out how to arrange training and appropriate stipends for inductees into such a program and a need to design private-public partnerships that would usefully employ inductees to meet national needs. And thought should be given to the types and terms of post-service educational benefits to which every service member would have a claim. This educational benefit provision is crucially important because it would provide a solution to the current problem of unmanageably heavy student debt.

Presidential hopefuls should recognize that creative thinking along these lines could lead to a renewed sense of national purpose in America. The presidential debates should include a conversation about the benefits of national service.

 

[Housecarl]

An article backing up Moulton's op ed....Looks like someone's jonesing for higher office.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/123351/how-america-can-get-its-mojo-back

How America Can Get Its Mojo Back

National-service evangelists hope to inspire a cultural shift among millennials.

STEVE JOHNSON/THE ASPEN INSTITUTE

December 1, 2015
Ron Fournier @ron_fournier

Capt. Seth Moulton left the Marines in 2008 after four tours in Iraq and found himself on the campus of Columbia University, watching presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain discuss their shared passion for national service.

Moulton was the rare military veteran in a crowd of Peace Corps and AmeriCorps recruits, part of a generation of young Americans with an outsized dedication to causes greater than themselves.

“It was extraordinary for me as a young veteran who had just come back from the surge in Iraq to meet so many other national-service veterans who hadn’t had the same experience as I did, and yet we shared so much in common,” Moulton said seven years later. “The commonality that I had in my experience in Iraq with a Teach for America veteran in New Orleans, for example, was not something that I expected to see, but I saw that there in that moment.”

Whether toting a gun in Iraq or a shovel in New Orleans, the young Americans at Columbia had sacrificed the first years of their adult lives to help others. They had lived and worked with fellow Americans from disparate socioeconomic backgrounds. They had learned to think critically, to solve problems, to lead.

For those millennials and millions more, national service has instilled the same sense of shared destiny and duty that the Greatest Generation found in World War II.

Now Moulton is a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts and part of a movement to make a year of national service a cultural expectation for all young Americans. Year of Service evangelists believe shared sacrifice is an antidote to the great toxins of our times: polarization and intellectual isolation.

Tragedies like the shootings in Paris and Colorado no longer bring us together; they pull us apart and into camps, each with its separate truths and outrage. Depending on where you sit, Robert Dear is a creation of either antiabortion conservatives or anti-life liberals. We, the people, no long share a common set of facts, much less a common cause, and thus Americans no longer believe their country is capable of shared greatness.

We can’t fix big problems.

“A lot of thinkers out there much smarter than I would say the reason we can’t do [big] things … is because we don’t have national service, because we don’t have a common experience,” Moulton said, while appearing on a Franklin Project panel Monday at the Aspen Institute.

“We’ve never had fewer veterans in Congress in our nation’s history than today,” Moulton continued, “and a lot of older guys talk about how it was different when you knew that while you might have political differences, you could focus on what was best for America when you came to Congress because you had that common experience of fighting together in war.”

The Franklin Project is not calling for a military draft. It is not proposing a mandatory year of service (as I did here). Rather, the group hopes to create a series of pressures and incentives for national service, including:

-Preferential treatment in college admissions

-Five-year university programs that include one year of paid service.

-Corporations allowing new hires to do a year of paid service before starting their jobs.

The idea, retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal told the panel, is to raise cultural expectations to a point that parents and peers start assuming that high school graduates will spend a year in service before getting on with their lives.

The service must be compensated, said Aspen Institute President Walter Isaacson, so that the programs aren’t limited to young Americans who come from wealthy homes.

“Nowadays,” Isaacson said, “there’s just no expectation that you’ll get out of your zip codes, your comfort zones.” Isaacson, a historian, said every good thing that has happened to America was the result of “people stepping up,” sacrificing a bit of themselves for the greater good. “That’s been lacking today,” he said. “I think it undergirds all the incivility and polarization in the public sector.”

“There is something about service that is essential to citizenship,” said McChrystal, adding that America has lost its service ethic “as we’ve been more atomized and more anonymous in more areas” of life.

Which is why it’s a national shame that President Obama failed to deliver on his 2008 promise to expand AmeriCorps, and a disgrace that the GOP-led Congress wants to gut the program.

“There is the potential to find political agreement on both sides of the aisle for an issue that does bring Americans together,” Moulton said, “but I think it’s tough.”

NOTE: The panel was cosponsored by Defense One, a sister publication of National Journal.

 

[ShadowMan]

The Constitution does not allow "tiered" citizenship for a reason.

It was not tiered...it was ULTRA exclusive. Unless you where a property owner and male you couldn't vote or run for office.

If you're looking for something that is "fair" you're chasing an illusion. There is no fair in the world. The idea of the tiered citizenship system is fully based on the premise that you reap what you sow. It is fully up to you how much participation you have in the say of your government, totally your choice, however...comma, nothing is free, you have to earn that right.

I agree that a draft or mandatory national service is at best indentured servitude, or worst - slavery. That's why we need choices and with those choices come rewards commensurate with the service volunteered and the risk.

I think the one hold up with such a system is that people are afraid and selfish. Afraid that if they take the military route they could end up in combat. Which is a remote possibility yes, however in my 22 years of military service I ended up in a combat situation exactly ONCE....during Desert Shield/Desert Storm. In the mean time my younger brother who was a police officer was in combat nearly everyday!!! The other thing is that for every rifleman there are hundreds of support personnel that never get near the front lines, so your odds are pretty good that during a two year period you're going to be pretty bored if combat is what you're hoping for.

Secondly people in general are pretty selfish. Helping a neighbor or a stranger used to be a common American trait. Good manners. Hard work. Dedication and self pride. Where did they go? We've become so involved with ourselves we seem to have forgotten that there are other people out there in the real world. When i think how much good could come from a fully manned Civilian Conservation/Service Corps in our local communities, roads repaired, infrastructure repaired, cities cleaned up, elderly helped, everything that could be done with just a little effort, it's staggering!

And then there's educational benefits EARNED by the full and standard citizen! The G.I.Bill from WWII resulted in the single greatest improvement to our economic, manufacturing, business and science booms in the history of this nation! Education is the key to success and positive change!

If someone can come up with a better way to instil duty, honor, selflessness, dedication, maturity, etc., etc., etc., in our young people I'd like to hear it. It's almost impossible for kids to get jobs and work like I did growing up; mowing lawns, paper route, washing cars, helping neighbors and after I could drive flipping burgers and such. We expect them to instantly learn how to work at that magic 18th, birthday. Poof! you're an instant adult! Awwww....not quite.

 

[Housecarl]

First like many here and those who commented on those op-eds, any time “national service” or “the Draft” is brought up, particularly when “community service” opt-outs or alternatives are injected into the discussion as a “bonus” and an adjunct to instilling citizenship and community or as a quid pro quo for a “civilian” version of the “GI Bill” all of my red lights go off.

What’s forgotten is the genesis of “the Draft”. Those who bring up the “involuntary servitude” aspect have some points, however they have to look at it not by itself but in the full concept of citizens’ duties in the same vein as jury duty, a sheriff’s posse and an educated vote.

The Draft, aka Selective Service, is for calling to active duty members of the unorganized military reserve, pursuant to Title 10, Chapter 13 of the US Code, i.e. the unorganized portion of the Militia of the United States. That’s not the National Guard, they’re covered under Title 32, Chapters 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 and Title 10, 311 when in Federal service and are state organized militia.

Selective Service is set up to in time of mobilization to select by lottery people from that unorganized pool for induction into the military, and if things are truly screwed up, for manpower needs for national recovery efforts. These are national security and national survival missions, not mandatory community service for roles and functions akin to the missions of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Transportation or Department of the Interior via AmeriCorps.

So in order to twist this, they’re going to have to either come up with some real convoluted “national security” reason for this scheme or some other flim-flamery in the guise of a national emergency. Of course they’ve been using that canard forever to justify the budgeting methods they’ve been doing for years and a bunch of other things.

With the current state of affairs, about the only legitimate “call-up” of those proportions that they could justify would be for internal security in the event of wide spread terrorist attacks against infrastructure or other important facilities. That action would rightly be seen as instituting martial law nationally with all of the likely devils in the details you’d expect. The only other would be for World War 4, if you consider the “Cold War” World War 3, if you envision that as the suppression with extreme prejudice overseas of Islamic radicalism.

So unless they’re going to be forming up militia light infantry battalions by county in the spirit of the Militia Act of 1790 as an augmentation to the current “Total Force”(since the States don’t have the budget for anything this huge) or reorganize everything around the “Swiss System” (which then touches legitimately on US foreign and defense policy), going the “Kum ba yah” direction is only going to happen with a Presidential Executive Order. Such a move will start a real mess in Congress if for no other reason than how it is going to be paid for, and how many people it may displace who are already employed in some of those roles, particularly if they are dues paying union members.

All that being said, I wouldn’t put it past them to do more than just “run it up the flagpole” as these articles are doing. I’m just wondering when Rangel is going to jump into this.