Download PDF of this full issue: v9n2.pdf (9.7 MB)

Editorial: The Draft

By VVAW

Demonstrations against the draft in D.C. Congress debating "service to country." It's 1968--but no, it is actually 1979. It's all beginning again. The voluntary army is a bust; the "adventure, not a job," etc isn't making it. So it's back to involuntary servitude. Of course there will be appropriate exemptions for essential occupations like the son of a congressman or heir to Standard Oil. But everyone else will have to do his (and perhaps her) duty.

VVAW stands l00% against this latest attempt to crank up the war machine. The draft is merely a new move toward war, not the other way around as they would like us to believe. And it is not a duty required by citizenship; if it were, 60% of Congress and 95% of Congressional offspring would have to register as aliens.

The draft won't be substantially changed from the time of the Vietnam War. Neither will the purpose of the military. VVAW opposes even the first step, the registration of 18-year olds. The purpose of registration is induction, nothing more. Strangely enough, registration will begin after the 1980 elections. Once again our political leaders put re-election first, "conviction," second.

Lest Congress get the wrong idea and think we are against the U.S. fighting another war out of pacifism or a fear of combat, let us put forward our position on the military and the draft: we propose that all who will profit most from another war--the corporation heads, the politicians who declare it, and the generals who are supposed to lead it--that these people volunteer for the front lines, right in front of the rest of us. Let them be first into the breech, and they need not worry; we will point our guns in the direction of the enemy.