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Draft Near: Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight

By VVAW

Reagan is hardly famous for being true to his word. Whether its tax hikes, V.A. budget cuts or registration for the draft, Reagan's campaign promises have turned out to be so much hot air.

We are being told now that registration for the draft is not the draft itself. Don't worry, President Reagan won't send any young Americans to fight in Central America or the Middle East or especially Africa. Well, boot camp isn't combat but its purpose is to prepare you for combat, and the purpose of registration is to prepare for the draft!

To get over, the government is putting out a number of positions concerning what registration and the draft are and are not for. It is important to examine them both for what they say and for what they leave out.

"We need registration to speed up a draft in case of war with the Russians," Beside the simple point that a war with the Soviet union would probably escalate into nuclear war before anyone could be called up, this idea is used frequently—and is one of the most absurd of arguments. Consider the state of the military bases in the event of an outbreak of war: they would be full, not only with volunteers but with inactive reservists, reservists, national guards who need additional training and retirees returning to active duty. This process alone would take more time than emergency registration and draft. Reservists and the national guard exist to be called to active duty; that's why billions of dollars are poured into them. It's truce that they weren't called up for Vietnam (the only recent war where they were not mobilized) but that was one way that Johnson used to escalate the war without admitting it. The draft allowed him to increase cannon fodder from youth fresh out of high school on his command: there is no reason to believe that Reagan or any other President would not do the same.

"It's everyone's duty to serve their country." True, perhaps, in the abstract, but the reality of who "serves" and where they "serve" shows that some people end up with a distinctly heavier duty than others. Every draft, except for the Second World War has been grossly unequal. In the Civil War people could buy their way out, and wealthy patriots like John D. Rockefeller let some one else serve for him. A fine family tradition—and it hasn't changed all that much until today. Poor whites, Blacks, Latins and the children of workers do the serving and the fighting, with only a few exceptions. Vietnam is a prime example: 18 million young men were eligible for "service" during Vietnam; 6 million served, 2.8 million in Vietnam. And who do you think served in the front lines? No, it was not eh sons of congressmen nor those of the heads of Standard Oil. It wasn't even the $100,000 a year football players (who couldn't pass the physical) nor even the son of John Wayne. The simple fact is that they got the butter while the poor got the guns, once again making seem not so trite the old slogan about the "Rich man's war/Poor man's fight!"

"What are you afraid of? It's just registration, not the draft!" Registration exists for one thing: the draft. If the government did not plan to use it they wouldn't be going through the political hassle, especially during an election year. After the Pentagon papers, Watergate and Vietnam, and American would have to be a fool to trust the government. And the Reagan Administration has not demonstrated anymore respect for the truth than did Johnson or Nixon.