The Impending Draft?

In her op-ed column on October 4 (“An Army of Indentured Servants”) Susan E. McGregor ’05 portrayed H.R. 163, a bill proposing to reintroduce the draft, and its “plan for indentured servitude to the President of the United States” as a viable proposal of which we should be afraid. In a display of fabulously bad timing for McGregor, the House suddenly took up H.R. 163 on October 5 and defeated it by a vote of 402 to 2.

As yesterday’s vote demonstrated, H.R. 163 was never a viable proposal with any chance of becoming law. However, rumors that H.R. 163 might pass and lead to the draft’s reinstatement were so common that the House Republican leadership—which strongly opposes a draft—moved to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 163, just to show the vast margin by which it would fail.

McGregor wrote Monday that the bill “has some people ready to run for the borders,” and that we would be “lucky” if it were only as bad as those people think it is. In her final paragraph, McGregor wrote that “[o]ne hopes... that such legislation would never pass.” I’m glad that her hopes have come true; however, a simple Lexis-Nexis search would have shown her that the bill was already dead on arrival and that such fear was entirely frivolous. Even before this vote, it was apparent to anyone who did some research that H.R. 163 was going nowhere.

Both the Chairman and the Ranking Minority Member of the House Armed Services Committee were on the record strongly opposing a draft and the bill. A week ago, Denver’s Rocky Mountain News wrote that H.R. 163 had “virtually no support on Capitol Hill.” Indeed, until Tuesday, the bill had seen its last action twenty months ago, when it was referred to a subcommittee. It was never even given a hearing. And it never would have seen the House floor were it not for the Republican leadership’s need to counter rumor-mongers like McGregor who made people fear that the bill was just a clever acronym away from being passed.

Like many who spread rumors of a new draft, McGregor failed to note that H.R. 163 was sponsored by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), a liberal Democrat and consistent critic of the president and the war in Iraq. All of his co-sponsors are also liberal anti-war Democrats. Do these people really want to give the president what McGregor describes as “a cost-free standing army at his disposal”?

Of course they don’t. Snopes.com, the leading debunker of urban legends, says H.R. 163 and its identical Senate version “were introduced not by legislators genuinely seeking to reinstate the draft, but by Democrats seeking to make an anti-war statement.”

Demonstrating that they never intended for H.R. 163 to become law, Rangel and most of his co-sponsors voted against their own bill in yesterday’s vote. Only one of fourteen co-sponsors voted in favor; Rangel and 11 others voted no; and the rest did not vote. It is clear that they intended only to instill fear of the draft rather than reinstate it.

It is possible, of course, that McGregor knew about the bill’s lack of support but did not discuss it because it was inconvenient to her thesis. After all, it is hard to argue that we should fear a bill to “give the President of the United States the power to demand two years of potentially unpaid labor in any capacity—including military service” when: (a) the bill is offered by the president’s political enemies; (b) a vast majority of Republicans and Democrats oppose the bill; and (c) the bill is widely acknowledged in the press as dead. In an op-ed column of 850 words about H.R. 163, one might think that these three facts were interesting enough to include; McGregor avoided all of them.

Unfortunately, McGregor has not been alone in stoking unfounded fear about H.R. 163. Andre Heinz, John Kerry’s stepson, said in an interview last month that “we now have the specter of a draft looming...a draft that, rumor has it, won’t give you the luxury of deferment.” This rumor is an apparent reference to the deferment restrictions in H.R. 163.

On a draft, the Bush Administration is clear. White House Spokesman Jim Morrell says: “[T]he president is absolutely opposed to a draft, he doesn’t believe it’s needed, and he strongly supports having a voluntary military force.” President Bush said in last week’s debate that “[t]he military will be an all-volunteer army.” But John Kerry’s supporters are using unfounded rumors to scare young voters away from the president. It is dishonest, it is unfortunate, and the Crimson should know better than to lend its valuable space to it.

I hope that the House’s resounding defeat of H.R. 163 finally puts these rumors to rest, but I don’t count on it. Just like before this vote, H.R. 163 still exists as an entity in the House pipeline with no chance of passage; and you can count on someone continuing to distort its existence for political gain.

Josh A. Barro ’05 is a psychology concentrator in Adams House. He is Co-Policy Director of the Harvard Republican Club.