Misconceptions About the Draft

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Kenneth Katz makes several good points in his editorial "The Draft Is Only Fair" (February 25). He correctly notes that many antiwar, and some pro-war, students are more concerned about their own lives than about anything else. His desire for universal conscription is also commendable, though I don't completely agree with him on the reasons for implementing it. But the editorial is fraught with misconceptions and factual errors, and these popular myths need to be dispelled.

Although Katz cites the revision of the draft policy in 1968, he nonetheless asserts that "during the Vietnam War...poorer, Black Americans did most of the fighting and dying." As I pointed out in the most recent issue of The Salient, 12.5 percent of the U.S. dead in Vietnam were Black (while 86.3 percent were white) during a time when 13.5 percent of the military age population was Black. Katz's statement, in addition to being false, is a blatant affront to the whites who risked their lives in Vietnam.

In addition, Katz claims that "The all volunteer force is a sham, since economic factors have forced the poorer, Blacker sections of America to sign up in disproportionately high numbers." In The Salient I also mentioned that today's military requires that almost all recruits have a high school diploma or its equivalent, which excludes from the military nearly three quarters of the Black men who used to apply, along with many other poor people. The armed forces draw the bulk of their strength neither from an exploited underclass nor from the generally hedonistic upper classes, but from the lower-middle and middle classes, who usually think that serving in the military is an honorable way to live.

Katz takes a rather cynical view of Desert Storm supporters: "Pro-war students at Harvard, it seems, are willing to stand firmly behind Desert Storm--so long as they do not have to leave precious Cambridge to do it...If these privileged young men and women truly believe the national interest demands that American blood be shed in the Arabian desert, they should not shy away from doing their duty to America."

Katz's claim that pro-war students should be fighting in the war has been voiced repeatedly by antiwar students, but pro-war students have not yet responded, so I'll present my response.

In early January, with war on the horizon, I contacted several military recruiters because I believed that, as a war supporter of military age, I ought to serve if possible. When I asked them if I might be able to participate in the war, however, it became apparent that I could not. I found out that it takes at least 16 weeks from the time of enlistment for a soldier to finish training, and often much longer. Since most military analysts and most U.S. military leaders predicted (correctly, it turns out) that the war would be short and would be finished before Ramadan, the Moslem holy time which begins in mid-March, it was obvious that I would not be done with training in time.

Even if the war had taken longer, as some people--most of them antiwar--claimed, my chances of participating would still have been poor because only one out of seven members of the U.S. armed forces is stationed in the Middle East and the troops are not being rotated.

What puzzles me is that Katz, who argued that "war is the only answer" in the latest Perspective, has not joined the armed forces as he advises other pro-war students to do. His lack of knowledge about the military's training system indicates that he has not even investigated the matter. Mark Moyar '92-'93