[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Page 23348]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            A MILITARY DRAFT

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, whenever I travel in Iowa, I hear moms and 
dads worrying out loud that if President Bush gets a second term, he 
intends to reinstitute the military draft. I hear the same thing from 
college-aged Iowans. In fact, a national poll of young people found 
that 55 percent expect the draft to be started up again. Of course, the 
joke that is going around is: President Bush insists that there will be 
no draft. And if anybody knows how to avoid a draft, it is George W. 
Bush.
  But the facts tell a different story. The facts tell us that if 
President Bush continues on his current course, he will have to 
reinstitute the draft. In fact, to meet personnel needs in Iraq, 
President Bush has already imposed stage one of a new draft. Many 
soldiers whose enlistment time is up are not being allowed to leave the 
service, and people who left the service years ago are being forced to 
put on the uniform again against their will. So we already have a 
backdoor draft. Let's be honest about it. President Bush has already 
done away with the All-Volunteer military. Stage two of the reinstated 
draft would be easy to implement. Draft boards are already in place in 
every county in America. Young men who turn age 18 are already required 
to register with their local draft board. It is becoming increasingly 
obvious that because of President Bush's new doctrine of preemptive 
war, our military is stretched dangerously thin. We do not have enough 
people in uniform to meet current needs in Iraq and Afghanistan, much 
less to deal with a confrontation with Iran or North Korea or some 
other hot spot.
  Here are the hard realities that cannot be ignored. Right now, total 
Active Army and Marine personnel number about 655,000. That includes 
support units, training units, headquarters personnel, and others who 
do not see combat.
  In a long, drawn out war such as a Vietnam or an Iraq, units sent to 
the front lines have to be rotated out periodically and replaced by an 
equal number of forces. Now, currently, we have 135,000 troops in Iraq, 
20,000 in Afghanistan, 36,000 in Korea, more than 100,000 in Europe, 
and some various troops scattered in Japan and Okinawa and a few other 
places.
  Our Armed Forces have been stretched and strained to the breaking 
point. To fill the gaps and shortages, tens of thousands of guardsmen 
and women reservists have been called up, some for several years at a 
time. But there is a cost to all of this. Morale is suffering. 
Enlistments and reenlistments are down. The Army National Guard fell 
10-percent short of its 2004 recruiting goal. The Regular Army has had 
to ease up on standards in order to meet its recruitment goals.
  Now, what happens if all-out civil war breaks out in Iraq and we have 
to increase our troop strength to 200,000 or 300,000 to quell it? What 
happens if a newly reelected President Bush decides it is time for a 
preemptive war against Iran or Syria or North Korea?
  President Bush has already effectively ended the All-Volunteer 
military. People are hesitant to join the Guard or Reserve because the 
odds of being sent into combat have skyrocketed.
  So how in the world would a second-term President Bush meet the 
personnel needs of his doctrine of preemptive war? Bear in mind, 
President Bush has changed the standard for justifying preemptive war.
  As the New York Times reported on Sunday, originally the criterion 
was that a rogue nation was an imminent threat to us, that it either 
possessed weapons of mass destruction or was actively attempting to 
build these weapons of mass destruction. But in response to the Duelfer 
report last week, which found no weapons of mass destruction stockpiles 
and no active program to produce these weapons in Iraq, President Bush 
says that does not matter. He said that a preemptive invasion is 
justified if an enemy is trying to avoid United Nations sanctions by 
``gaming the system,'' as the President put it.
  As the New York Times concluded:

       Mr. Bush appears to be saying that under his new standard a 
     country merely has to be thinking about developing illicit 
     weapons at some time.

  Or as Joseph Nye of Harvard concludes:

       The President is saying that intent is enough.

  Well, given either the old or the new standard for justifying 
preemption, the U.S. military is going to be very busy indeed if 
President Bush is reelected. Our military personnel needs will grow 
dramatically as morale, enlistments, and reenlistments fall. That is 
exactly why I have taken the floor today, to state this: That I believe 
President Bush intends to reinstate the draft. Why can I say that? 
Because he has no choice. To pursue his agenda of aggressive 
preemption, he must reinstate the draft.
  Now, if you look at history, incumbent Presidents never reveal their 
true intentions on matters of war and the draft. Those of us who were 
around in the 1960s remember President Lyndon Johnson, a President of 
my own party. When he was running for election in 1964, people were 
afraid he had a secret plan to escalate the war in Vietnam. He denied 
it. President Johnson repeatedly promised: I will not send American 
boys halfway around the world to do a job that Asian boys ought to be 
doing for themselves.
  Well, Mr. Johnson was reelected and, sure enough, millions of 
American boys were drafted and sent halfway around the world to 
Vietnam.
  So young people today have good reasons for fearing the draft. They 
have good reasons for not believing President Bush's reassurances that 
he has no intention of reinstituting the draft. After all, President 
Bush has quite a lengthy track record of saying one thing and doing 
exactly the opposite. Well, I guess there is some kind of a technical 
term for this. I guess it is called: Flip-flopping.
  Remember, as a candidate in 2000, President Bush was for a ``humble 
foreign policy'' before he was against it. He was against nation 
building in foreign countries before he was for it. He was for a 
peaceful resolution of the confrontation with Iraq before he was 
against it. He was for an All-Volunteer military before the pressures 
of war in Iraq obliged him to do away with the All-Volunteer military.
  Now he says he is against the draft. I think our young people can be 
forgiven for doubting President Bush is going to stick with that 
position. George W. Bush may have avoided the draft when he was a young 
man, but he is not going to be able to avoid the draft as President if 
he is reelected and pursues his policy of preemptive war.

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