Maybe Time to Take Another Look at the Military Draft
By Jim Freeman

Yeah, I know, nobody wants it and it took us long enough to get rid of it after the 2nd world war. But it’s just not fair to keep fighting our wars with the National Guard, a force that was never meant to be doing what it is currently asked to do. Doesn't serve our national interests very well either.

I’m always hesitant about big-picture recommendations that affect the whole country, but I did my own part-time soldiering a half a century ago and it gave me something back. Like many obligations in a less and less personally obligated society, it wasn’t all bad. Not to say I enjoyed it.

First of all, I was only in for six months of active duty, followed by six years of Reserves. The time was between Korea and Vietnam, while there was still a draft. I was just getting out of university. No one really wanted to do two full years and when the six-month program opened, a lot of us ran for it.

July 1st our train pulled into Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. It was hot. For the next eight weeks it never seemed to stop being hot. But we survived, learned to shut up and take orders, to drill and shoot and march, to make a bed Sergeant Funk could bounce a quarter off of, to work within a tiny, diverse society that was totally inter-dependent.