Service Should Be Mandatory Essay, Research Paper
There’s a quiet move under way to abolish the Selective Service
System, the government unit that keeps track of draft-age young men.
Opponens of this relic of the military conscription that ended 26
years ago say it is time to shut down the agency that this year will spend
$24.4 million registering 18-year-olds for possible call-up if the draft ever
reinstates.
Supporters counter that the money is a small price to pay to keep
the nation prepared for a major conflict that might require deployment of
hundreds of thousands of U.S. servicemen and women.
That argument took a beating when the House Appropriations
Committee voted to abolish the Selective Service Commission, an action that
also must be approved by the full House and Senate, and signed by the
president.
But a noisy debate about the future of the Selective Service Commission-
and the draft- may be just what this nation needs.
Except for the Marine Corps, every branch of the armed services has
fallen short of its recruitment goal in recent years. With the economy in
overdrive and an increase in the deployment of U.S. troops into harm’s wa,
enlistments in the all-volunteer aren’t keeping pace with the needs of the army,
navy, and Air Force.
The best way to keep U.S. troops out of combat is to make sure our
potential adversaries know our military is ready and able to inflict heavy losses
if they cross swords with us. For that message to be convincing, we have to get
more men and women into uniform.
This year the navy expects to be short 22,000 sailors. The army project
a deficit of 10,000 soldiers, and the Air Force says it will miss it’s goal by
25,000 airmen and 1,5000 pilots.
Faced with these short falls, the United States not only should continue
to register 18-year-olds for the draft, some of them ought to be called up to
active military duty. Or maybe even all off them.
What if every young adult served their country for a year as a
requirement of citizenship? Wouldn’t this change a lot of our nation’s
dilemmas?
If mandatory service- military or otherwise- was instated, the diminutive
recruitment problems would definitely be remedied. Also, other nations’
armies would fully comprehend the potential of the United States Army with
such manpower.
For the young adults that aren’t made for the armed services, that
doesn’t mean that they aren’t received the opportunity to searve their nation.
They can searve by other means than being armed.
Besides the need for men and women in uniform, the United States is
undergoing other obstacles that keep this nation from using’s it’s own army’s
slogan, of being all it can be. Some of these problems are hopelessness,
Hunger, school budgets, and an overall lack of service volunteers. Mandatory
Service would make a dramatic difference in each one of these predicaments
and would greatly strengthen the U.S.
When congress returns from summer recess, it should put aside the bill
that seeks to abolish the Selective Service Commission and consider the
possibility of compulsory service in both the military and civilian sectors.