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Reinstating the Draft is Not a Bad Idea
It was fall of 1970. I was a junior in college, and by that time I had had the pleasure of getting to know several Vietnam War veterans who returned from Southeast Asia because of nonfatal injuries. It seemed as though several of them were in every class that I had, and they didn’t mind talking with us about the war.
Although the war had been creating unrest on college campuses across the nation for some time, things intensified in May 1970 when several Kent State University students were shot and killed by members of the National Guard. In the wake of that horrific incident, the U.S. government moved to abolish the draft and replace it with a lottery.
It was a simple process. Each day of the year was drawn out of a hat, so to speak, and given a number. The first date drawn was number 1, and so on. Your lottery number was the number of your birthday. Thanks to the lottery, young men would be called up for duty starting with number 1 until the military had all the troops that it needed. If after 12 months you had not been called up, you were no longer eligible. The next year another lottery would be held for all able bodied 18 year old males.
While the draft was in effect, full-time college students got student deferrals. The lottery didn’t change that policy. Each quarter as a part of the registration process, we were required to submit a form proving that we were enrolled in college. If we didn’t submit the form, we were eligible for the draft immediately, but under the lottery if you failed to submit the form, you would be called up immediately if your number was low enough. That’s one important reason why college enrollment exploded during the 1960s and 1970s.
Like B.C. and A.D., the first lottery in the fall of 1970 divided my life on earth into two distinct parts: before this and after this. In advance of the lottery, military experts had informed us that people with numbers lower than about 150 were sure to see action in Vietnam. My number was 83. At age 20, I was forced to consider the very real possibility that after graduation I was going straight to Vietnam and that I might die.
Like most of my fellow classmates, I was young and foolish. Under the draft, there was at least a chance that I might not be called up, but my number in the lottery was so low that I was guaranteed to see action in Vietnam, or so I thought. Thus, I decided to forego the student deferral process beginning the next quarter and take my chances. I reasoned that I would be better off going to Vietnam before I graduated than postponing the inevitable until after graduation.
At the same time, President Nixon was winding down the war in Vietnam so my number was never called, but the thought process that I went through matured me in a hurry. For a calendar year, I believed that my life would end in a matter of months. That may sound like torture, but looking back on it, it wasn’t. In fact, it’s a part of my maturation process that I cherish, and one of my regrets in life is that I did not serve in the military.
Most young males in this country today don’t have to go through that process, so they are free to fritter away their time playing on their Xboxes or marching with the Occupy Wall Street gang or getting into all kinds of mischief without having to consider the consequences of their actions. Because of the draft and the lottery we didn’t have that luxury. If we got into trouble, we knew where we were going, and many of us went even if we didn’t get into trouble.
In September 2011 when Occupy Wall Street began, the first thing that entered my mind was that we need to reinstate the draft or the lottery because those young people needed something meaningful to do with their time. Think of it as an attitude adjustment for young men with the side benefit of helping our nation. Unfortunately, they are growing up during a time when most of our citizens don’t even pay federal income taxes. Even worse, most of them are the beneficiaries of government handout programs that produce nothing of significance except deficits and debt.
It’s time to put an end to this madness, and sequestration may be a blessing in disguise because it could force us to reconsider the draft. Bridget Johnson raised that possibility yesterday in an article for PJ Media titled “Will Obama’s Defense Cuts Lead to a Military Draft?” She said,
If the military continues to be gutted under Obama, fewer men and women are expected to walk through the doors of recruiting offices. If there aren’t enough men and women in uniform come the next conflict, will this administration or the next — which will be left to mop up the damage at the Pentagon — be forced to institute the draft?
Personally, I hope that we do reinstate the draft because it will help to reduce the cost associated with defending our nation. Additionally, although they may not realize it, those young people who are protesting because of the perceived lack of fairness in our society or campaigning for green energy to reduce C02 emissions or complaining about whatever will benefit more than they can imagine if we do.
The draft is a sobering process, and military service sure beats paying people to do nothing. That’s what the Occupy Wall Street crowd was doing for days, weeks, and months on end. It’s obvious that they didn’t have jobs. How were they supporting themselves? The answer: either they got money from the government or from mommy and daddy. In either case, they were learning to be dependent in an already dependent society, and that’s got to change. The draft can help us move in the right direction.
As an aside, if my mother-in-law reads this, she will finally know what was going on in my mind when I met her daughter in the fall of 1970.
This SnyderTalk editorial first appeared in American Thinker.
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Daniel 1: 3-7
Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, the chief of his officials, to bring in some of the sons of Israel, including some of the royal family and of the nobles, youths in whom was no defect, who were good-looking, showing intelligence in every branch of wisdom, endowed with understanding and discerning knowledge, and who had ability for serving in the king’s court; and he ordered him to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. The king appointed for them a daily ration from the king’s choice food and from the wine which he drank, and appointed that they should be educated three years, at the end of which they were to enter the king’s personal service. Now among them from the sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. Then the commander of the officials assigned new names to them; and to Daniel he assigned the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah Shadrach, to Mishael Meshach and to Azariah Abed-nego.
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His Name is Yahweh explains why the Name of God, Yahweh, is so important. It’s available in eBook format and in paperback. It’s also available for free in PDF format.
- God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This [Yahweh] is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.” (Exodus 3: 15)
- “Therefore behold, I am going to make them know—this time I will make them know My power and My might; and they shall know that My name is Yahweh.” (Jeremiah 16: 21)
- “Behold, the days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; and He will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; and this is His name by which He will be called, ‘Yahweh our righteousness.’” (Jeremiah 23: 5-6)
- Yeshua said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” (John 8: 58)
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Peace in the Middle East: The Facts Tell an Interesting Story
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Hosea 4: 6
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
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Stray mortar shells fired from Syria land in Golan Heights
Oren: Israel trying to guarantee US military aid
Syria, Iran condemn US plan to aid anti-Assad rebels
New US defense chief Hagel to host Barak
‘PM to renew settlement freeze after gov’t formed’
‘Ancient Syrian synagogue damaged by Assad army’
Dueling expectations ahead of Obama’s Israel trip
No Evidence Palestinian Inmate Was Victim of Violence
Gaza gunmen fire at IDF soldiers across border
PA’s Fayyad tear-gassed by IDF in Bil’in protest
Kerry: Turkish PM’s Zionism quip ‘objectionable’
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Report: Netanyahu Planning New Construction Freeze
Gaza Terrorists Open Fire at Southern Israel
Likud Negotiator: Bayit Yehudi Also Rejected Hareidim
IDF: Stop Announcing ‘Intifada’
Erdogan’s Statements Offensive and Wrong
Bennett Vindicated; Coalition Crafting in Overtime
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In blow to prosecution, key witness in Olmert trial dies
Lapid reportedly won’t sit with haredim under any constellation
Nothing to fear but fear itself
Police: Palestinians fabricated price-tag attack near Nablus
Erdoğan’s remark on Zionism ‘dark and false’ says Netanyhau
Yisrael Beytenu plays favorites in Chief Rabbinate race
‘US would back Israel in defensive Iran strike’
Pollard: I am moved, I haven’t been forgotten
Jerusalem marathon spurs political saber-rattling
Iran nuclear talks show progress, Western diplomat says
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In America’s Schools, Marines are offensive and Islamic terrorists are “freedom fighters”
Bipartisan Group Backs Measure Stating U.S. Support for Israel’s Self-Defense
Rolling Stones To Israel haters:’Up Yours’
Report: Labor Dispute at Israel’s Foreign Ministry Threatens Obama Visit
Police: Kusra Vandalism Not “Price Tag” Attack, Was Staged Propaganda
Jewish Students at Cornell Respond to Anti-Israel Defacement of Flyers on Campus
Christian Missionaries Threaten Survival of Kaifeng Jews: SnyderTalk Comment—I wish Anson Laynter knew who Yahweh is and what He did for us, including Kaifeng Jews.
U.S. Announces Expanded Battlefield Aid to Syrian Rebels, But Not Arms
Eager Israelis Send Invites to Obama Ahead of Tour
Egyptian Police Search for 500 Palestinians Who Entered Illegally, Some Accused of Terrorism
16,577 Immigrants to Israel in 2012
Swiss-Based Glencore Bartered with Firm Linked to Iran Nuclear Program
MK Ben-Dahan: Stop EU’s Pro-PA Endeavors
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Dore Gold: As close as ever— Some academics argue that Israel is not a strategic asset, and possibly a liability to the U.S., but the facts suggest otherwise.
Ron Prosor: Ambassador Prosor’s Speech on Incitement to Terror and Violence at UN Conference—64 years ago, the United Nations ratified the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention was written with the horrors of the Holocaust still fresh in the mind of the international community. One of the Convention’s key provisions made it a crime to “directly and publicly incite” to commit genocide. Last August, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went on public television and insisted that (and I quote), “the very existence of the Zionist regime is…an affront to all world nations.” He called on “all human communities to wipe out the Zionist regime from the forehead of humanity.”
Jeremy Rosen: The Pope and the Jews—Pope Benedict’s resignation sends an important message to our own religious leadership. Know when it’s time to step down. What humility it takes for someone to realize that he does not have the strength or the capacity to lead such a significant movement. No pope has had that quality for over six hundred years. Like most geriatric leaders, they have invariably held on until the Almighty (or His agent) has put them out of their misery.
Dror Eydar: Redemption, bit by bit— It is important to argue with the haredim about issues of “substance” but not now, when we have a coalition to assemble.
Isi Leibler: Anti-Semitism and the Germans— Germany has seen increasing hostility against Israel which would have been inconceivable only a few years ago.
Yigal Carmon and A. Savyon: Is There Room for Agreement between the Obama Administration and Tehran in Nuclear Talks?—Even if we accept the mistaken assumption that Iran seeks only threshold status – mistaken because of the ever-growing evidence that it is persisting in its development of nuclear weapons and that for this reason it will not accept true oversight – there still, in our assessment, remains no area of agreement between the sides.
Washington Post Editorial: Is the U.S. Kowtowing to Iran in Nuclear Talks?—In the eight months since Iran last agreed to meet with the international coalition, the offer to Tehran has grown more, rather than less, generous. “It was they who tried to get closer to our point of view,” crowed Tehran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili.
James Blitz: Reasons to Be Cautious on Iran Talks—After two days of talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Iran has told the U.S. and five other world powers that it is prepared to hold a couple more meetings in March and April to try to resolve international concerns that it wants a nuclear bomb. Do more meetings just mean stalling for time? In Geneva in 2009 and in Istanbul last April, Iran made similar declarations, giving the green light for further talks on confidence-building measures that went nowhere.
Clifford D. May: The Sanctions Paradox—The sanctions being imposed on Iran are unlikely to succeed, yet they are an essential component of any serious and strategic policy mix. Sanctions may be most useful after a strike against Iran’s nuclear-weapons facilities. At that point, American and other Western diplomats will need all the leverage they can get to assure that Iran’s rulers verifiably end the nuclear-weapons program, halt terrorism sponsorship, and ease domestic oppression. If an agreement cannot be reached, continuing and even tightening sanctions will make it more difficult for Iran to replace facilities destroyed after a military option has been exercised.
Jake Wallis Simons: Nobody Wants War with Iran. But It Must Be an Option—From the Israeli point of view, although many experts believe that Iran would not be so irrational as to develop and deploy a nuclear warhead, this is counterbalanced by the regime’s frequent threats against the Jewish state, and propagation of aggression towards it. Netanyahu is adamant that a policy towards Iran should take into account the “never again” lessons of the Holocaust. This underscores the seriousness with which Israel must take such threats.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians to Hagel: “We Don’t Need U.S. Troops Here”—Palestinians repeated this week their opposition to the idea of deploying a U.S.-led international force in the West Bank and Gaza. “We will not agree to the presence of any foreign forces in our territories,” spokesmen for various Palestinian groups said. “Such forces, especially if they are led by the U.S., would be viewed as an occupying power.”
Jonathan Schanzer: Abbas Needs an Heir Apparent—PA President Mahmoud Abbas is 78, a heavy smoker and a cancer survivor. In 2010, he reportedly was admitted six times to a Jordanian hospital for health reasons. Should the unthinkable happen, according to Palestinian Basic Law, Article 37, “the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council shall temporarily assume the powers and duties of the Presidency.” The current speaker is Aziz Dweik, who ran on the Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform ticket. Should Dweik succeed Abbas, it would be the end of any possible peace process. Yet Abbas has refused to allow political challengers to emerge in the West Bank.
Gordon Henderson: The PA Promotes Terror, the UK Pays for It—A culture of hate has wormed its way into the very fiber of Palestinian society. Incitement is pervasive in Palestinian school textbooks, on television programs and at cultural and sporting events. Palestinians have been consistently and unremittingly taught to hate Jews, Israel and the West, with maps replacing the State of Israel with “Palestine,” images of children carrying weapons, and cultural events named in honor of notorious Palestinian terrorists.
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik: Debate in Norway on Funding the PA—Norwegian state-owned TV, NRK, recently aired an 11-minute report on the direct connection between the PA’s promotion of hatred and terror glorification and Norwegian funding of the PA, at 300 million kroner a year ($52,628,700). The report noted that Palestinian “children grow up learning that Jews are ‘Satan with a tail.’…Adults hear that Jews are evil and not to be trusted. It is perhaps not surprising that the hatred is growing. The messenger is a [PA] government that receives large amounts [of money] from Norway.”
Matthew Duss and Michael Werz: Erdogan’s “Zionism” Comments Isolate Him and His Country—Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan recently grouped Zionism with anti-Semitism, fascism, and Islamophobia as “crimes against humanity.” Casting Zionism in this way is not only deeply offensive but also quite historically inaccurate and has the potential to promote or justify violence.
NGO Monitor: Disgraceful Diplomacy: EU Leaks and Secret NGO Processes—Many of the claims and conclusions in the “EU Heads of Mission Jerusalem Report 2012,” which recommends various sanctions against Israel, are based on non-verified statements and prejudicial opinions of NGOs which themselves receive funding from the EU and European governments. The secret cooperation between the EU and fringe NGOs produces damaging and ill-informed policies.
Einat Wilf: Israel Looks Inward—The recent Israeli elections were not about peace, and had very little to say on the matter. To borrow the American term, Israelis have chosen to focus on “nation-building at home.” Israelis made a rational choice. They took a look around them – at the Arab world, at the West Bank – and realized that they are not likely to face any major policy choices on these fronts anytime soon. They understood that the Arab world will be overwhelmed by its own problems for years to come. The Arabs in the West Bank, while continuing to detest Israel’s control over them, are still unable to make the difficult choices that would yield an agreement that would end this control.
Jay Famiglietti: Freshwater Losses in the Middle East—A new study on recent (2003-2009) water losses in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, based on data from a NASA satellite, concludes that the Middle East may be expected to continue to lose fresh water resources over time, primarily due to climate change. The best available science indicates that the arid and semi-arid regions of the world will become even more so: the dry areas of the world will become drier (while conversely, the wet areas will become wetter).
David Horovitz: The Desalination Revolution: How Israel Beat the Drought—For the foreseeable future, Israel’s water crisis is over, says Alexander Kushnir, who heads Israel’s Water Authority. Kushnir identifies a refusal to “rely on fate” as the key to a genuine strategic achievement in a desert region desperately short of natural water. The solution was desalination, on a major scale. The first large desalination plant came on line in Ashkelon in 2005, followed by Palmahim and Hadera. By the end of 2013, when the Soreq and Ashdod plants are working, there’ll be five plants – built privately at a cost of $2 billion.
Yasmina Hatem: The Film Lebanon Refused to Submit for an Oscar—Lebanon refused to endorse Lebanese Director Ziad Doueiri’s film “The Attack” because it wasn’t shot in Lebanon and had Israeli actors in it. The film, which is based on Yasmina Khadra’s French-language novel, is the story of an Arab surgeon living and working in Tel Aviv. After a bomb attack in a Jewish restaurant, the surgeon finds out his wife is the prime suspect.
Elihu D. Richter: The Palestinian-Israeli Textbook Study: Flawed and Wrong— The study had major limitations. It was narrowly confined to textual excerpts alone, and did not include homework assignments, guidebooks for teachers, and the larger educational environment of children. It therefore did not capture much of the explicitly horrendous incitement in the public square, summer camps, children’s TV programs, and print media. The study did not look at Hamas-run schools.
Adel Al Toraifi: The Future of Hizbullah—When the Arab Spring broke out, Hizbullah adopted the official Iranian stance in support of regime change, but as the uprisings continued, Syria changed the rules of the game, whereby Hizbullah sided with the Assad regime at the expense of unarmed Syrian citizens.
Eitan Haber: Will Bibi and Obama make history?— US president will not travel thousands of miles just to eat hummus or place note in Kotel.
Ulf Laessing: Christians grow anxious in ‘100 percent’ Islamic Sudan— When Pastor Kamis went to visit his small church in the Sudanese capital just before Christmas last year, he found a pile of rubble and the remains of a single blue wall.
Anna Mulrine: How US military plans to carry out Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’— A US policy shift toward Asia means a greater role for the Navy. Even pre-‘pivot to Asia,’ it already stationed half its ships in the region, and it is developing a new ‘afloat forward staging base’ in the Pacific.
Fred Weir: So many nyets: Why the chasm between US, Russia is so hard to bridge— Many in the West see a perplexing obstructionism in Russia’s stands on everything from Syria to adoption. But Russia is working from a fundamentally different understanding of the post-cold war world.
James Lewis: Dangerous Times: How Euro-socialism Set off a Fascist Bomb—This week Europe blew up. The media haven’t caught up yet, because they are what they are. But the markets are catching up fast.
G. Donald Allen: The Logic of Liberalism—For liberals, two common conclusions intertwine within their logic: spending more money, and the government as the centerpiece of all activities.
John Ozanich: The Hijacking of America—The logic and meaning of the Constitution have been degraded by actions of the Supreme Court. Political powers have been quick to take advantage.
Dan Joppich: Many Questions, No Answers—Earlier this week the usually compliant press had the audacity to question Jay Carney about Obama’s Chi-town mafia’s selling quarterly access to the highest official in the land for $500,000. Apparently expecting the question, Mr. Carney read a prepared response to journalists in the Press Pool. He reread the same statement again in response to the follow up question from Jake Tapper, as if Jake wasn’t paying attention the first time or was too stupid to understand what he was parroting. As the gaggle of media minions continued to yell follow-up questions, Jay, of course, slithered silently out of the room.
Sally Zelikovsky: When the Obama Administration Goes After a Journalist for Reporting the Truth—Bob Woodward isn’t the first journalist to be thrown under the proverbial bus by the Obama Administration. Back in April 2011, veteran San Francisco Chronicle journalist Carla Marinucci, was banned from the presidential press pool in San Francisco, a beat she’d been covering without incident for some time.
Michelle Malkin: Rotten to the Core, Part III: Lessons from Texas and the Growing Grassroots Revolt—Texas is a right-minded red state, where patriotism is still a virtue and political correctness is out of vogue. So how on earth have left-wing educators in public classrooms been allowed to instruct Lone Star students to dress in Islamic garb, call the 9/11 jihadists “freedom fighters” and treat the Boston Tea Party participants as “terrorists”?
Todd Starnes: College Shuts Down Student Bible Study—Officials at a Florida college ordered a group of students to shut down a Bible study they were holding in the privacy of a dorm room – because it violated the rules. The incident occurred at Rollins College in the midst of a campus battle over whether religious groups that require their leaders to follow specific religious beliefs are violating the school’s non-discrimination policies.
Kathryn Lopez: Faith Crucial to Life and State—”Humility isn’t incompatible with bravery,” Boehner reflected. “When we put God before ourselves … when we make ‘In God We Trust’ not just a motto, but a mission, as Rosa Parks did … any burden can be lifted,” he said. Boehner’s words about Parks are necessary and timely, a refresher on faith’s power to motivate, and a reminder that true heroism is selfless.
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Blessings in the Book of Revelation is a book that you need to read, especially now. There are blessings throughout the Scriptures but Revelation is the only book in the Bible actually containing a specific blessing for reading it. It’s repeated twice, once at the beginning and again at the end. This is the reason that I believe Revelation should be the first step toward studying biblical prophecy. Though not easy to do, Revelation can be broken down and understood by anyone, not just the academic elite. So, Revelation’s blessings are for everyone. Click here to order the eBook. Click here to order the paperback.
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Other Books by Neil Snyder
- Stand! is a suspense novel that exposes the lies, corruption, and greed underlying the theory that man-made CO2 emissions are responsible for global warming. Professor Wes Carlyle and Karen Sterling, his research collaborator, carefully scan the audience for their would-be attacker—a member of the enviro-gestapo who has been following them for days. Wes spots his man in the back of the room leaning against the wall. Suddenly, another man in the audience steps forward and moves toward Karen at a menacing pace. With a vicious stroke, he swings a billy club at her head. Click here to order the eBook. Click here to order the paperback.
- What Will You Do with the Rest of Your Life? deals with a question that every Christian has to consider: what should I do with my life? Click here to order the eBook. Click here to order the paperback.
- Falsely Accused is a true story about a young woman who was accused of committing a double homicide. It’s about a travesty of justice, and it reveals Yahweh intervening in the life of a believer to rescue her from danger in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Everyone will enjoy the book, but young people in particular need to read it because the mistakes made that led to the problem could have been avoided. They were the kinds of mistakes that young people are prone to make. As they say, forewarned is forearmed. Click here to order the eBook. Click here to order the paperback.
