Draft anxiety

Life as a student during the War on Terror looks pretty normal to someone on the outside. On campus, there are no marches, no sit-ins, no strikes. Few of us look like we've lost sleep over the war. We talk mostly about other things. It's not like during the Vietnam War, when, it seems to us, many more people wore their anxiety and anger on their sleeves.

Instead, most of us have a small, dense block of fear deep down - fears we've never had before, like of terrorist attacks, economic collapse, loss of civil rights, nuclear war. Some people's fears rise to the surface, but for most students, they just sit down there, gnawing at our gut.

That fear has spread and grown over the past few months on college campuses, on the heels of new rumors about the draft.

The possibility of forced military service took root in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush declared a war that seemed limitless. But it wasn't until this semester, when students began to hear that reserve units were missing their recruiting goals, that rumors really began to spread. Now nearly 40 percent of students think there will be a draft soon, according to Newsweek.

The official word from Washington, of course, is that a draft will never happen. "We're not going to have a draft so long as I'm the President," said President Bush in an October debate. Donald Rumsfeld said the draft has never been "debated, endorsed, discussed, theorized, pondered or even whispered about" by anyone in the administration.

In truth, the draft is unlikely. But no one knows for sure if it will happen, because no one can predict the future. What keeps the fears and rumors alive is that while Bush tells us not to worry about a draft, everything else he's doing makes us more and more worried.

For one thing, Rumsfeld lied: there are, in fact, proposals on the table for renewing the draft. An internal Selective Service memo, presented to two of Rumsfeld's undersecretaries, shows the government has been preparing for a skills-based draft, according to CounterPunch and Rolling Stone. Men and women ages 18 to 34 would have to register their skills with the government; those with have a high-demand skill would be drafted.

Another recent trend that makes us nervous is the fact that military reserve units, which make up 40 percent of our force in Iraq, are running out of people. A report last week said that five of the six reserve units fell short of their recruiting goals last fiscal year.

Reservists are also having their tours of duty extended far beyond what they signed up for - what some are calling a "back-door draft." The Pentagon is thinking of scrapping a rule that says Reservists and Guard members cannot be called up for more than 24 months, according to news reports. The Army Reserve is becoming a "broken force," said Lt. Gen. James Helmly, the reserve's commander.

But by far the biggest trend that is making students more and more nervous about a draft is that every corner of the world seems to be moving toward war.

Bush says there will be no draft; but he has not said when, or under what circumstances, we'll get out of Iraq. More countries are making nuclear weapons. The Pentagon is developing a plan to attack Iran, writes Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker. President Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive war has been joined by a march toward "expansion of freedom in all the world." Students worry that this means another war, and we won't have the soldiers to fight. Ten of our 12 combat divisions are locked down in Iraq, either coming or going, according to Sen. Joseph Biden.

Bush and Rumsfeld criticize people who talk openly of their fear of a draft. They say the Pentagon has a plan to find more people, and that Congress would have to authorize the draft. Both things are true. The draft remains a very distant possibility.

And they are right that no one should play on the public's fears. But what they do not realize is that nothing spreads fear as fast as their drumbeat for war.

In this way President Bush has failed at one of the President's great duties: calming the public in times of crisis.

Great presidents gave the public hope in such times. But great presidents also had the credibility to reassure. Bush has misled us so many times - on weapons, on "Mission Accomplished" - that he has lost that ability. He is going for broke; for war, against the odds. Rather than ease our honest fears, he scorns them, and they gnaw harder.