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Letters

Looking at the Draft, and Other National Service

Conscientious objector trainees of Company E, Fourth Battalion at the U.S. Army Medical Training Center in 1967, learning hand-to-hand combat, their only means of defense.Credit...Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

To the Editor:

Re “A Public Service Message From the Class of ’67,” by Serge Schmemann (Editorial Observer, June 11):

Mr. Schmemann writes that one classmate says “a national service program would be a political and economic nonstarter.” She may be right, but some government policy can build from smaller starts.

Continuing draft registration for men only is wrong. Congress should either abolish the Selective Service Act and save $23 million a year, or double down and register all women at 18.

Adding women to the sign-up would help create more connections of citizens to the military, and we would all be reminded that the draft is not just something that the National Football League does every spring.

LARRY ARMSTRONG
LINCOLN CITY, ORE.

The writer was a private first class company clerk in the United States Army in West Germany, 1966-67.

To the Editor:

Serge Schmemann explores every aspect of national service except for the central one: To what purpose would obligatory military service (with alternatives for nonbelligerents) be put?

Never defense-focused, the United States has pursued brutal, destabilizing wars abroad for the purposes of economic domination and the suppression of movements of social liberation.

Resistance to war, especially in Vietnam and Iraq, has made us aware of the true costs to non-Americans usually deemed racially inferior (as Muhammad Ali perfectly understood and acted upon).

Compared with this outrage, Mr. Schmemann’s reference to “the disruption to young lives” in this country comes across as callous and profoundly apolitical.

CARL G. MARTIN, MONTPELIER, VT.

To the Editor:

One of Serge Schmemann’s classmates, after a career in Washington, said that a return of national service would be a political and economic disaster. One of the lessons of Vietnam was that fighting an unpopular war is almost impossible if there is a draft.

It’s hard for me, a veteran, to see how a national service program could cost more than any of our recent wars of choice. As for a political disaster, well, just look at our current situation.

DAVID BACON, ASPEN, COLO.

The writer is a retired United States Army colonel.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition with the headline: Looking at the Draft, and Other National Service. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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