Rachel Strehlow
Published: January 24, 2006
As people hear rumors about the war in Iraq on a daily basis, some of them worry that a draft is coming soon. Will college students be drafted? Will brothers and boyfriends and friends of yours soon be drafted if there aren’t enough volunteer soldiers to go to the Middle East? Will “you” be drafted?
With feminist groups petitioning the government to draft women, girls are wondering if someday they’ll be drafted, too… and most people hardly even know what a draft would entail.
First of all, if you’re a woman or man younger than 18 and older than 25, the odds are very slim that you’ll ever be drafted. Second of all, with the way Congress is voting, there probably won’t be any draft at all, as long as the war stays overseas.
Recently, Representative Charles B. Rangel (D-New York) and Senator Ernest F. Hollings (D-South Carolina) tried to pass bills demanding that every male and female between 18 and 26 in the United States serve two years in our military (for the medically disabled, community service). However, these bills failed in both the House and Senate.
Even though the bills were set aside completely, and even though the Bush administration has said it’s against the draft many times, people were spreading rumors that President Bush was in favor of this legislation.
To end this speculation, the bill introduced by Rangel was put up for a vote by the House of Representatives. The bill was voted down 402 to 2. In other words, it’s pretty much gone for good. Rangel even voted against his own bill. He revised this draft and tried again twice, but those bills were rejected too.