Does Trump the isolationist know that his team wants to bring back the military draft?
Look at the top of this picture from Stop the Draft Week in Oakland in 1967..
See that doorway?
That’s where I was that day. Sitting in the doorway of the Oakland induction center with about a dozen other anti-war and anti-draft protesters waiting peacefully to be arrested.
The plan was for us to engage in classic civil disobedience while thousands of others attempted to block the busses bringing in inductees who would then be sent to Vietnam.
The Oakland police had other plans for us. There would be no arrests. Instead we were sprayed with mace and beaten with clubs.
My old friend, the late Chicago teacher union president Karen Lewis, was fond of the quote, “Make plans. God laughs.”
But the Movement against the war continued and the truth is that the military draft was a big motivator for opposition to the war.
The last draft call was on December 7, 1972, and the authority to induct expired on June 30, 1973. The date of the last drawing for the lottery was on March 12, 1975. Registration with the Selective Service System was suspended on April 1, 1975, and registrant processing was suspended on January 27, 1976.
Now when the United States gets involved in military operations abroad, as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Israel or Ukraine, it does it without draftees, sometimes without any boots on the ground at all.
For nearly forty years American presidents, gun shy about a new anti-war movement, have stayed away from any suggestion of starting up the military draft again.
Oddly, a trial balloon suggesting a new draft is coming from Team Trump, even as Trump himself has tried to present himself as an isolationist opposed to the U.S. getting involved at all in foreign wars.
Christopher Miller, who led the Pentagon during the chaotic closure of Trump’s tenure in Washington, detailed his vision for the ASVAB (draft) and a range of other changes as part of Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s aspirational government-wide game plan should the presumptive Republican nominee return to the White House. Though Trump has not publicly endorsed its policy proposals, Miller is among a cluster of influential former administration officials and GOP lawmakers who have mused aloud about a national service mandate and other measures to remedy what they see as a “crisis” facing the all-volunteer military.
Trump has been complimentary of Miller’s performance during his administration and suggested that, if there is a second term, he might reprise his role as defense secretary, a powerful Cabinet post with sway over Pentagon policy. And though the former president has not weighed in on this Heritage strategy document, he did embrace many of the organization’s proposals at the outset of his first term.
That is not the news story Trump wants our there if he wants to grab any of the dwindling cohort of young voters that have deserted Biden.
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday said an article published by the Washington Post implying he’d consider a mandatory military service rule at the urging of some in his inner circle is "completely untrue" and that he's "never even thought" of instituting a national service requirement.
Did the cognitively impaired (and convicted felon) Trump even know his team was planning to bring back a military draft if the Old Man gets elected again?
Or does the threat of a reborn anti-draft movement scare the hell out of him?