Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 29, 1993 TAG: 9308290319
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GUY GUGLIOTTA THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
For much of the past half-century, the threat of being drafted into the armed forces was the grand prize awaiting every American male with the good fortune to reach his 18th birthday. Induction was even more fun. Hatred of government, it could be said, began here.
Given the draft's notoriety, it may come as a shock to know that on June 28 the House - virtually unnoticed - voted 207 to 202 to end funding for the Selective Service System, the agency that administers the draft. If the Senate follows suit, Selective Service will be a memory by Christmas.
"I cannot believe we need this," said Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark, D-Calif., during the floor debate. "It is of the order of the $600 toilet seats. Why would we spend $30 million a year to get a list of names of the young men who turn 18? It eludes me."
Actually, it's $28 million, but what's a couple of million when we're talking about dismantling a federal agency that spent its life invading the privacy of millions of young men only to send them to terrible places? Now this monster is skulking toward oblivion accompanied by toilet seats. How the mighty have fallen.
Since then-President Nixon abolished the draft in 1973, Selective Service has been out of the sword-of-Damocles business. Instead, most of what it has done for the past two decades (and not all the time) is collect names of 18-year-old men (it's still as sexist as ever) so it can put a draft into effect if, say, Iraq suddenly attacked Pearl Harbor. For this it needs 267 full-time employees. In 1972 it had 8,000.
The rationale for eliminating Selective Service, as advanced by Stark and others, is that the Soviet Union is gone and, as illustrated by Operation Desert Storm, the all-volunteer armed forces can handle anything that Iraq or any other country might try.
Still, the agency has plenty of friends on Capitol Hill, who believe, like Rep. Gerald B.H. Solomon, R-N.Y., that "threats to national security and world peace can occur at any moment." It is therefore a good idea, they say, to have a ready list of able-bodied men, especially when the active-duty armed forces are being "downsized" because of budget cutbacks and the end of the Cold War.
The Pentagon is studying the question, and in April was supposed to produce a report about it. This has not happened yet for reasons not readily apparent, but early drafts are said to advocate keeping Selective Service, at least for a little while.
Working for the ogre of all federal agencies (the IRS at least gives something back) could be depressing, especially when Congress is thinking about a shutdown. But Assistant Director Lewis C. Brodsky, a fortysomething Army veteran who handles Selective Service's public relations, remains affable in adversity.
"We always say that we know we're never going to be popular," Brodsky admitted. "When you're making a man do something unpleasant where he might lose his life, how eager is he going to be?"
Working out of Selective Service's red-brick Georgetown headquarters, Brodsky is responsible for promoting the agency, encouraging registration and watching the doings in Congress.
He is also an avid student of Selective Service history and a collector of agency memorabilia. His office displays the actual glass bowl used in the 1969 Vietnam-era lottery (the one in which Bill Clinton drew number 311). There are, he said, "plenty of ghosts around here."
Especially the ghost of Gen. Lewis B. Hershey. The patriarch of the draft ruled the Selective Service System from 1941 until 1970, supplying 13.3 million young draftees for three wars. On any day in his long reign, he could probably count on the active dislike of most of America's young men.
A bronze bust of Hershey greets visitors as they exit the elevator in front of the office of current Selective Service Director Robert W. Gambino.
by CNB