On Mon, 24 May 1999, Michael Hoover wrote:
> ...despite fact that no one has been drafted since 1973, the 1947 Act is
> still on the books...Prez Ford followed Nixon's decision to stop
> inducting with suspension of registration in 1975...Carter renewed
> registration in 1980 (Congress authorized funding for registering 18 yr
> old men after a fairly heated debate)...in 1983 (I think), Congress
> passed a bill prohibiting higher ed financial assistance to males 18 and
> older who have not registered...
This is true and important, but we should remember why the draft was effectively ended in '73: the US army in Vietnam had revolted. "Fragging" (e.g., rolling a fragmentation grenade under the occupied bed of a gung-ho officer) had entered the lexicon some years before, and the US had slowly learnt one of the real lessons of Vietnam, as the French had learnt it there before them: it is inadvisable to fight a colonial war with a conscript army. Our leaders corrected that mistake by instituting (as kelley implies) an economic draft, which has for a generation produced a biddable professional class-based military.
--C. G. Estabrook