In the Israeli draft law, if one is called up, men are mandated to serve for 3 years, women for 2. It was a topic of some friendly joking* between HS classmates’ parents who did their mandatory service in the IDF.
Yes, women should have to register if men do. Agree completely.
I think if we activated the draft, perhaps on a lottery basis as we did in Vietnam, but did not allow for student deferments or exemptions that favor the privileged, we might see an end to our state of perpetual war. I think we would have had much more resistance to our Iraq fiasco if our own sons and daughters had to go over there and fight.
Young people need to be engaged what we are doing militarily around the globe, and until it affects them personally, they have no real reason to care.
Israel doesn’t allow women in combat positions as far as I know, but women do everything else, again keep in mind that in the military, for every person in combat, you need multiples of people behind the lines, it is roughly 10 to 1…and for every support position you fill, potentially frees up more people for combat. Even assuming you don’t want women in combat, they already do a ton of support positions like that, so if we drafted women, then we could free up men for combat (and again, I am not saying I think women shouldn’t be allowed in combat).
The draft was never meant to be a rapid thing, it is why they have reserves, they can call up reserves and national guard faster than they can draft (it is what happened in Korea, if I recall correctly). The peacetime draft was a lot smaller than the wartime one, and was designed to be the basis for any armed action, then they would open the draft up further to handle the situation at hand.
" I would think that many of the men coming out of the depression era when the draft was started in September 1940 were also not in shape for military service. " No, they weren’t, when the first draft happened in 1939, almost 50% of the candidates were 4F, and a large majority of those were caused by malnutrition (William Manchester wrote about it in his book “The Glory and the Dream”, and he used that to counter some of the recent day propoganda about how the depression wasn’t so bad, it showed how bad it was and also how ill prepared the depression left us. They probably were a lot less picky later on.
In a sense, what we have today with the all volunteer force is what we had with the draft let’s say back in the 1950’s, they are the basis for most fighting, and the draft is simply a fallback if the US has needed beyond which the volunteer forces can handle. I don’t think we are going to face that scale of fighting, unless we decided to open up full scale campaigns in every place with issues, which some less than astute politicians seem to suggest to make themselves look tough, I doubt we will get to that point. That said, I think that having selective service registration for men and women is both a sign of fairness, and also gives us a large pool to take from if needed, whether or not women are going into combat or not.
jym,
if you don’t understand how the draft is related to the geopolitical environment of the world, now and in the future, then I don’t know what to tell you.
cobrat,
again, I agree the Russia situation is unlikely.
Unlikely does not mean it cannot happen.
I don’t imagine the cost is very high to register people for a potential draft.
“Young people need to be engaged what we are doing militarily around the globe, and until it affects them personally, they have no real reason to care.”
Well then realistically most adults in the US have no real reason to care…
As someone who IS of draft age and who already lost a brother in law in this godforsaken disaster in the middle east, not to mention countless friends who are physically alive but mentally very damaged after their tours, I can tell you I very much care about what we’re doing with our military around the globe.
And it is for that very reason that I adamantly believe the draft should be abolished completely for both men and women.
By the way, I lost my BIL in middle school. I’m now a PhD student. I have never known peace time and I’ve never really experienced a time when my friends and loved ones weren’t being shipped off.
I don’t really know a single person of my generation who hasn’t been affected by the military in some way. Whether that be the fact that Mr R’s best friend couldn’t be his best man because he was in Iraq or the loss of my BIL. We are in no way unique.
soccerguy,
I have no idea what your comment is in reference to. I simply asked how many in the US were exempt or failed to register. Perhaps your crack about the geopolitical world environment was related to something else. But the digression to the issues in Russia, Korea, etc are off topic.
Is it unfathomable to you that there might be a pressing need for more people to serve than are signing up voluntarily?
Imperial Japan, France at varying points until 1996…but especially from 1905 (Third Republic) when many exemptions were abolished except for medical grounds, and Germany even with the Weimar Republic period are a few cases which illustrate how having a universal draft doesn’t necessarily mean leaders…even democratically elected ones as in the latter two cases would necessarily be deterred from military adventurism/aggression.
Imperial Japan even during the brief period of “Taisho Democracy”** weren’t deterred from maintaining its empire and even expansionism as shown in the 1931 “Manchurian Incident”.
And the embittered attitudes among a critical mass of Germans of the period from the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty, economic effects of the Great Depression combined with bad memories of the Great inflation of the early '20s, and strong anti-semitic/xenophobic attitudes among them was such Hitler and the Nazi party were able to get themselves democratically elected in 1933 by capitalizing on those factors. They brought back universal conscription in 1935 which had been abolished after WWI as the terms of the Versailles Treaty banned it.
** Continued into the very early parts of Hirohito’s reign until the militarists effectively seized control of the government in the early '30s through political assassinations and at least one attempted coup in 1936 by militarist factions within the Imperial Japanese armed forces officer corps. While democratically elected leaders were still existing in the early period, they were effectively powerless due to those assassinations and blatant refusal of the powerful military officer corps to obey civilian political leaders…or sometimes even their superior officers if they felt those officers “weren’t patriotic towards the emperor enough”.
I won’t delete any of these posts at this point, but let’s be sure to stay on topic and not set up the inevitable meandering streams that come from posts such as the last with its historical examples of eliminating exemptions, etc., interesting though I do find it. The topic is women registering for the draft the same as men are currently required to do, not if the draft should or should not exist, etc. In other words, assuming everything else stays relatively status quo, such as military service remaining voluntary, whatever exemptions exist would remain the same, and the reason for registration presumably being in case of national emergency, should women have to register. If so why, or if it should remain as is then why? Citing what other countries do in this regard seems like fair game, but keep it narrow. Talking about reactivating the draft is off topic.
jym,
per the mod comments above (which I hadn’t read when I wrote this), I deleted my part of the response, but you can’t just imagine you didn’t say things that you posted.
I don’t think anyone in the thread has argued that women should be exempt if there is a draft (admittedly, I didn’t go back and read the whole thing).
Also worth noting, that the U.S. doesn’t want what Israel has, which is mandatory service (at least, a majority of the U.S. does not).
but abolishing the draft is not related at all to current military operations… since there is no draft.
The draft is in place for the potential of a future circumstance where it might be required (obviously, hopefully this never happens).
edit: fallenchemist (after reading your previous post), if you have to delete this post, please do so. Just posting in response to the thread. I think it is ok, but understand if you make the decision it is not. 
soccerguy,
Please read post# 89. This thread is about whether or not women should be included in registration for US selective service. It is not about Imperial Japan or China or other issues perhaps worthy of discussion in another thread. And if you are going to attack a post from a day and a page or so ago, don’t expect posters to be mind readers and guess which one it was.
edit:
Looks like you read post # 89!!
Agree. Women should also be required to register for the draft.
that’s fine jym.
but I also think everyone would benefit if you didn’t completely mischaracterize what you said! 
Once again I have no idea what you are referencing., soccer guy. Apparently you know what I said somewhere but I don’t. 8-| But no matter. Let’s not go there as it will be irrelevant and off topic.
Without getting into the merits or probabilities of the draft, assuming that the current registration reflects potential need down the road, then yes, women should be required to register as well as men. If we ever have a military or other emergency requiring pulling people in off the selective service rolls, then it only makes sense that women be included in it. From there, what roles are suitable to who is up to debate, but in terms of where we are as a society and the idea that the SS registration is there for an emergency, it would be the ultimate double standard to require it only of young men, it is basically once again saying women shouldn’t/don’t have an equal responsibility to our society/country (it is no big surprise that many of those opposed to women being registered are not exactly feminists).
If we have a draft at all, yes both men and women should register for it. I’d also like to see it eliminated, however. For both.
^What would you envision in the event of an emergency situation, OHMomof2?
I’d think we’d have (and we have had) many more volunteers when an emergency arises. If that doesn’t do it, then a draft if necessary. I agree that the whole notion of registering seems redundant with tax records, MV records, etc.
I am not sure how many men actually register when they turn 18 unless/until they have to apply for financial aid?