As I watch the draft return, I wonder what it means to young people today. Perhaps defending the "national interest"--a lonely outpost among the oil wells, like something out of a Foreign Legion movie. As I grew up, the draft was one of the facts of life--like the war in Vietnam, which it served. I couldn't remember a time when it hadn't been there. To me it meant that the government had the ultimate claim on how I used my life. And in the end, whether it is called "preparedness" or "standing up to the Russians," that is what the draft will always mean to me, and why I will always oppose it.
And yet, as I grew up, I found it comforting to have something so reliable on the horizon. There it was, waiting for me on my 18th birthday: a fork in the road, a moment of choice, I was convinced, that would make "all the difference." Over the years my grave doubts about Vietnam had caused me to begin questioning all the variously given reasons why people should make war on one another. At some point I decided that human beings were not my enemies and that I would not kill them.
How this would translate into a response to the draft, I wasn't sure. One option was to apply for deferment as a conscientious objector. But although I respected the struggle of other C.O.'s for recognition of the demands of conscience, I thought it a strange commentary on our world that people should have to justify their refusal to kill.
Deferment seemed to represent a kind of private whim which the system could easily afford to indulge as long as it was claimed by only a few. Rather than entitling me to any privileges, I believed my conscience impelled me to challenge the legitimacy of the system itself. I decided that when I turned 18, I would simply refuse to register.
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