Universal National Service Act of 2003

UNIVERSAL NATIONAL SERVICE ACT OF 2003 -- (Extensions of Remarks - October 08, 2004)

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose H.R. 163, a bill to reinstate the draft. Rumors of a military draft have been flying around the Internet and the possibility has been discussed at millions of lunch and dinner tables all over the country. Constituents, especially those with kids and grand-kids, have called me to ask, "Is this true?" The answer is no. We will defeat this bill today. But that doesn't mean that American families don't have to worry about a draft-a backdoor draft.

In the Army alone, over 20,000 soldiers have had their tours of duty extended. Seven thousand active duty soldiers and 3,000 National Guardsmen and Reservists will be forced into extended deployments by President Bush's "stop loss" orders that prevent them from leaving the service after their contract expires. Those orders hurt our brave men and women and they hurt their families. Extended deployments over-seas have been correlated to increased rates of alcoholism, domestic violence and divorce. The biggest tragedy of the current situation in Iraq is that the lives of brave military men and women are being disrupted-and in some cases changed forever-because of wrong foreign policies.

More appropriate foreign policies that do not call on our troops to attack foreign countries on a unilateral preemptive basis would allow us to meet our defense and national security needs with a volunteer force. Our young men and women have seen the impact of our current policy in Iraq. They have seen over 1,000 lose their lives in a war of choice, and, even worse, they have seen our troops sent into battle without modern protective equipment. As a result, military men and women are not re-enlisting. For the first time since 1994, the Army National Guard came up short on its recruiting goals. The Army has nearly tripled its previous top enlistment bonus to certain recruits, lowered its standards for new recruits and added hundreds of new recruiters in what looks to be a long-shot effort to meet next year's goal. The way to fill our security needs is not to reinstate a draft. The answer is to change our policies and to make sure that we are taking care of the troops we have.

Our troops are stretched thin and getting thinner. We are losing what little support from the international community we had in Iraq. Poland, our third largest ally in Iraq just announced they will soon fix a date for the withdrawal of its 2,500 troops. We launched a unilateral, preemptive war against a country that did not have weapons of mass destruction or a link to al Qaeda. We now know that not only did Iraq not have nuclear weapons, but that virtually every U.S. expert-and international expert-questioned the claim before we went to war, but those views were kept secret.

Either President Bush knew that his own experts disagreed and refused to acknowledge the fact, or he went to war without knowing that his justification for war was being challenged within his own Administration. In either case, it is tragic that it is the military men and women and their families who are now paying the price and facing the backdoor draft. They deserve much better.