A draft in here?

Doubtful ruling means much

THIS SEEMS a topic tailor-made for talk radio. It involves the courts. (The federal courts at that!) A long-standing tradition. Men and women. War. The long arm of government. Throw in sports and you might have the perfect radio topic.

But there are no sports. Not if you don’t include politics.

It seems a federal judge down in Texas (in Texas!) ruled that the Selective Service law is unconstitutional. Because it requires men to sign up, but not women.

As far back as 1981, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that women could be exempt from registering for the draft because they were excluded from combat jobs. But all that changed in 2015 when those jobs were opened to women. So last week a judge decided that excluding women from the draft made no constitutional sense: “If there ever was a time to discuss ‘the place of women in the Armed Services,’” the judge wrote, “that time has passed.”

So, besides the gasping in some quarters, what does this mean? Answer: Probably not much. Mostly because there hasn’t been a draft in the United States in 45-some-odd years. In the last decade, Americans have been fighting several wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, not to mention smaller combat operations in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan . . . . And the war on terror might spread elsewhere tomorrow. This country has been able to do all that—while holding the fort in Germany, Japan, South Korea and Kuwait—without using inductees. The all-volunteer force has worked well, has worked wonders, for four-plus decades. It’s doubtful a draft is coming.

Doubtful, but not impossible. Which is the whole reason for this list of names in the first place: in case the nation needs an instant army to fight an unthinkable fight.

As a friend in the military put it this week, getting picked in the draft never meant an automatic ticket to a war anyway. It meant a trip to the draft board to see if there were any reasons why you could not go. Any woman, er, female, who couldn’t deploy could make her case there. And there are still physical standards that must be met for combat jobs.

There has been some talk that this ruling might be the final straw for the Selective Service. And that if America’s daughters are forced to sign up, the politics will be easier to kill the thing outright. On this, we should listen to the experts. Including one writing in The Hill earlier this month. Dennis Laich, a retired major general, wrote a sharp column before last week’s ruling, saying in part:

“From a national security perspective, the idea of eliminating the system is a slippery slope. The most recent National Defense Strategy identifies China and Russia as primary threats. War with either one might require mass mobilization, and the United States never has been able to achieve a mass mobilization without conscription. Abandoning the Selective Service System would take us one step further away from a timely response to a major threat and might embolden a potential adversary.”

The Selective Service, we should keep. Just so’s the rest of the world knows we have it. It’s doubtful the United States will ever use it again. Besides, if it becomes necessary, we might all be shooting at the bad guys over the fence anyway.

It’s not going to harm much if some of the names on the list are feminine.