How About a Bigger, More Useful Army?

I read something the other day—that as many as 75% of America’s kids are ineligible for military service. Reasons: poor education, overweight, criminal records. They simply cannot pass the pre-induction tests that the military requires before you put on the uniform.
That brought back to memory several kids I knew in my teens who simply weren’t making it all that well in school or in life. In a case or two, a judge gave a kid a choice: army or jail. I recall a chap who opted for the marines rather than having to admit to paternity.
For these guys, the military was a haven of last resort (there were no wars while I was in high school or college). Some of them turned out quite well after a three year tour of peeling potatoes and standing guard duty. The army didn’t feel it was being hurt, either.
Apparently that option is gone today for a lot of kids who could really use it. As I was thinking about it, an idea I had way back then came back to me. Why not make military service universal, for fat and skinny, for poor students and good ones, for non-violent criminals in lieu of a life of crime, which they would be taught by spending time in prison?
This idea came to me while I was dodging the draft—an exercise that was perfectly legal under the 1948-1973 draft law; it merely required a few side steps and a little calculation. For much of that time the monthly draft call was only about 3,000 kids a month.
Everybody knew that his “Greetings from Uncle Sam” were due about precisely two months after one’s twenty-second birthday. After that you had to rely on being in grad school, holding certain jobs (like teaching) or getting married and having a child.
I did all of those things—like some kind of two-step dance. It limited your freedom of action—none of this touring the world after college. “You’re in the army now… .” No staying single while you established a career or just enjoyed yourself. “You’re in the army … .”
One of my friends got a little careless with his grad school application and spent two years in Alaska peeling potatoes. He was just dumb—but he felt so bitter over being one of the few who came up “it” that he never really got over it.
Going in the military was a matter volunteering when you had no better option or being inept enough to get caught. Until Vietnam heated up, draftees were just guys who missed deadlines and couldn’t keep their dates straight. It wasn’t hard to stay out.
At the same time, we had a nation full of kids in poor health, poorly educated, or slipping into a habit of B&E’s, criminal rowdiness and so forth. “What,” I thought, “would be wrong with drafting EVERYBODY (like they do in some European nations), male AND FEMALE (the way they do in Israel)”?
Nobody would feel screwed just because he happened to get tagged. It was part of living; you expected it like you did driver’s training or at least two years of high school. What a marvelous opportunity to get your hands on every kid in the country—and not let him or her go until their health problems were dealt with, until they could read and write, until they had their heads knocked hard enough that they finally realized certain criminal behaviors were simply unacceptable!
We spend billions on the military—and they spend years training men and women to do everything from run computer systems to shooting huge cannon. Why not use some of those billions to overcome deficiencies caused by poor education, bad hygiene and lousy choices?
That could make our military—at war and peace—worth any money we spent on it! Why not! (I’m aware that many officers and non-coms would sputter at the mere thought of taking on what they saw as a babysitting job—but is training raw civilians to become proficient killers on land, sea and air any easier?) Again, why not?
Anybody got a better idea for the millions of kids who are too fat, too uneducated, or who already have criminal records?