US Congress Ponders Military Draft As Conflicts Mount (Worthy News Investigation)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – The U.S. Congress is quietly working on a plan to automatically register young men for military service at a time of mounting international conflicts and threats, Worthy News established Friday.
An amendment passed by the U.S. House of Representatives could enroll males between the ages of 18 and 26 living in America into the military if needed.
The legislation, adopted last month as part of an annual defense authorization bill, has now moved to the U.S. Senate, Worthy News learned.
It would mandate the automatic registration of all men aged 18 to 26 in America in the Selective Service System, the federal database used for a military draft in case of a national emergency.
This new system of automatic draft registration would replace the existing system, in place since 1980, in which young men had the freedom to decide whether or not to sign up for the draft.
The House approved the bill with a vote of 217 to 199.
Among the votes, 211 Republicans supported the measure, but Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, and Matt Rosendale disagreed with their fellow party members and voted “no.”
MOST DEMOCRATS AGAINST
Some 196 Democrats voted against the bill, with six breaking ranks to vote in favor.
Talks about the draft come amid concerns that the U.S. military is overstretched and undersupplied as it faces multiple security challenges.
“While maintaining regional stability across the globe is critical to U.S. defense and national security objectives, simultaneously supplying major arms packages to Israel and Ukraine, at a time when the United States needs to prepare for the possibility of armed conflict with China, will stretch production lines and resources beyond sustainable limits,” warned the Atlantic Council, an influential American think tank.
These difficulties could “potentially jeopardize all U.S. supported efforts.
Recently, the U.S. response to the conflict in the Middle East and to Russia’s war in Ukraine has brought to light growing concerns about U.S. defense industrial capacity and about the spectrum of security cooperation the United States deploys,” the Atlantic Council added in a recent assessment seen by Worthy News.
“Limited resources within the Department of Defense are polarizing debates in Washington and beyond about which country needs help more: Israel or Ukraine?” the group noted.
The honest answer is less straightforward than one or the other. “While maintaining Israel’s and Ukraine’s sovereignty are both critical to U.S. national security objectives, the size of the United States’ involvement in helping each could, in turn, gamble with many of the same security objectives,” the Atlantic Council warned.
Its observations were due to play a key role as the U.S. Senate ponders the draft in a nation where the wounds of the Vietnam War have not been healed.
In Europe, similar debates are underway at a time of tensions with Russia over its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
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