For the second successive year, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) has included an ill-considered and unworkable proposal by the Selective Service System (SSS) to try to automatically construct a database of potential draftees from other government records collected for other purposes in the House version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The proposal to try to register young men “automatically” on the basis of aggregation and (mis)matching of other poorly-suited databases collected and intended for other purposes may fit perfectly with the standard operating procedures of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has already obtained access to the Selective Service registration database for unknown purposes. But if DOGE were really concerned with ending wasteful and inefficient government programs and agencies, it would have recommended abolishing the SSS, not making an attempt to salvage it.
Ongoing passive but pervasive noncompliance makes registration or a draft unenforceable. Compliance has fallen dramatically since the start of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and there’s been even more concern among potential draftees about activation of either a general draft or a draft of health care workers since the U.S. bombing of Iran. Deployment of soldiers for immigration enforcement, transportation of deportees to overseas death camps, and policing of domestic political protests in L.A. and elsewhere has prompted another surge of concern about a possible draft and what sorts of illegal orders might be given to both draftees and enlistees.
Automatic draft registration won’t magically make the registration database accurate or complete. But it has been proposed by SSS staff — otherwise threatened with losing their jobs if the agency is shut down as a useless failure — because it would enable the agency to pretend to be ready to implement a draft on demand. And it’s supported by both Republican and Democratic hawks because it would enable them to continue to pretend that the draft is available as a fallback option, so they can plan, prepare, and commit the U.S. to endless, unlimited war(s) without having to think about whether the people are willing to fight those wars, even if they escalate.
Whether warmongers like it or not, “automatic” draft registration can’t solve the compliance problem because no other government databases have all the information needed to identify all potential draftees or determine who is and who isn’t subject to the draft or required to register.
Hellbound and Down 