Finally, with an extended military campaign on the drawing boards for the first time since the Vietnam era, we asked people about the makeup of the military. There have been calls, since Sept. 11, for a reinstitution of the draft, and a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll in October found deep support -- 77 percent -- for the idea. On the other hand, those likely to be drafted aren't as enthusiastic. A Harvard Institute of Politics poll of college undergraduates in October found 68 percent of them opposing a reinstatement of the draft, though 79 percent supported the airstrikes and 68 percent supported the use of ground troops.

Without a draft, the military tends to draw disproportionately from lower-income people. As Roby, the Baltimore nonprofit worker, pointed out, "The military traditionally has been a good career for people who don't have a lot of options." But is it fair that the responsibility for defending our country falls so heavily on poorer people? With some exceptions, our respondents tended to say that because no one has to join the military, it is fair.

"What makes it fair is because they volunteer," said Boyd, the St. Louis salon owner. "Now, if it was a draft, that would be different if they only took the poor people."

Many oppose reinstating the draft, some because they don't believe Americans should ever be forced to do anything they don't want to do, but more because they feel that a professional, volunteer military makes a more effective fighting force.

"The draft is bullshit," said Hickel, the San Francisco collections agent, who adds he was drafted during the Vietnam War after a stint in the merchant marine, but avoided serving. "They should keep up the high standards and make it a profession. When they drafted people who didn't know what they were doing in Vietnam, people got killed. They shouldn't have even been there."

Palmer, in Minneapolis, said she'd be in favor of a draft only if it were universal and played no favorites. But she's referring to gender, not the type of maneuvering that kept our last two presidents, as well as former Vice President Dan Quayle and current Vice President Dick Cheney, from combat duty.

"If they're going to draft my male friends, then they should draft me," she said. "And if they're going to require people to be in the military or perform some kind of service, they should require me to do that, too, and they don't. So as long as it's not balanced, then they shouldn't do it at all."

Roby adds that she thinks a return of the draft would lead to a less activist U.S. military. "We'd see a lot less interest in military interventions around the world" if there were a draft, she said. "I think probably the military leadership feels like the fighting guys who are young and poor and all that are maybe expendable. If they're sending middle-income people, like the people who were killed in the World Trade Center, or upper-income people, overseas, there'd probably be more incentive not to intervene."

Deck, who said he enlisted in the Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army, would like to see the draft return. "I'd actually be for some kind of a draft, for a couple of years," he says. Military service "did me a lot of good, and I think it's done a lot of people that I know a lot of good." He added, however, that even without a draft, "apparently the military's doing a heck of a good job with what we've got, even though I believe we're getting the lower socioeconomic groups in there for the better percentage."

Cross, the Alabama Republican, said he doesn't like the idea that the armed forces tend to be made up of poor people, "but there ain't a whole lot I can do about it. I keep voting these sorry bastards out, but then another one gets in."

Cross said if he were in charge, there would be a draft for all young American men, with no special considerations for anybody. "It wouldn't make no difference who their daddy was. He come of age, by God, he'd go in the military."

Cross said he enlisted in the Army in 1953, when there was a draft. "I went in, and I served my time. And then I got out," he said.

"I didn't like it."

Additional reporting by Damien Cave and Suzy Hansen.

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