Now do you believe we need a draft? We're in a new kind of war. Time for a new kind of draft.

• Author: Moskos, Charles
• Position: Column - Statistical Data Included

PRESIDENT BUSH HAS SAID THAT THE new war against terrorism will be a different kind of conflict. He is more right than he knows. Not only are we facing a uniquely shadowy enemy, one committed to inflicting mass civilian casualties on US. soil. But for the first time in our history we are entering a war of significant size and probable duration (administration officials have said it may last for "years") without drafting young men to fight the threat.

Not only are we not drafting our young men. We are not even planning to draft them. Elected leaders are not even talking about the possibility of drafting them. That terrorists might poison municipal water supplies, spray anthrax from crop dusters, or suicidally infect themselves with small pox and stroll through busy city streets, is no longer considered farfetched. That we might need to draft some of our people to counter these threats--now that's considered farfetched, to the extent that it's considered at all.

America needs to wake up. We're at war. We need a draft. But because this is a new kind of conflict, we need a new kind of draft. A 21st century draft would be less focused on preparing men for conventional combat-which probably won't be that extensive in this war--than on the arguably more daunting task of guarding against and responding to terrorism at home and abroad. If structured right, this new draft might not be as tough to sell as you would think.

Churchill famously said that America could be counted on to do the right thing, after exhausting all other possibilities. On the subject of the draft, we are rapidly reaching that point of exhaustion. A draft might be avoidable if enough Americans were volunteering to serve. But we're not. Soon after the events of September 11, newspapers reported that the phones in military recruitment offices were ringing off the hook. Follow up with stories showed that all that clamor had brought virtually no new recruits. So far, our patriotism, though sincerely felt, has largely amounted to flag-waving and coat holding.

Perhaps we could get by without a draft if our all-volunteer military had more than enough troops on hand. But it doesn't. The actions so far taken in Afghanistan, and the buildup to support those actions, have been relatively modest. Yet with personnel cut by a third since the end of the Cold War, the services were hard-pressed to meet ongoing missions even before September 11. There is already talk of pulling U.S. forces out of the Balkans, something the Bush administration wanted to do anyway. But it will not please our NATO allies, whose long-term support we will need in the fight against terrorism, and who will have to fill the gap with more troops of their own.

We are calling up large numbers of reservists, but because so many of them work as police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians, our municipalities are being drained of precisely the people we will need if (when) the terrorists return.

Indeed, it seems clear that we are going...