ALAN DUNN, BEAVERTON, ORE.

To the Editor:

Clyde Haberman’s incisive and logical call to bring back the draft so more Americans would have “skin in the game” is no more than wishful thinking. As Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s series on Vietnam showed, the most powerful voices against the war were those raised by veterans, many of whom were draftees. Eliminating the draft was diabolically shrewd. Never again would these voices trouble the warmakers.

RICHARD BIRD, HAMPTON, N.J.

To the Editor:

Clyde Haberman gives an eloquent and realistic argument for reinstating a requirement for national military service. I only wish he had expanded on his reference to options for national service in areas other than the military. Service of any kind that targets national and community needs “would be a profoundly democratizing action.”

ELIZABETH BJORKMAN

LEXINGTON, MASS.

To the Editor:

After World War II, many Americans recognized how unprepared the country had been to defend itself against threats from abroad. President Harry Truman in 1945 proposed a system called Universal Military Training, which would have required all males to serve in the military for a year of training and then six years in the reserve. Congress refused to pass the program.

Other countries, such as Switzerland, have such systems, giving them the ability to activate a force of hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) in a matter of hours. The Swiss use the system as a democratization tool (with rich and poor getting to know each other) as well as a preparedness program. President Truman had the same hope for his system.

Perhaps we would not be faced with our divisions today if we had Universal Military Training now.

STEPHEN R. LANGENTHAL

NEW YORK

To the Editor:

It should not have to take a draft in order for more of us to more responsibly consider our foreign affairs, any more than it should take a possible tax cut for us to consider federal spending choices. It is perhaps a failure of both our politics and responsible citizenship that each and every American does not identify with what is done in our name by our country.

NEIL J. LISS, SALEM, ORE.

To the Editor:

The mission of the Defense Department is simple: “to provide the military forces needed to deter war and to protect the security of our country” (according to its website). To accomplish this mission, we enlist and train the best qualified we can find in order to field a superior fighting force. Sadly, some 70 percent of today’s youth can’t meet the standards we have established, whether because of obesity, education, drug use or infractions of the law.