# Politicians keep bringing up "The Draft." Would people even go if conscripted?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/politicians-keep-bringing-up-the-draft-would-people-even-go-if-conscripted/416122>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [August 19, 2007, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/politicians-keep-bringing-up-the-draft-would-people-even-go-if-conscripted/416122 "2007-08-19T06:48:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 7

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**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2007, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/politicians-keep-bringing-up-the-draft-would-people-even-go-if-conscripted/416122/121 "2007-08-28T15:20:05Z")

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The reason Canada didn’t extradite draft dodgers during the Vietnam era is that draft dodging wasn’t a crime in Canada. Most countries won’t extradite you for things that aren’t crimes in their country.

Since we don’t have a draft nowadays but an all-volunteer army, Canada will ship you back, because desertion is a crime in Canada.

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**Author:** ![netsplit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@netsplit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/netsplit)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2007, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/politicians-keep-bringing-up-the-draft-would-people-even-go-if-conscripted/416122/122 "2007-08-28T15:28:56Z")

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[QUOTE=Lemur866]  
The reason Canada didn’t extradite draft dodgers during the Vietnam era is that draft dodging wasn’t a crime in Canada. Most countries won’t extradite you for things that aren’t crimes in their country.

Since we don’t have a draft nowadays but an all-volunteer army, Canada will ship you back, because desertion is a crime in Canada.  
[/QUOTE]

Makes sense, but if the draft was brought back would Canada ship people back for dodging it?

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**Author:** ![Sunrazor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sunrazor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunrazor)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2007, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/politicians-keep-bringing-up-the-draft-would-people-even-go-if-conscripted/416122/123 "2007-08-28T19:10:41Z")

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I thought of this thread when I saw [this article](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20478293/site/newsweek/) on [msnbc.com](http://msnbc.com) today. Maybe I remember it wrong (it was, after all, almost 40 years ago) but I don’t recall the sons of rich and influential people being drafted into the service to serve in line combat units in Vietnam. The idea that we need a draft so it spreads the danger evenly over all social classes is naive and a little forgetful. Yes, there were some sons of the priveleged who served in Vietnam as staff officers, and maybe one or two were actually lost in combat. But these were rare. For the most part, the wealthy kept their children out of the draft (there was a joke about advice from Doctor Spock going around at the time) by paying to keep them in college or getting them into the NG and Reserves. There is no reason to think that the captains of industry would allow their sons and daughters to serve in a drafted military.

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