War in the Eastern Hemisphere is reviving political discussion of the draft, the American name for conscription. Conscription in one form or another has been the primary way that those in power have forced those with little power to risk their lives in the service of the powerful.

The practice is so old that there’s probably no record of its first application. King David sent a romance adversary off to war. Pete Hegseth wants an all-male military with high testosterone.

Let’s focus on recent history where we have somewhat reliable records. In the days of wooden warships, most of the sailors were poor conscripts, forbidden to leave the ship. Discipline involved flogging or worse.

If the conscript sailors were married, sometimes their wives were allowed on board overnight. Occasionally, the ships were called into action immediately, and there was no opportunity to discharge the women, some of whom could be pregnant. The concussion of the guns would send mothers into labor — the baby became almost literally a son-of-a-gun, condemned to a life of deprivation. The order show-a-leg was a way for the petty officers to determine which hammocks were women who did not have to turn out. They could still become casualties.

Hammocks were an innovation the sailors copied from Caribbean natives. Before that, sailors slept wherever they could find a place. Berths were only for officers, cabins for captains.

English conscripts were impressed, harvested off the streets by roving thugs. British warships even impressed sailors off American merchant ships. England reasoned that the men had been born English subjects and therefore still obligated to the crown. This was the official cause of the war of 1812.

Conscription was not limited to navies. Armies also depended on conscripted cannon fodder. Conscription in the U.S. has gone through its own series of scandals. During the Civil War, rich men could pay to have someone poor go in their place.

In America, the draft evolved into an official lottery that reduced the bribery aspect. Soldiers were mostly selected at random, but the rich have had more options to avoid service, such as easy college enrollment and connections. They are more likely to have a degree that led to a commission as an officer. Senators’ sons rarely go to the front line.

Armies are slowly learning that professionals are better soldiers than conscripts, just as industry learned a long time ago that slaves are not as productive as free workers. Free workers seldom sabotage the machines. Soldiering has become too technical for cannon-fodder grunts.

In the military, there are officers and enlisted. Traditionally the distinction was officers came from the aristocracy, enlisted were the poor. Aristocrats, knights earned their positions because they were better fighters. The joust fights were often lethal. The titles became hereditary, ensuring ultimate mediocrity.

Between the invention of firearms and the invention of the machine gun, tactics changed. Battles were arranged so that the enlisted were lined up facing each other and shot at one another while the officers were positioned safely behind lines, virtual spectators. The officers used their sidearms to prevent the enlisted from retreating.

As recently as WW II, American units of minority soldiers, mostly poor, commanded by white officers, were considered expendable, given the most dangerous missions and suffered the highest casualties. Japanese-Americans from Hawaii, the 442nd regimental combat team, distinguished themselves in Italy, suffering the highest casualty rates.

China and the USSR did not have as many rifles as soldiers. In the Chinese army, the conscripts of the first wave were not armed. Their mission was to either overwhelm an enemy and fight hand to hand or get the outnumbered enemy to expend precious ammunition against an uncountable number of expendables. Russia sometimes armed only half the first wave, expecting the survivors to collect rifles from the fallen — or at least that’s what soldiers have been told.

In many cultures, conscripts are considered already dead. Their families hold a funeral when the conscript leaves home. In Kurdistan, they call themselves Peshmerga, already dead.

The call to defend our way of life from “all enemies foreign or domestic” is used to justify an increase in the military. Often, the enemies are exaggerated or imaginary.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H.L. Mencken.

Keep that in mind every time a politician warns you about anything. Turn up the gain on your BS meter. Who says it? Who benefits? Does it fit the known facts? In war, businesses profit and the poor sacrifice. Truth is the first casualty.

Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer and safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Feedback is encouraged at obenskik@gmail.com.