Rick Jahnkow argues in May’s _Nonviolent Activist_ that there’s a “Decreased Likelihood of Draft”:http://www.warresisters.org/nva0504‑3.htm. There are many aging pacifists that have become obsessed lately with the idea that compulsory military service might be returning to the United States. For example, I’ve watched the leader of one annual anti-draft workshop predict the draft’s imminent return year after year, in ever more excited terms and wondered what evidence this organizer has seen that I haven’t.
Jahnkow watches this issue as much as anyone in his work for the San Diego-based “Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft”:http://www.comdsd.org/ and he’s been watching the hype build as he’s become more skeptical:
bq. Warnings about an impending draft have been circulating on the Internet for months now. Some are tying a possible draft to the election and predicting with bold certainty that conscription will be introduced in 2005… The energy that�s been generated on this topic has been both amazing and, I have to confess, somewhat seductive to anti-draft organizations like the one for which I work.
Most of the people I’ve seen get excited by a possible return of the draft were in their teens back in the Vietnam War era. Their organizing sometimes seems almost nostalgic for the issues of their youth. They’re trying to save the current generation from having to go through the same trauma. But the older activists’ anti-draft work is often patronistic and self-congratulatory, for it doesn’t take into account the fact that younger Americans don’t need saving.
The bottom line truth is that the Pentagon simply couldn’t reinstate the draft. Jahnkow cites a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll that found that 88 percent of people 18 – 29 oppose a return of the draft. There would be mass mayhem if the draft returned. While some young men would surely obey, a huge percentage would actively defy it. Even if only 10% dramatically refused, the system would break down. This is a generation raised in a post-punk culture and many of its members aggressively question authority. They were raised by parents who lived through the sixties and saw widespread lies and abuse of power, including the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The media mythology around sixties-era radicalism has kept us from realizing that there’s a baseline of everyday radicalism today that far overshadows much of what was going on thirty years ago. The Pentagon knows this better than the peace movement does.
It’s not the only nostalgic protesting this generation is engaging in these days and I’ve compared revived organizing around “phone war tax resistance”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000230.php to “recycling dead horses.” I agree with Rick that today’s teens and twenty-somethings have real issues which we need to address. He says it so well:
bq. The latter point leads me to the second reason why I have some negative feelings about the current concern over the draft: Much of the anxiety is coming from people who are ignoring the more pressing problem of aggressive military recruiting, which, among other things, disproportionately affects non-affluent youths and people of color. In essence, there has been a draft for these individuals�a poverty draft�and yet it has drawn relatively little attention from antiwar activists. There is a race and class bias reflected in this that needs to be seriously considered and addressed by the general peace movement.
“Here’s the link to his article again”:http://www.warresisters.org/nva0504‑3.htm
h4. Related:
* Last November we published a provocative article by pacifist Johann Christoph Arnold arguing that “A Military Draft Would be Good for Us”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000231.php and a personal response piece I wrote about how the “pressures of a military draft”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000231.php can force an eighteen year old to really think hard about issues of war and peace.
* Nonviolence.org has guide to issues of “military conscription and conscientious objection”:http://www.nonviolence.org/issues/conscience.php. We also watch issues of the “peace movement”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_peace_movement.php, and tend to highlight generational issues a lot.
* The Urban Legend debunkers at Snopes.com have tracked and researched the “draft fear emails going around”:http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/draft.asp. They don’t think a draft is coming back and any time soon, citing many sources.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ cnn
Attacks a sign of our success
October 28, 2003
I couldn’t believe it when a friend told me the news. In the wake of four coordinated suicide attacks in iraq that killed 30 and injured 200, President George Bush claimed that the “attacks were merely a mark of how successfully the U.S. Occupation is going”:www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/10/27/sprj.irq.main/index.html :
bq. “There are terrorists in iraq who are willing to kill anybody in order to stop our progress. The more success we have on the ground, the more these killers will react — and our job is to find them and bring them to justice.”
This is really his way of explaining away all opposition to the U.S.: people must be jealous of all we have and all we do. But maybe iraqis continue to be angry that we invaded their country; maybe they’re angry that we’ve only reinstalled many of their generals and many of Saddam’s henchmen. Maybe they’re waiting for a democratically-elected council. I’m sure many iraqi’s condemn yesterday’s bombings. But it’s still way too early to declare victory in the war of iraqi public opinion.
Betting on Terror
July 29, 2003
The news sites are all reporting a Pentagon plan to bet on future terrorist activity (BBC). It’s reported as a stock market-style system in which sucessful predictions by investors would win them money.
Someone at the Pentagon has read a little too many books about the infinite wisdom of the free market. There are those who have a religious faith in the power of unfettered capitalism, who posit it as a kind of all-knowing, self-correcting God. With the input of enough self-interested actors, the truth can be discerned. I’d argue that stock markets are more like blogs (the highly-linked New York Times version of the article), with everyone rushing to make the same links (Associated Press).
The truth of the matter is that recent intelligence lapses have been the result of political meddling in the collection and analytical processes. When the boss wants a certain result (proof of weapons in Iraq, proof of Al Qaeda links), then the group-think pressure to conform will warp the sifting process. A stock market-style system for predicting terror would be about as accurate as a poll of CNN and Fox News watchers – it will tell you what everyone thinks but it probably won’t tell you the truth.
Why We Mourn and Protest
December 19, 1998
Many of the this week’s critics of the Nonviolence Web are insisting that the U.S. needs to bomb Iraq in order to secure a future world of peace: “Are you an idiot? We needed to bomb them.
Otherwise, many more INNOCENT will eventually die at the hands of Saddam Hussein. Sometimes force is necessary in order to prevent much greater violence later.”
This is the logic that has brought us to most violent century in human existence. War is always fought for peace. Acts of violence are always justified with the argument that they’re preventing acts of violence later. We kill for peace. And they kill for peace. And as the death count rises we build even bigger and smarter bombs. And they build even bigger and smarter bombs.
The million-dollar cruise missiles going into Iraq aren’t go to hurt Saddam Hussein. He’s safely ensconced in one of his presidential palaces watching CNN (meanwhile, President Clinton sits in the White House watching CNN as well). All the cruise missiles in the U.S. Navy won’t bring Hussein from power.
It is the people of Iraq who feel the sting of these bombings. Just as it is them who have born the brunt of eight years of brutal sanctions. It is the mothers who suffer as they watch their children die because even the most basic medical supplies are non-existent. It is the little ones themselves suffering as yet another wave of bombs come raining down on their world from that abstract entity called the “U.S.”
American policy is wrong precisely because we are at war not with Saddam Hussein, but with the people of Iraq-the citizens, the poor and meek, the downtrodden and hurting.
The nation of Iraq will always have the technical know-how to build weapons of mass destruction. Because the fact is that we live in a world where every industrialized nation with a couple of smart chemistry Ph.D.‘s can build these bombs. India and Pakistan just a few months ago set off nuclear weapons, we know Israel has a stockpile. We can’t just bomb every country with a weapon of mass destruction or with the capacity to produce such a weapon.
We need to build a world of real peace, of peace between nations built on the rule of law, yes, but also on reconciliation. We need foreign policy that recognizes that it is the rulers and the policies of other nations with which we disagree. That recognizes that it is wrong to ever condemn a whole people for the excesses of their leaders.
A number of U.S. peace groups have called for today to be a day of National Mourning and Protest. Let us gather to remember that we stand together in solidarity with those suffering in Iraq. Let us vigil quietly and then yell out loudly that war to end war is wrong.
End the Sanctions. Stop the Bombing. Declare peace with the Iraqi People.
Ohio Protests Open National Debate on War
February 19, 1998
Protesters in Columbus, Ohio upset a pro-war program with top Clinton Administration officials Wednesday afternoon, asking them tough questions at a live CNN “Town Hall” meeting and giving the antiwar movement its first serious national publicity.
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen were in Columbus to gain popular support for the war and to build the myth of a national consensus for a U.S. attack on Iraq. They were both surprised and embarrassed by the jeers and tough questions they received from audience members. Some audience members held up signs and chanted “We Don’t Want Your Racist War” while one questioner asked why the U.S. wasn’t considering force against other countries violating human rights such as Indonesia in it’s slaughter of East Timorese (when Albright started hemming and hawing, her accuser shot back “You’re not answering my question, Madame Albright.”)
The Columbus dissenters are the top story in the major newspapers and media pundits are starting to publicly doubt polls showing overwhelming support for military action.
Sample Letter to Media
To the Editors,
With today’s story about an Ohio audience jeering Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, it’s time for MS-NBC to give some coverage to the groundswell of grassroots opposition to another Gulf War. If you had been monitoring the “Iraq Crisis Antiwar Homepage,” the events in Columbus would not have been a surprise. In fact, 82 other demonstrations are currently listed here.
In addition to events listings, the Antiwar Homepage has analysis, action alerts, ideas for organizing and links to major nonviolence groups. A project of the Nonviolence Web, home to dozens of U.S.-based peace groups, it is a central source for antiwar organizing.
Please consider profiling all the great work being done around the country to stop another senseless war.
In peace,
Martin Kelley
Nonviolence Web
Reporters visiting the “Iraq Crisis Antiwar Homepage” would not have been surprised by the turnout in Columbus. A huge grassroots antiwar movement has grown in the past month. The Nonviolence Web’s email box is being flooded with great statements, letters to Clinton, action ideas and just plain worry about another war. The Antiwar Homepage’s list of upcoming protests spans the world, listing the Columbus event along with over seventy others.
But little of this organizing has gotten the national media. Most of the online media have put together sections promising “complete coverage,” and sporting bravura titles like “Showdown with Saddam.” But look at the coverage and you’ll see only fluff pieces about the brave boys on the aircraft carriers or furrow-browed analysis of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s doomed search for a diplomatic settlement.
fter Ohio, the national media will have to start recognizing the widespread dissent among Americans. Some progress is being made. YAHOO, the most popular site on the net, has listed the Antiwar Homepage in its list of Iraq Crisis resources. And a top news organization is working on a profile of the Nonviolence Web to appear within a few days (keeping looking for an announcement).
But we must all do more. Write and email the national media to include coverage of antiwar actions. Demand that a link to the Iraq Crisis Antiwar Homepage be included in their “Complete Coverage” of the crisis. A sample letter to MS-NBC is included here, but please write your own and show them that dissent has spread past the Columbus auditorium and is following them across the internet!