h3. By Johann Christoph Arnold
“If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country? And how do you, then, enforce a quarantine? …One option is the use of the military… I think the president ought to have all…assets on the table to be able to deal with something this significant.” — President George W. Bush, news conference, October 4, 2005
For years, health officials have warned that a virulent strain of avian influenza could rapidly spread the globe, killing millions. Headlines about such an outbreak now seem to pop up daily, and there is reason for increasing concern. But President Bush’s recent request to Congress, asking for the authority to call in the military as part of the government’s response to such a disaster, is wrong.
To start with, calling in the troops would set a worrying precedent, and not only because it would be yet one more step to a fully militarized state.
We already have public health systems at both the state and federal levels, which, though weakened by years of underfunding, could still be quickly strengthened and expanded by an infusion of congressional aid. These agencies have been operative for years, and the people who direct them are trained and experienced in dealing with infectious disease.
This is more than a medical issue. Have we learned nothing from the recent spate of natural disasters that has wracked our shores? Have we not considered that in the end, disease, pestilence, and floods might be an inescapable part of life?
I am not suggesting that we should stand idly by. I myself have children and grandchildren and friends whom I dearly love, and would be the first to call for professional medical assistance should such a disaster strike my family or community. But aren’t we a little audacious in thinking, in the aftermath of two terrible hurricanes, that we can somehow avert or prevent such a tragedy?
Quarantine and isolation may indeed be a necessary part of our response, but let us not forget that families and pastoral caregivers must also be part of the equation when many people are dying. Does our government really care for human beings, or does it worry more about the devastation such a pandemic could wreak on the global economy?
If widespread death is truly imminent (some sources suggest that 150 million people could die of avian flu) wouldn’t it be better to prepare ourselves by paying at least some attention to the fact that we all must die one day, and that dying is going to be terribly lonely, and frightening, if we are quarantined? We need to concern ourselves with this issue because one day death will claim each one of us.
If we die alone, under the control of the military, who will provide the last services of love for us, and who will comfort the loved ones we leave behind? Are we going to sit back while we are denied the chance to lay down our lives for each other, which Jesus says is the greatest act of love we can ever perform? A military response will not bring out the best in people, but only magnify the fear and anxiety we already have about death.
Why are we so terribly afraid of dying? Only when we are ready to suffer – only when we are ready to die – will we experience true peace of heart. Dying always involves a hard struggle, because we fear the uncertainty of an unknown and unknowable future. We all feel the pain of unmet obligations, and we all want to be relieved of past regrets and feelings of guilt. But it is just here that we can reach out and help one another to die peacefully.
Once we recognize this, the specter of a worldwide flu epidemic will not make us fear death, but give us pause to consider how we can use our lives to show love, while there is still time.
Again, enforced isolation is wrong: sick and dying people are often lonely as it is, even in situations where they have a family and friends. How will they feel when the government forces us to treat them like lepers? How will they find comfort, if they are not even allowed to talk about what is happening to them?
We should see it as a privilege to stand at their bedsides at the hour of death, not a danger – even if this means that we are eventually taken by the same plague. That is why I feel military intervention would be such a tragedy.
Quaker Ranter
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NVA: US Military Draft Probably Isn’t Coming Back
August 26, 2004
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.
Arnold: Losing Our Religion
December 31, 2003
Johann Christoph Arnold has an interesting piece on the intersection of peace activism and religion [originally published on Nonviolence.org]. Here’s a taste:
The day before Martin Luther King was murdered he said, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.” We must have this same desire if we are going to survive the fear and violence and mass confusion of our time. And we should be as unabashed about letting people know that it is our religious faith that motivates us, regardless of the setting or the consequences.
Many peace activists are driven by religious motivations, which is often all that keeps them going through all the hard times and non-appreciation. Yet we often present ourselves to the world in a secular way using rational arguments.
It took me a few years to really admit to myself that Nonviolence.org is a ministry intimately connected with my Quaker faith. In the eight years it’s been going, thousands of websites have sprung up with good intentions and hype only to disappear into oblivion (or the internet equivalent, the line reading “Last updated July 7, 1997”). I have a separate forum for “Quaker religious and peace issues” [which later became the general QuakerRanter blog] In my essay on the Quaker peace testimony, I worry that modern religious pacifists have spent so much effort convincing the world that pacifism makes sense from a strictly rationalist viewpoint that we’ve largely forgotten our own motivations. Don’t get me wrong: I think pacifism also makes sense as a pragmatic policy; while military solutions might be quicker, pacifism can bring about the long-term changes that break the cycle of militarism. But how can we learn to balance the sharing of both our pragmatic and religious motivations?
A Military Draft Would be Good for Us
November 12, 2003
From Johann Christoph Arnold, a “provocative argument that a military draft might not be a bad idea”:www.nonviolence.org/articles/1003-arnold.php. “Deciding which side to stand on is one of life’s most vital skills. It forces you to test your own convictions, to assess your personal integrity and your character as an individual.”
It’s a pretty drastic wish. I don’t really wish it on today’s youngins’ (I’m not sure Arnold is quite convinced either). But I will give a snippet of my own personal story, since it’s kind of appropriate to the issue: when I was a senior in high school my father desperately wanted me to attend the U.S. Naval Academy. I went on interviews and even took the first physical. The pressure to join was sort of akin to the pressure young people of earlier generations have faced with a military draft (except more personal, as I was essentially living with the chair of the draft Martin Kelley board). I was forced to really think hard about what I believed. I had to reconcile my romaticism about the navy with my gut instincts that fighting was never a real solution. My father’s pressure made me realize I was a pacifist. With my decision to forego the Naval Academy made, I started asking myself what other ramifications followed from my peace stance. Almost twenty years, here’s Nonviolence.org.
Arnold’s argument, right or wrong, does reflect my story:
bq. A draft would present every young person with a choice between two paths, both of which require courage: either to heed the call of military duty and be rushed off to war, or to say, “No, I will give my life in the service of peace.”
In Two Years, What Have We Learned?
August 18, 2003
*By Johann Christoph Arnold*
bq. “I often wonder how many more tragedies it will take before we learn to truly love each other, and before we grasp how happy we could be if we cared for those around us as well as we care for ourselves.”