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.
* Non​vi​o​lence​.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.

War of the Parents & the Peace Movement Standing Strong in the Flak

July 9, 2004

The Wash­ing­ton Post reports that in blue-collar Amer­i­ca, “it’s the par­ents are hang­ing up on war and on the recruiters”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35400-2004Jul7?language=printer try­ing to send their sons overseas:
bq. “It’s the par­ents hold­ing me back,” [Army recruiter] Broad­wa­ter says. When he calls, they hang up the phone, refuse to put their chil­dren on the line, tell him off. They try to talk their sons and daugh­ters out of join­ing, and, more often now, they succeed.
Lots of good com­men­tary on this arti­cle and what it means from “Under the Same Sun”:http://www.underthesamesun.org/content/2004/07/index.html#000100, where I found this link. USS draws some good ques­tions for the peace movement:
bq. So, what are we tell moth­ers of future dead sol­diers? We were afraid to be seen as less than sup­port­ing of the troops so we will let them be sent to kill and get killed in an immoral occu­pa­tion? I am not say­ing that it was not hard to voice these truths, espe­cial­ly before all the evi­dence became wide­ly avail­able and before the body bags and bod­ies miss­ing parts start­ed stream­ing back home. It is part­ly a ques

Recreating the theatrical residues of history

April 3, 2004

On the Pick­et Line, a fun­ny post about the “cir­cus of the cur­rent pro­gres­sive movement”:http://www.sniggle.net/Experiment/index.php?entry=26Mar04
bq. In San Fran­cis­co, to be part of the anti-war, pro­gres­sive move­ment means to be shar­ing the stage with a whole bunch of unapolo­getic Stal­in­ists, para­noid schiz­o­phren­ics, ersatz intifadists, tin-eared rhetor­i­cal broken-records, insa­tiable identity-politics police, new-age gurus of every vari­ety, pub­lic­i­ty hounds, careerist Democ­rats, and the like… A super­fi­cial fetishiza­tion of the the­atri­cal residue of his­to­ry gets you a renais­sance faire, not a suc­cess­ful polit­i­cal movement.
The author also gives some hope­ful reports from a recent con­fer­ence he attended.

Collaring the Peacniks in Iowa

February 11, 2004

It’s get­ting “scary in Amerikkka when they start round­ing up peaceniks in Iowa”:www.nytimes.com/2004/02/10/national/10PROT.html
bq. To hear the anti­war pro­test­ers describe it, their forum at a local uni­ver­si­ty last fall was like so many oth­ers they had held over the years. They talked about the non­vi­o­lent philoso­phies of Mahat­ma Gand­hi and the Rev. Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr., they said, and how best to con­vey their feel­ings about iraq into acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. But last week, sub­poe­nas began arriv­ing seek­ing details about the forum’s spon­sor — its lead­er­ship list, its annu­al reports, its office loca­tion –and the event itself.
Mild-mannered pro­test­ers wear­ing 1980s-style Guatemalan cloth­ing, talk­ing about Gand­hi and climb­ing the fences of Nation­al Guard bases are not a threat to state of Iowa. But this kind of strong-arm tac­tic is a clear threat free speech and a clear act of intim­i­da­tion to those who might join the peace move­ment. How sad. Unfor­tu­nate­ly I know lots of peo­ple who are already afraid to speak out to loud­ly – this will silence at least some of them.
Of course, it’s hard to get too worked up about Iowa sub­poe­nas, when much more seri­ous civ­il rights vio­la­tions have been going on since the start of the Afghanistan War. The “pris­on­ers of war” down in the Amer­i­can base at “Guan­tanamo Bay have been held with­out charge or tri­al for two years now”:http://web.amnesty.org/pages/guantanamobay-index-eng.

Religious Peace Left: Puny, Aged & Marginalized?

January 16, 2004

Jour­nal­ist Mark I. Pin­sky talks about the “state of the reli­gious left”:www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/7644649.htm :
bq. Left-wing reli­gious efforts at polit­i­cal mobi­liza­tion — where they exist — seem puny, aged and mar­gin­al­ized. After decades of rid­ing pop­u­lar social move­ments such as civ­il rights, the left splin­tered and now seems unable to regroup. Con­verse­ly, the GOP has co-opted the sup­port of reli­gious vot­ers by focus­ing their atten­tion on cul­tur­al and lifestyle issues — such as gay marriage.
Arti­cle found from a link on “The Right Christians”:http://www.therightchristians.org/ site, which has more com­men­tary on the sub­ject and a pro­pos­al to mim­ic the Dean Cam­paign inter­net orga­niz­ing to rebuild a pro­gres­sive Chris­t­ian left.

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 Non​vi​o​lence​.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 Non​vi​o​lence​.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?

 

Zunes on the Geneva Initiative

December 8, 2003

Stephen Zunes is a care­ful and bal­anced com­men­ta­tor on Mid east issues, some­one I turn to help sort out con­flict­ing claims. No where is this need­ed more than in the ever-changing rela­tion­ship between Israel and Pales­tine, with its con­stant suces­sion of hopes born and shattered.
The “every Church a Peace Church” site has a good arti­cle from Zunes on the lat­est hope, the so-called “Gene­va Ini­tia­tive for peace between Israel and Palestine”:www.ecapc.org/newspage_detail.asp?control=849. Zunes gives the con­text of the pro­posed accord and then explains its major points. For example:
bq. In con­trast to Washington’s insis­tence on focus­ing upon the thus far unsuc­cess­ful confidence-building mea­sures described in the Roadmap, the archi­tects of the Gene­va Ini­tia­tive went direct­ly to the issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian con­flict and devel­oped a detailed out­line for a permanent-status agreement.

Horses on a Trot?

December 8, 2003

Almost a month ago I ques­tion a “newly-launched cam­paign of phone tax resistance”:http://www.hanguponwar.org in a post called “Beat­ing Dead Horses”:www.nonviolence.org/articles/000194.php.
Robert Ran­dall, a dear friend who I haven’t seen in far too long, wrote in last night explain­ing how the new cam­paign came about and some of its goals.
bq. Hi, Martin.
   I’m all for com­ing up with new tac­tics, and I think a lot of peo­ple have
been doing just that. This does­n’t mean, though, that we have to leave old
tac­tics behind if they can serve us. Nor should we assume that old tactics
are not new tac­tics for some.
   Inter­est­ing­ly, at its Nov. 2002 meet­ing, the Nation­al War Tax Resistance
Coor­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee did in fact decide to shelve a “Hang Up On the SOA”
fly­er because the ease of tele­phone tax resis­tance was no longer there: with
the pletho­ra of new phone com­pa­nies and the unwill­ing­ness of the FCC to
apply its old rul­ings on the AT&T tar­iff to oth­er com­pa­nies, we felt that it
would be inac­cu­rate to pro­mote phone tax refusal as an easy, low-risk form
of remov­ing sup­port for war.
   Now, though, we have the pos­si­bil­i­ty, through a large phone tax
redi­rec­tion cam­paign and the Inter­net, to learn and gath­er togeth­er the
how-to-do-it infor­ma­tion on all these dif­fer­ent phone ser­vices. It may take
time, but it is far from impos­si­ble. In the process, a lot of edu­cat­ing can
be done, both of the pub­lic and of phone com­pa­ny employ­ees. ease of doing
it can rise and risk can be lowered.
   What I like about the Hang Up On War cam­paign (www​.hangupon​war​.org) is
that it did not orig­i­nate with a war tax orga­ni­za­tion. It comes from the
iraq peace Pledge, made up of a num­ber of peace groups, old and new. NWTRCC is avail­able to ser­vice the cam­paign, but the fact that “main­line” peace
groups are pro­mot­ing wtr is some­thing which, as you are aware, those of us
who are long-time war tax con­vert­ers have long desired. While sup­port for
this cam­paign was not unan­i­mous at our recent NWTRCC meet­ing in Chica­go, I,
for one, felt it a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to get peo­ple start­ed toward less
sym­bol­ic, real war tax redirection.
   True, the fed­er­al excise tax on phone ser­vice is no more directly
linked to war than the fed­er­al income tax, but it is also no less. One
strat­e­gy which I favor is to pro­vide as many avenues of ingress to resisting
war as pos­si­ble. This is one. We can cer­tain­ly come up with oth­ers, and
with bet­ter ones, but I see no ben­e­fit in dis­parag­ing what some are doing
for peace. For many peo­ple, phone tax resis­tance is a new tac­tic and a big
step. Let’s applaud what I see as a step for­ward, into any kind of
resis­tance, for groups which have often stopped short of such things, and
work with them to keep mov­ing ever for­ward. I trust you will be suggesting
to where that might be.
 peace and hope,
 Robert Randall