_____
From: David Swanson via WarIsACrime.org [mailto:david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2016 1:11 PM
To: miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: 10 Reasons Why Ending the Draft Helps End War
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/1gA/ni0YAA/t.1us/ELzpsWEYQqmwbyihkPLg
bQ/h0/2dJX7vfGJc-2Blgwz3zyDBV9RFfQfmbNU91v58dB5YuVTZAFS-2Fv8Y1cfd85eXihzVWkX
N5krcXkHtKTQ9kCv6-2BOP0HgoBcOrtAq5xmnFvXqUBus4-2BRZsFBPFqQswICY7DIfJpm-2ButU
xppKEAMTBVf-2Fd6uEby4SA0c8N1ij3ot5-2BwMWlKF5GZM305URZhsgJQL8xXwHqzipw7-2BYo2
TdAOspN8NWKx0qE4YE5p93qITRCdJvb7xhDHCfkgP2iWtjT-2BmjJBShBwvYb1HdFWsxbJO5iMi5
zdRHJXSLhETKJLR4evn63AWtaoVIUGLWwkx2j8qBD4hAgeI-2BmqoMtiyv27nDcA-3D-3D>
10 Reasons Why Ending the Draft Helps End War
By David Swanson
http://worldbeyondwar.org/10-reasons-why-ending-the-draft-helps-end-war/
The military draft has not been used in the United States since 1973, but
the machinery has remained in place (costing the federal government about
$25 million a year). Males over 18 have been required to register for the
draft since 1940 and still are today, with no option to register as
conscientious objectors or to choose peaceful productive public service.
Some in Congress have been making "enlightened" feminist noises about
forcing young women to register as well. In most states young men who get
driver's licenses are automatically registered for the draft without their
permission (and virtually all of those states' governments claim that
automatically registering people to vote would just not be realistic). When
you apply for financial aid for college, if you're male, you probably won't
get it until after a mandatory check to see if you're registered for the
draft.
A new bill in Congress would abolish the draft, and a petition in support of
it has gained a good deal of traction. But a significant contingent among
those who sincerely want peace vehemently opposes ending the draft, and in
fact favors drafting young people into war starting tomorrow. Since coming
out as a supporter of the new legislation, I've encountered far more support
than opposition. But the opposition has been intense and sizable. I've been
called naive, ignorant, ahistorical, and desirous of slaughtering poor boys
to protect the elite children I supposedly care exclusively about.
Mr. Moderator, may I have a thirty-second rebuttal, as the distinguished
demagogue addressed me directly?
We're all familiar with the argument behind peace activists' demand for the
draft, the argument that Congressman Charles Rangel made when proposing to
start up a draft some years back. U.S. wars, while killing almost
exclusively innocent foreigners, also kill and injure and traumatize
thousands of U.S. troops drawn disproportionately from among those lacking
viable educational and career alternatives. A fair draft, rather than a
poverty draft, would send - if not modern-day Donald Trumps, Dick Cheneys,
George W. Bushes, or Bill Clintons - at least some offspring of relatively
powerful people to war. And that would create opposition, and that
opposition would end the war. That's the argument in a nutshell. Let me
offer 10 reasons why I think this is sincere but misguided.
1. History doesn't bear it out. The drafts in the U.S. civil war (both
sides), the two world wars, and the war on Korea did not end those wars,
despite being much larger and in some cases fairer than the draft during the
American war on Vietnam. Those drafts were despised and protested, but they
took lives; they did not save lives. The very idea of a draft was widely
considered an outrageous assault on basic rights and liberties even before
any of these drafts. In fact, a draft proposal was successfully argued down
in Congress by denouncing it as unconstitutional, despite the fact that the
guy who had actually written most of the Constitution was also the president
who was proposing to create the draft. Said Congressman Daniel Webster on
the House floor at the time (1814): "The administration asserts the right to
fill the ranks of the regular army by compulsion.Is this, sir, consistent
with the character of a free government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the
real character of our Constitution? No, sir, indeed it is not.Where is it
written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained,
that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their
children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the
folly or the wickedness of government may engage it? Under what concealment
has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a
tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest
rights of personal liberty?" When the draft came to be accepted as an
emergency wartime measure during the civil and first world wars, it never
would have been tolerated during peacetime. (And it's still not anywhere to
be found in the Constitution.) Only since 1940 (and under a new law in '48),
when FDR was still working on manipulating the United States into World War
II, and during the subsequent 75 years of permanent wartime has "selective
service" registration gone on uninterrupted for decades. The draft machine
is part of a culture of war that makes kindergarteners pledge allegiance to
a flag and 18-year-old males sign up to express their willingness to go off
and kill people as part of some unspecified future government project. The
government already knows your Social Security number, sex, and age. The
purpose of draft registration is in great part war normalization.
2. People bled for this. When voting rights are threatened, when
elections are corrupted, and even when we are admonished to hold our noses
and vote for one or another of the god-awful candidates regularly placed
before us, what are we reminded of? People bled for this. People risked
their lives and lost their lives. People faced fire hoses and dogs. People
went to jail. That's right. And that's why we should continue the struggle
for fair and open and verifiable elections. But what do you think people did
for the right not to be drafted into war? They risked their lives and lost
their lives. They were hung up by their wrists. They were starved and beaten
and poisoned. Eugene Debs, hero of Senator Bernie Sanders, went to prison
for speaking against the draft. What would Debs make of the idea of peace
activists supporting a draft in order to stir up more peace activism? I
doubt he'd be able to speak through his tears.
3. Millions dead is a cure worse than the disease. I am very well
convinced that the peace movement shortened and ended the war on Vietnam,
not to mention removing a president from office, helping to pass other
progressive legislation, educating the public, communicating to the world
that there was decency hiding in the United States, and - oh, by the way -
ending the draft. And I have zero doubt that the draft had helped to build
the peace movement. But the draft did not contribute to ending the war
before that war had done far more damage than has any war since. We can
cheer for the draft ending the war, but four million Vietnamese lay dead,
along with Laotians, Cambodians, and over 50,000 U.S. troops. And as the war
ended, the dying continued. Many more U.S. troops came home and killed
themselves than had died in the war. Children are still born deformed by
Agent Orange and other poisons used. Children are still ripped apart by
explosives left behind. If you add up numerous wars in numerous nations, the
United States has inflicted death and suffering on the Middle East to equal
or surpass that in Vietnam, but none of the wars has used anything like as
many U.S. troops as were used in Vietnam. If the U.S. government had wanted
a draft and believed it could get away with starting one, it would have. If
anything, the lack of a draft has restrained the killing. The U.S. military
would add a draft to its existing billion-dollar recruitment efforts, not
replace one with the other. And the far greater concentration of wealth and
power now than in 1973 pretty well assures that the children of the
super-elite would not be conscripted.
4. Don't underestimate support for a draft. The United States has a
much greater population than do most countries of people who say they are
ready to support wars and even of people who
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/1gA/ni0YAA/t.1us/ELzpsWEYQqmwbyihkPLg
bQ/h3/oOrf4U-2FQJ-2Bbavx96gfibBkBCnIuwmx7y3z8wupR8lsOnMv0Mjvjydthd4ksK21yNIE
po8ekVHQpflj0E-2FBaoEf37U4hUVMVfVYttfJDF2yivNohNpHLhyt150utMDi7U1WIYyuzCUVHz
ko83gNseMKUpyrIu2yT7hDlFbg78KXQXWGrXu2bKi1Igu4cV8M5fvkLn0Sm3i52BB6ABGuBAOhUt
4vCmOazoI-2FrV5AO00ZJV5lDVYDO6M0ntPqMebcWIQJcy5RgjIaAH2eI4x0pQYadzsfbtNTXGwK
lmCX-2BpSw-2BIehBJxvao9y3I4qFJ7LjhWSWijCtFsuxnwVrt5-2FHfeFSchD0fUZz7glLPwuId
O28-3D> say they would be willing to fight a war. Forty-four percent of U.S.
Americans now tell Gallup polling that they "would" fight in a war. Why
aren't they now fighting in one? That's an excellent question, but one
answer could be: Because there's no draft. What if millions of young men in
this country, having grown up in a culture absolutely saturated in
militarism, are told it's their duty to join a war? You saw how many joined
without a draft between September 12, 2001, and 2003. Is combining those
misguided motivations with a direct order from the "commander in chief"
(whom many civilians already refer to in those terms) really what we want to
experiment with? To protect the world from war?!
5. The supposedly non-existent peace movement is quite real. Yes, of
course, all movements were bigger in the 1960s and they did a great deal of
good, and I'd willingly die to bring back that level of positive engagement.
But the notion that there has been no peace movement without the draft is
false. The strongest peace movement the United States has seen was probably
that of the 1920s and 1930s. The peace movements since 1973 have restrained
the nukes, resisted the wars, and moved many in the United States further
along the path toward supporting war
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/1gA/ni0YAA/t.1us/ELzpsWEYQqmwbyihkPLg
bQ/h4/Jb9ZUZ-2BHBLFAkQw-2FQ1kTOhkxB0htLj4DwWrPry3iX5q4FwIrMpD-2BCtwHXEGvnx2d
NEKwbsApXbzcWOGCF7uEfOm6xPOBq-2BOfXoZ3ZISOYVFnKhdvJ0RlloZHmMgCqKgaiPIH8I6hps
mXG-2BoU7-2F2WOhOhJgLMpOeA3qa1-2FPG2glQnoCIOZhhWXx4Wtq5pPiFXnWpqkA-2FvG9AXXM
WgJJ11mxK5723iuduiKE6hDlSbCg664W3dUdwg7WNiDWOWefQSnOqeDJcTdbC2gMNhW2n-2FE3Cw
XfSflvL5T7wKkl7pBemBjdPA2FSosBca8nxScmkaf3mNc1L-2FW-2Fl6waUz9I6h3JkBTtyfAjn3
-2FAHizXbHSeE-3D> abolition. Public pressure blocked the United Nations from
supporting recent wars, including the 2003 attack on Iraq, and made
supporting that war such a badge of shame that it has kept Hillary Clinton
out of the White House at least once so far. It also resulted in concern in
2013 among members of Congress that if they backed the bombing of Syria
they'd been seen as having backed "another Iraq." Public pressure was
critical in upholding a nuclear agreement with Iran last year. There are
many ways to build the movement. You can elect a Republican president and
easily multiply the ranks of the peace movement 100-fold the next day. But
should you? You can play on people's bigotry and depict opposition to a
particular war or weapons system as nationalistic and macho, part of
preparation for other better wars. But should you? You can draft millions of
young men off to war and probably see some new resisters materialize. But
should you? Have we really given making the
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/1gA/ni0YAA/t.1us/ELzpsWEYQqmwbyihkPLg
bQ/h5/Jb9ZUZ-2BHBLFAkQw-2FQ1kTOhkxB0htLj4DwWrPry3iX5q4FwIrMpD-2BCtwHXEGvnx2d
NEKwbsApXbzcWOGCF7uEfOm6xPOBq-2BOfXoZ3ZISOYVFnKhdvJ0RlloZHmMgCqKgaiPIH8I6hps
mXG-2BoU7-2F2WOhOhJgLMpOeA3qa1-2FPG2glQnoCIOZhhWXx4Wtq5pPiFXnWpqkA-2FvG9AXXM
WgJJ11mxK5723iuduiKE6hDlSbCg664W3dUdwg7WNiDWOWefQSnOqeDJcTdbC2gMNhW2n-2FE3Cw
XfSflvL5T7wKkl7pBemBjdPA2FSosBca8nxScmkaf3mNc1L-2FW-2Fl6waUz9I6h3AYwxK5x6KI7
PB0triuPO2A-3D> honest case for ending war on moral, economic, humanitarian,
environmental, and civil liberties grounds a fair try?
6. Doesn't Joe Biden's son count? I too would love to see a bill passed
requiring that congress members and presidents deploy to the front lines of
any war they support. But in a society gone mad enough for war, even steps
in that direction wouldn't end the war making. It appears the U.S. military
killed the Vice President's son through reckless disregard for its own
cannon fodder. Will the Vice President even mention it, much less make a
move to end the endless warmaking? Don't hold your breath. U.S. Presidents
and Senators used to be proud to send their offspring off to die. If Wall
Street can out-do the gilded age, so can the servants of the military
industrial complex.
7. We build a movement to end war by building a movement to end war.
The surest way we have of reducing and then ending militarism, and the
racism and materialism with which it is interwoven, is to work for the end
of war. By seeking to make wars bloody enough for the aggressor that he
stops aggressing, we would essentially be moving in the same direction as we
already have by turning public opinion against wars in which U.S. troops
die. I understand that there might be more concern over wealthier troops and
greater numbers of troops. But if you can open people's eyes to the lives of
gays and lesbians and transgendered people, if you can open people's hearts
to the injustices facing African Americans murdered by police, if you can
bring people to care about the other species dying off from human pollution,
surely you can also bring them even further along than they've already come
in caring about the lives of U.S. troops not in their families - and perhaps
even about the lives of the non-Americans who make up the vast majority of
those killed by U.S. warmaking. One result of the progress already made
toward caring about U.S. deaths has been greater use of robotic drones. We
need to be building opposition to war because it is the mass murder of
beautiful human beings who are not in the United States and could never be
drafted by the United States. A war in which no Americans die is just as
much a horror as one in which they do. That understanding will end war.
8. The right movement advances us in the right direction. Pushing to
end the draft will expose those who favor it and increase opposition to
their war mongering. It will involve young people, including young men who
do not want to register for the draft and young women who do not want to be
required to start doing so. A movement is headed in the right direction if
even a compromise is progress. A compromise with a movement demanding a
draft would be a small draft. That would almost certainly not work any of
the magic intended, but would increase the killing. A compromise with a
movement to end the draft might be the ability to register for non-military
service or as a conscientious objector. That would be a step forward. We
might develop out of that new models of heroism and sacrifice, new
nonviolent sources of solidarity and meaning, new members of a movement in
favor of substituting civilized alternatives for the whole institution of
war.
9. The war mongers want the draft too. It's not only a certain section
of peace activists who want the draft. So do the true war mongers. The
selective service tested its systems at the height of the occupation of
Iraq, preparing for a draft if needed. Various powerful figures in D.C. have
proposed that a draft would be more fair, not because they think the
fairness would end the warmaking but because they think the draft would be
tolerated. Now, what happens if they decide they really want it? Should it
be left available to them? Shouldn't they at least have to recreate the
selective service first, and to do so up against the concerted opposition of
a public facing an imminent draft? Imagine if the United States joins the
civilized world in making college free. Recruitment will be devastated. The
poverty draft will suffer a major blow. The actual draft will look very
desirable to the Pentagon. They may try more robots, more hiring of
mercenaries, and more promises of citizenship to immigrants. We need to be
focused on cutting off those angles, as well as on in fact making college
free.
10. Take away the poverty draft too. The unfairness of the poverty draft
is not grounds for a larger unfairness. It needs to be ended too. It needs
to be ended by opening up opportunities to everyone, including free quality
education, job prospects, life prospects. Isn't the proper solution to
troops being stop-lossed not adding more troops but waging less war? When we
end the poverty draft and the actual draft, when we actually deny the
military the troops it needs to wage war, and when we create a culture that
views murder as wrong even when engaged in on a large scale and even when
all the deaths are foreign, then we'll actually get rid of war, not just
acquire the ability to stop each war 4 million deaths into it.
War Is A Lie: Second Edition, published by Just World Books on April 5,
2016. Please buy it online that day.
Help support DavidSwanson.org, WarIsACrime.org, and TalkNationRadio.org by
clicking here: http://davidswanson.org/donate
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/1gA/ni0YAA/t.1us/ELzpsWEYQqmwbyihkPLg
bQ/h7/oOrf4U-2FQJ-2Bbavx96gfibBgfhcqsAUiFColRSOmna7WQNqoW-2FOsVpfpJBYI22tsxA
NSCImTDB7I0N-2BocljVr3Os3H1BtgLxdd0edQYbk450L-2Flu0ZJcInYHx4j6LYsavLaqqkqLof
mlWtMe4F7noyHX1uwjNkcUrEmGBSJN6X-2FaTMbp0IHQAHi3AdIivMMqxCL-2FMTaUyHpP5HhDce
L7vyN8Q5KoPSRunt-2BmvDgP-2BMKEvk0txOH3YffquAeVVotuej4GpkqBjd3Ma-2B8EqjPst98z
RgzC6xwLdihUDf8glwTpkUjOCtNRLRl2Eb-2BpP9TEnvUXsS5J92LyC3wix-2BX6KJgeDwRU3cRp
H8U-2Fekn2Ptg6U-3D> .
Sign up for these emails at
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/activism-alerts-from-david-swanson
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/1gA/ni0YAA/t.1us/ELzpsWEYQqmwbyihkPLg
bQ/h8/WQ-2BlIwq7W2eCmkkcwbDiBbZZ8k6zBVQtuO7myuMWeln1sH84Vgjzm9rfJwo1wCzXTOkp
-2B0jkdFuRc2APrNVBJ19EUE1qpv4-2BeuBGmvnyG7EFgkXaMEhl-2BLX2S0JhqtFMBRcku9ul-2
FGj-2BUBES57eRRmCtTvecTXd6iX6J-2FdHrCk2xcwkRi5ft251IhXLIijy4I9u85Sb5PV982lwp
PiZ62g3JOsJZGxpCM-2BnUfUCIyX0Hp2c5gdbI0j4hPB5YHEoLJty4KaNW-2BljhBtl1mWYknsb-
2B-2Bxif-2Bf8Fy1aJO5O8IyOBz3TXF1N467eXGkBidQCddKmSLsvrmP5Cw7bdAmOGECuUCbiBtE
GSg5XMM8dFEF75FD4XPLuIa2dfUhbqHsYg> .
Sent via ActionNetwork.org
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/1gA/ni0YAA/t.1us/ELzpsWEYQqmwbyihkPLg
bQ/h9/55uI0ZjpoLA9-2FYhqE-2F4Eitwb7nFGaBM-2BttuyqSTdMS4-3D> . To update your
email address or to stop receiving emails from David Swanson, please click
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/1gA/ni0YAA/t.1us/ELzpsWEYQqmwbyihkPLg
bQ/h10/WQ-2BlIwq7W2eCmkkcwbDiBT0sCHjIgGKpfIYyX6Ihnr95Llz6oNsHRg-2FXREcWM17BH
yCjt98i1G6S6JqUzDHcJT9wZx6ILxCd35oXC6qn2pMhrq-2B78jAnESeJTnkXimmZLyrQx0oMEO0
K21Gv9Xn7Pp3wwZMaftqYa40SxegrJUSQVBZkET8-2BwRNy4Tstvk4B> here.
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/o/1gA/ni0YAA/t.1us/ELzpsWEYQqmwbyihkPLg
bQ/o.gif>
