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Draft Legislation Pending in Congress
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Polly Mann, W A M M
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There is evidence that a draft will be instituted in June of 2005. The Star Tribune recently carried an article quoting knowledgeable government sources saying that a draft would not be instituted. As accustomed as I am to the misrepresentations of the government, this denial, for me, constitutes an affirmation. So, what is the evidence?
Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., in an e-mail of April 27, 2004, says that Senate Bill 89, the Universal National Service Act of 2003, would require that all U.S. citizens between the ages of 18 and 26 perform a two-year period of national service either as a member of the armed forces or in a civilian capacity that promotes national defense and homeland security. According to Adam Stutz, in a January 28, 2004, article of the newsletter of Projector Censored (Sonoma State University, California), the House legislation is numbered HR 163. Twenty-eight million dollars have been added to the 2004 Selective Service System (SSS) budget. The Pentagon has quietly begun a public campaign to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots nationwide. The SSS must report to the president on March 31, 2005, that the system, which has lain dormant for decades, is ready for activation.
The new legislation would eliminate higher education as a shelter and would not exclude women. Canada would no longer be an option due to a 2001 declaration between the U.S. and Canada. It involves 30 points which implement, among other things, a “pre-clearance agreement” of people entering and departing each country.
The draft bill commits the SSS to being fully operational within 75 days of “an authorized return to conscription.” Next year there will be a mobilization of 56 state headquarters, area offices, and 1,980 local boards. Another part of the plan would put volunteer registrars in at least 85 percent of the nation’s high schools, up from 65 percent in 1998.
As all this goes on, however, the Department of Defense, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the Selective Service deny that the draft is about to be reinstated. However, the Bush Administration’s military goals cannot be met without forced conscription. Consider the following: twenty-one of the U.S. Army’s 33 regular combat brigades are now on active duty in Afghanistan, South Korea, and the Balkans—that is 63 percent of the Army’s fighting force, plus there are additional troops in Saudi Arabia, Germany, Britain, Italy, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere. The regular military is now 125,000 soldiers short, a gap the Bush Administration has temporarily plugged by calling more than 150,000 Army Reserve and National Guard troops into active service.
There are between 135,000 and 140,000 troops stationed in Iraq, just under half of them guardsmen and reservists. But another 22,000 have already been sent there and brought home dead, wounded, or medically unfit for service. Enlistment rates in the regular armed forces and the National Guard have dropped precipitously and, according to a poll of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, 49 percent of soldiers stationed in Iraq say they do not intend to reenlist even with the Army offering a $10,000 bonus.
The job of approving a draft officially belongs to both the president and Congress. Officially, it can only happen if the country is at war. As far as the Bush Administration is concerned, we are at war. On the basis of this position, the president has skated around the strict language of the Constitution and launched the invasion of two different countries, despite the fact that only Congress is supposed to have the power to declare war. Also, the White House is supported by Republican majorities in both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court.
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., sponsor of one of the draft bills, believes that a draft could remedy the disproportionate number of working-class and minority soldiers in the volunteer military. However, the draft of the l960s did not close this gap: of the Vietnam war casualties, 14.1 percent were African American, although African Americans accounted for only 11 percent of the young male population at the time.
The General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church and the Center on Conscience and War have published a booklet, “Conscientious Objectors and the Draft,” which contains clear information for the use of questioning young people and their parents about obtaining conscientious objector status (please see the sidebar on this page).
As for those people who contend that all this is unnecessary and that a draft will not be instituted, the information is also helpful to any young person who might want to volunteer. A soldier’s job, after all, is to kill. Young people should be fully aware of what this means. |
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Conscientious Objector Resources
Center on Conscience and War
nisbco@nisbco.org
www.nisbco.org
General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church
100 Maryland Avenue NE
Washington, DC 20002
1-800-967-0880
Co$t of War
Veterans Face Legacy of Persian Gulf War
A Ministry of Defense-funded study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has found that babies whose fathers served in the 1991 Gulf War are 50 percent more likely to have physical abnormalities. They also found a 40 percent increased risk of miscarriage among women whose partners served in the Gulf (Nukewatch Pathfinder, Summer 2004).
Suicide Rising among Afghan Women
Afghanistan is witnessing a rise in suicides among women, despite the fall of the Taliban. It was reported that in Herat, the biggest city in the country’s west, at least 52 young, married, or soon-to-be-married women had burned themselves to death. Behind the increase, says Amina Safi Afzali of the Afghan Human Rights Commission, is a disillusionment felt by many educated Afghan women because the two years since the fall of the Taliban have brought precious little freedom. Most of the female suicides recorded in Herat were educated women, including several nurses and teachers (Guardian Weekly, June 1l-17, 2004).
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© 2004 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete September 2004 Index - click here
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