From Draft NOtices, July - September 2019
-- Mernie Aste
When Ruth Bader Ginsburg built case law for equal rights for women under the 14th Amendment, she helped change the way we think about gender and equality in every aspect of our lives. She has been successful in many cases that have enhanced the quality of life for women, men and children in spite of great resistance. Protection under the law and cultural practices have changed incrementally, opening up opportunities for all genders that were unthinkable a generation ago.Under the banner of Equal Rights, some have called for including women in the requirement to register with the Selective Service System for a possible future military draft. In 2016 a coalition of organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, American Association of University Women, Service Women’s Action Network, NAACP, and others, sent a letter to U.S. Congressional leaders who serve on Senate and House Committees on Armed Services advocating the registration of women as a step toward gender equality.
Later that year, a rebuttal letter was signed by, among others, the Center on Conscience and War, American Friends Service Committee, War Resisters League, Jewish Peace Fellowship, National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth, Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD), and Nancy Cruz, board member of the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities. Their letter was sent to groups that had signed the statement calling for female draft registration. It expressed “serious concern” about progressive organizations joining such a call, and instead urged them to support a House bill that would put an end to the Selective Service System altogether.
For women to be subject to the draft, this means that, like their male peers, they could be forced to participate in state violence -- the justification for which is questionable. Veterans can be, and are, changed for life as evidenced by their high rates of suicide, PTSD, physical disabilities, homelessness, deportation and domestic violence. Throughout history you can find examples of troops participating in atrocities such as Abu Ghraib, the My Lai Massacre, and “enhanced interrogation” torture techniques. This adaptation to violence is not what I would wish for women or men.
Besides becoming inured to committing and abetting this kind of violence, women have been documented being subjected to violence by their own comrades. One must acknowledge the sexist hegemony pervasive in the military exemplified by sexual assaults -- reported and unreported -- harassment, and the pattern of regarding those who report such attacks as traitors to the cohesiveness of the unit. While even men in the military have been victims of such treatment, it disproportionately affects females.
When draft registration for women was being considered in the 1980s, the feminist Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) responded with some thoughtful points to the argument that equality would be promoted by including women in the draft:
If the U.S. were truly in peril, women and men would volunteer to come to its defense. . . . Suggesting that women’s equality will be furthered by participation and registration in the draft, is like saying we could have solved the slavery problem by making whites slaves too.
More recently a similar point was made by Ana Yeli Ruiz, a post-9/11 Marine Corps veteran: “The liberal argument in favor of ‘equal oppression’ in the form of an all-gender draft registration amounts to two steps backward, not forward.”
In the April–June 2019 issue of COMD’s newsletter, Draft NOtices, Rick Jahnkow reported that a Federal District Court Judge in Texas recently ruled that “the male-only requirement to register with Selective Service for a possible military draft is unconstitutional.” As he points out, this ruling does not require women to register, since that would require legislative action by the U.S. Congress.
In an article in Military.com, February 2019, the chair of the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service, Dr. Joe Heck, raises the question, “[D]o we need the Selective Service System at all? . . . The United States is spending $24 million a year to maintain a system we haven’t used since 1973,” which is when the draft officially ended. Bernard Rostker, once head of the Selective Service agency, says the list generated by the registration requirement is out of date. “In the event of an emergency call up,” Rostker says, “a huge chunk of records would be useless.” The military relies on high tech skills and the draft is unlikely to help in that regard.
The National Commission has been tasked with giving Congress recommendations in 2020 on whether to continue draft registration and expand it to include women. Other options it is considering include recommending complete termination of draft registration or implementation of a national service program that might be mandatory and include a military component. A preliminary report was issued by the Commission in January 2019. It can be accessed at https://www.inspire2serve.gov/, where the public is also free to submit comments through December 2019.
Mernie Aste is a board member of the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities.
“So, my bottom line is there is no need to continue to register people for a draft that will not come; no need to fight the battle over registering women, and no military need to retain the [Military Selective Service Act].”-- Dr. Bernard Rostker, former Director of Selective Service (1979-1981); excerpted from testimony presented on April 24, 2019, to the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service
This article is from Draft NOtices, the newsletter of the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (http://www.comdsd.org/index.php/draft-notices).
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