Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, April - June 2006



— Susan Massey
    

A teacher’s response to the military in her school.

At the end of the last semester, the principal of the small rural high school where I teach Spanish and ELD announced that there would be a change in the exam schedule. (ELD — English Language Development — is what used to be English as a Second Language.) The semester usually ends by giving exams on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We go back the following Monday to start the new semester. However, this year the principal had run into someone from the Navy SEALs who had offered to help us celebrate the end of the semester by bringing a flight simulator to our campus. The only day they could come was on Thursday. Easy solution. Finals were to be moved up to Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Thursday the day would revolve around getting all the students onto the simulator, 20 at a time. Friday — well, Friday was just up in the air.

I was horrified. Our school has mostly low-income students and we are constantly visited by military recruiters. Last year we had a special program by the Blue Angels, who have their winter home 15 miles down the freeway from us. The idea that our school was welcoming recruiters so that they could bring in a fighter plane and teach our students that going to war was like going to Disneyland was outrageous. I railed on this topic to my colleagues, but only one shared my feelings. The principal was so excited about the arrangements she had made that I decided objecting would be futile.

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From Draft NOtices, April - June 2006


— Michelle Gutiérrez
  
I recently viewed British director Sam Mendes’s 2005 film, Jarhead. Based on former Marine Anthony Swofford’s Gulf War memoir, the film depicts the experiences of United States soldiers. The film’s subject matter has a limited scope, but among post-Vietnam war movies (such as The Three Kings in 1999 and Black Hawk Down in 2001), Jarhead presents the most stinging critique of the effects of U.S. military culture on soldiers. By exposing the disillusionment of military life, soldiers’ lack of agency, and rampant homophobia and misogyny, Jarhead is the first film to lay bare the destructiveness of military culture since Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket in 1987. However, the filmmakers’ stance on the Gulf War and many problematic aspects of military training are portrayed ambiguously.

Mendes centers the film primarily on soldiers’ psychological wellbeing. The film begins and ends on this theme with a voiceover from Swofford stating, “A man fires a rifle for many years and he goes to war, and afterward he turns in the rifle to the armory and he believes he is finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands -- love a woman, build a house, change his son’s diaper -- his hands remember the rifle.” By encapsulating the film with this statement, Mendes communicates not only the long-lasting impact military training and war have on soldiers’ lives, but also the fact that soldiers are “regular” men who have jobs, wives, and children. Clearly, the constant harassment, teasing, and abuse by sergeants has a much more striking effect with this backdrop.

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From Draft NOtices, January-March 2006


— Rick Jahnkow

Some important stories have appeared recently about disagreements between military commanders and the Bush administration over whether to begin a significant withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in 2006. A related development is the recent call for an immediate withdrawal by Rep. John Murtha (D-PA). Murtha is a decorated combat veteran who is also considered a military hawk and one of the closest congressional allies of the high-level officer corps.

Peace organizations have been quick to add Murtha’s name to the growing list of those calling for an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but they’ve given scant attention to the true significance of his voice and the very potent implications of stories about military commanders’ dissatisfaction with their mission.

A more in-depth analysis of these developments and related issues can offer some important lessons on how the peace movement can hasten the end of the occupation and move proactively beyond the limited goal of ending one war.

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Ninth CIRCUIT COURT RULING: CONFRONTING MILITARISM BY USING EQUAL ACCESS TO HIGH SCHOOLS

When the military comes to your local high school, you have a legal right to give students an opposing view. This has been the position taken by federal district courts in Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois and two federal appellate courts. The most broadly-worded decision came from a case that COMD took to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1980s. Here is the background:

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