Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2024

— Isidro Ortiz, PhD

The election of Richard Nixon in 1968 marked the twilight of liberalism and the ascendancy of conservatism, according to some historians. In the wake of Nixon’s rise to power, the American Right mobilized and caused significant changes to social, economic and political life. Two recent works explore how the Right became such an influential force and are worth our reading.

In her new book, Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern American, historian Lauren Lassabe Shepherd draws extensively on interviews and archival sources to chronicle the emergence and growth of organized resistance to the campus-based New Left and Black Power movements of the late 1960s. She illuminates how conservative student activists were funded by wealthy donors and received intellectual guidance from sophisticated prominent conservatives. Under such sponsorship and direction, conservative student activists such as Karl Rove, Bill Barr, Jeff Sessions and Pat Buchanan crafted a robust response to progressivism on college campuses and became conservative icons.

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2024

— Lauren Reyna Morales

For the past several years, all branches of the U.S. military have experienced declining enlistment rates. Defense Department stakeholders have given varied explanations for this trend. Some espouse the ultra-conservative military-has-gone-woke narrative, while others cite a shift in young Americans’ perspectives on U.S. militarism. Some argue it’s because recruiters don’t have sufficient access to potential enlistees at high schools. Others point to the fact that a growing number of Americans are unable to meet standards required for enlistment, even if they had an interest in doing so.

No doubt there are a multitude of reasons for recent recruitment shortcomings. Regardless of the explanation, the military is working overtime to address the problem.

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2024

— Rick Jahnkow

UPDATE ON THIS BILL: As of 12/10/24, the final version of the bill had not been sent to the House and Senate for floor votes; however, the joint conference committee did remove the provisions that would implement automatic draft registration and expand registration to include women. Technically, these items could be added back as amendments during the floor vote, but it's not it's not often done.

In early November, Congress will be voting on final language for the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contains proposals that would dramatically change contingency planning for any future military draft.

Both the Senate and House have passed their own versions of the annual NDAA, which are now being considered for consolidation into a single final version. Both versions have language that would, for the first time, require automatic draft registration of 18-year-old men with the Selective Service System, the agency tasked with managing any military draft callup.

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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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