Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, April-June 2007

 



— Kathy Smith
    

The Navy is refusing to mitigate the harm to marine mammals when it uses sonar for training exercises off the coast of Southern California. The Navy contends that Coastal Commission restrictions are not valid because their training takes place more than three miles off shore, beyond the scope of the commission’s authority.

Joel Reynolds, an attorney in the Los Angeles office of the Natural Resources Defense Council, stated that “the Navy’s rejection of the common sense protective measures . . . is an attack not just on whales and other marine life off our coast, but on the commission itself.”

The issue at hand is the decibel rate of sonar, which commission officials want lowered because whales can be harmed by sonar transmissions that the Navy generates. The Navy’s use of sonar has caused the beaching of whales and dolphins because they surface (breach) too fast and suffer decompression sickness. A congressional report was released last year stating that the Navy’s sonar exercises were responsible for six cases of mass death and stranding of whales in the past decade. The Navy counters these facts by saying that pollution and starvation can cause marine animals to breach.

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From Draft NOtices, April-June 2007


A Review of Chalmers Johnson’s book Nemesis: the Last Days of the American Republic | Buy Book



—Glen Motil
    

    The bloody iron curtain of American Military Power
    Is a mirror image of Russia’s red Babel-Tower.
    — Allen Ginsberg, from the song/poem “Capitol Air,” Plutonian Ode


    Nemesis . . . deals with the way arrogant and misguided American policies have headed us for a series of catastrophes comparable to our disgrace and defeat in Vietnam or even the sort of extinction that befell our former fellow “superpower.”
    — Chalmers Johnson

Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (The American Empire Project)Chalmers Johnson, a UCSD professor emeritus, was formerly a self-described “cold warrior” in academia and viewed the Soviet Union as a “menace.” In light of his past, he often quotes economist John Maynard Keynes when asked how he has become such a stalwart critic of the U.S. military-industrial complex and a prominent voice for the CIA abolitionist movement: “When my information changes, I change my opinion. What do you do?”

Unfortunately, far too few people employ such a thought process, including the majority of America’s elected representatives. Johnson’s new book, Nemesis: the Last Days of the American Republic, is the completion of a trilogy. It follows Blowback, which was written before the events of 9/11 and provides evidence and speculation on how U.S. “covert policies abroad might be coming back to haunt us,” and Sorrows of Empire, which served to “analyze the nature of this militarism and to expose the harm it was doing, not to others but to our own society and governmental system.”

Nemesis is by far the best of the three. Each chapter causes us to stare deeper into the abyss of our own making. Each chapter is worth the price of the book and more. The endnotes provide a treasure trove of useful information, and the bibliography is invaluable for the intellectual arsenal counter-militarists must possess. If you’ve been closely following the existential journey of geopolitical events over the past decade, the endnotes compile in one place the treacherous landmines we have endured, the ideological projectiles we have managed to dodge, and rocky, embattled legal terrain we have tread.

The book instantly challenges readers to question our perspective. In the prologue, Johnson argues persuasively that “Americans cannot truly appreciate the impact of our bases elsewhere because there are no foreign military bases within the United States.” U.S. bases bring with them brothels, brawls, sex crimes, racial and religious insults, and environmental pollution; these “global garrisons provide that threat and are a cause of blowback.”

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From Draft NOtices, January-March 2007

 



—Rick Jahnkow
    

Ever since House Democrat Charles Rangel introduced his first proposal to bring back the military draft in 2003, it’s been amazing to see how much amnesia there is on the subject, especially among some of those who consider themselves liberals or “progressives.”

Supporters of Rangel’s bill (which includes a mandatory civilian service option) make what seems on the surface to be a compelling case. They say one reason our government is so willing to launch aggressive military action is that the children of political leaders and the wealthy elite do not face much risk from combat. They point out that this is because the armed forces are maintained by a system of recruitment that unfairly targets working-class and middle-income people. They also argue that a stronger service ethic is needed, along with more civilian options for performing tasks that would benefit society. The points are valid, and so it seems reasonable when some people conclude that a system of conscription is needed to address such issues.

But the problem with this thinking is that it is far too simplistic and only focuses on limited parts of the picture. It ignores important historical facts and fails to consider an entirely different set of social and political consequences that are inherent in any system of involuntary service.

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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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