From Draft NOtices, July-August 2002
- Molly Morgan
From May 31 to June 2 I attended the Radfest conference in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where I heard Zoltan Grossman speak. Grossman, a long-time peace activist who recently received his doctorate in geography, shared with conference participants his insights about a largely ignored consequence of U.S. military interventions in the last decade. The information he presented strongly suggests that the installation of new U.S. military bases has been one of the primary purposes of these wars.
Grossman explained that as a result of the increasing economic strength of the European Union and the East Asian economic bloc since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been making geopolitical decisions to counter the possibility of being excluded from much of the Eurasian land mass. This explanation helps to make it clear that the choices of U.S. military interventions were based not on the official explanations, let alone the needs of the local people, but on whether there was an opportunity to develop a U.S. sphere of influence in the strategic area bounded by Europe, Russia, and China.
Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)
From Draft NOtices, May-June 2002
- Molly Morgan
Less than one month after September 11, 2001, the Bush administration launched a military campaign to establish political and economic control over the geopolitically strategic country of Afghanistan. The cover story invented by the White House for this illegal action is the so-called "war on terrorism." Although 15 of the 19 suspects who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were from Saudi Arabia, the U.S. war on Afghanistan was justified because it harbored the alleged ringleader of the terrorists, Osama bin Laden (who is yet another Saudi, not an Afghan). The military began by bombing the terrorists' training camps, which were easy for them to find. As even the corporate media reported, they had been built with U.S. tax dollars by the CIA.
From Draft NOtices, May-June 2002
- Marion Morgan
In recent months, a growing number of Israeli soldiers dubbed "refuseniks" are refusing to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories. As the violence in the current Intifada has escalated, more young men are stating their opposition to the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem by refusing to carry out their compulsory military service in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in these areas. And while pundits on both sides argue about whether their actions represent the heroic stance of conscientious objectors or a dangerous aberration that cannot be tolerated, the significance of their resistance -- and the attention it is garnering -- cannot be denied.
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:
