Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, November - December 2001


— Molly Morgan

    

Why do people wish to exact revenge? What is it about pain and grief that spurs the desire to inflict the same emotional state on others? In the wake of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, collective revenge appears to have consumed the majority of people in the United States. Although there is official denial that direct retaliation is the reason for the bombing of Afghanistan, and although there are most certainly economic interests really driving the current military actions, the political support for engaging in them comes from a widespread feeling by the populace that the U.S. is entitled to avenge itself however it sees fit.

Bloody retaliation for harms both real and imagined has ancient roots in human societies. As has often been observed, violence is never a solution to a problem; it consistently begets only more violence. The steady escalation of war throughout human history has brought us to a precipice: now that we possess the capacity to exterminate our entire species — as well as most other lifeforms on the planet — there is great urgency to understand the vengeful tendency in human nature if we are to eliminate the cycle of warfare and violence and evolve into sustainable, peaceful societies.

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From Draft NOtices, November - December 2001



— Rick Jahnkow

   

When a student takes a gun to school and goes on a shooting rampage — as one 15-year-old is charged with doing in a community near me in California — the public immediately expresses its shock and confusion over how such a thing could ever occur. Educators, politicians and the mental health professionals who are called upon to deal with this sort of tragedy all struggle to come up with a plausible explanation.

Usually, their attention focuses on narrow, individualistic conditions that might provoke such a violent outburst. The American Psychological Association’s brochure, "Warning Signs of Teen Violence" (http://helping.apa.org/warningsigns/), advises us that factors that contribute to teen violence include:

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From Draft NOtices, August-September-October 2001



— Carol Jahnkow

    

Once in office, George W. Bush quickly followed up on his presidential campaign promises to set in motion "an immediate, comprehensive review of our military" and to give the Secretary of Defense "a broad mandate to challenge the status quo." Beginning in February, media stories began to report that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had begun this new broad review of the military.

Rumsfeld's review will bring significant changes in policy. U.S. military strategy since 1993 has revolved around maintaining the capacity to simultaneously fight two major wars. But according to Rumsfeld, the U.S. military has been "living a lie," with the two-war strategy stretching the military thin and preventing needed investment in equipment and strategy to help wage the wars of the future. This strategy has, he says, "brought us to a point where we don't have the forces to do it. It has brought us to a point where, because of the efforts to do it, we have slighted modernization and took a prolonged procurement holiday; we have slighted, in my view, transformation; and we have slighted things that affect the quality of our force."

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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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