Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2013

— Rick Jahnkow
    

It’s well established that many people who join the U.S. military do so because of their economic status. It could be that they do not see options for a civilian job that pays a livable wage, they cannot afford health insurance, or they believe they’ll never be able to go to college without financial aid from the Post-9/11 GI Bill. Whether this belief is accurate or based on an individual’s limited awareness of alternatives, military recruiters are effective at exploiting economic predicament to meet their monthly quotas. Many of us refer to it as economic conscription or the “poverty draft.” It is the reason why counter-recruitment groups spend much of their time and energy gathering and distributing information on alternative sources for job training and college financial aid.

Recruitment success rates have always been strongly affected by the economy, and the high unemployment rate since the economic crash of 2008 has made it much easier for the military to meet its enlistment quotas. If, on the other hand, the economy continues its gradual improvement, we can expect that recruiting will once again become difficult and the armed forces will be scrambling to find a larger pool of people to tap to fill their ranks. This looming problem has already been projected and mentioned to members of Congress by Pentagon representatives.

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2013

— Seth Kershner
    
 

Over the past few years, my colleague Scott Harding and I have been chronicling the counter-recruitment movement from the perspective of activists. In this article, I’ll take a different approach and focus on counter-recruitment as viewed by military recruiters. Although it takes a bit of work to find out what they think, military recruiters’ candid views on counter-recruitment reveal that many are concerned at the success of activist campaigns. There’s a strategic advantage to knowing where military recruiters’ vulnerabilities lie, for they give us a peek at the soft underbelly of the all-volunteer force and may suggest areas where counter-recruiters could focus more of their resources. And when military officers spend the time to write reports investigating counter-recruitment — even naming specific groups like Project YANO — activists should consider this a badge of honor. You’re rattling their cage a bit, forcing recruiters to regroup and rethink their strategy. Even though they’ve got all the money and power in this lopsided struggle, you’re getting into their heads.

It’s important to start by noting that we learn relatively little by looking at what military recruiters say in public. In press interviews, the military has tried to play down the impact of counter-recruitment. In 2003, for example, the director of JROTC for public schools in Washington, D.C. told the City Paper that a local counter-recruiter, John Judge, “doesn’t affect us much. . . . People who are with us, who are patriotic, aren’t paying attention to what he has to say.” However, sometimes recruiters let their guard down. In 2006, the Army’s Austin Recruiting Company missed their target by four percent; one year later the company commander told the Austin American-Statesman that “it has become increasingly difficult to recruit in Austin schools because of a strong ‘counter-recruitment’ movement.”

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2013

— Kathy Gilberd
 
    

On August 21, Private Chelsea* Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison and a Dishonorable Discharge, after one of the longest and most significant courts-martial in U.S. military history. She was originally charged with aiding the enemy, for which the prosecution had sought a life sentence, but her attorney, David Coombs, was successful in challenging that charge. Manning was ultimately convicted of violations of the Espionage Act, among other charges, for releasing the Collateral Murder videotape, Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, and embarrassing U.S. diplomatic cables. As the Private Manning Support Network stated, the video, cables and other materials “show a pattern of lacking accountability during the War on Terror, in which civilian deaths go unaccounted for, detainee torture is commonplace and corporations wield enormous influence on U.S. foreign policy.”

Reflecting on her case, Chelsea Manning wrote in a request for pardon to President Obama:

I realized that in our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.

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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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