Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, January-March 2025

— Lauren Reyna Morales

Americans are subjected to patriotic propaganda in nearly every facet of our institutionalized culture. From the movies, to pledging allegiance, to the nightly “news,” to the classroom and everywhere in between, we are conditioned to buy into the greatest-democracy-on-earth schtick. It is no wonder there’s an abundance of stunningly ignorant beliefs about U.S. militarism and imperialism. Beliefs that forsake a global perspective, ecological health and human rights in favor of dogmatic fealty to the beloved State narrative.

In an August 2024 publication in The Hill, columnist Amrik Chattha expressed a view so distressing that it even surprised me. Chattha wants the U.S. military to rebrand itself as a super-awesome-leading-fighter against the climate crisis. He contends that since young people are motivated to wage war against the onslaught of climate catastrophe, such a rebranding would encourage a new generation to consider careers in militarism. Chattha supposes that the U.S. military has a greater capacity to combat environmental challenges than any other organizational entity.

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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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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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