Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, November-December, 2005


— Arlene Inouye and Jorge Mariscal
    

On October 7, 2005, at the Anaheim, California, Convention Center not far from Disneyland, the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Corporation hosted an awards luncheon for approximately 500 people including more than 300 middle school, high school and college students. The featured employer at the luncheon was the Department of Defense.

Part of the Pentagon’s ongoing efforts to attract more Latinos into its ranks, the luncheon included Latino ROTC and military service academy students and a display that forms part of the “Medal of Honor Tour,” a joint venture between the Army and the Hispanic public relations agency Cartel Impacto (a unit of The Cartel Group of San Antonio, Texas). According to the official press release, the tour is a “national program to highlight the selfless and courageous legacy of service Hispanic Americans have imprinted in our nation's armed services.”

One day earlier, the “Medal of Honor Tour” had descended upon Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles. Accompanied by a JROTC color guard, the display was presented to students by Rick Leal, President of the Medal of Honor Society. Leal’s remarks were followed by presentations by City Councilman Tony Cardenas and Ramon Rodriguez, a local veteran who served three tours in Vietnam.

Rodriguez’s remarks were the stuff of a recruiter’s fantasy. He stated that although he had almost dropped out of high school, he ended up earning three advanced degrees “all because of the military.” He repeatedly stated that he owed a great deal to the military, highlighted career and education benefits, and urged students to join JROTC. He concluded by saying: "Freedom is not free, it has to be fought for.”

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From Draft NOtices, November-December, 2005


—Glen Motil
    


The Swedish Academy says playwright, poet, and polemicist Harold Pinter “uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms.”

An East London boy, son of working-class Jewish immigrants, is sent away to rural England on a traumatic separation where he immerses himself in reading. The reason for his sojourn is to escape bombs falling from the sky; it is the Battle of Britain and the Nazis are terrorizing the civilian population of London. The boy returns to find a devastated urban landscape. This experience would forever impact and alter the consciousness of this boy named Harold Pinter.

When he turned 18 in 1948, as World War II was being mythologized as the so-called “Good War” and the Cold War age of nuclear horror was just beginning, young Harold simply said, “No.” He confirmed his stance as a conscientious objector to British conscription, was brought before a court twice and fined for refusing to perform military service. He cited his cursory but traumatizing knowledge of war as his reason for refusal. According to Peter Marks of the Washington Post, “Pinter told an interviewer in 2002 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, ‘I didn’t actually see anybody killed, but I saw where bombs had fallen and I was part of that world of bombs dropping.’” Because of this, Pinter acknowledges that “out of one’s consciousness and out of one’s recognition of other people’s reality” one begins to see and feel “what death means to other people.” This knowledge made it impossible for him to take part in what he viewed as barbarism. Less than a decade later, Pinter rose to international fame with his plays of absurdist bent — originally misunderstood and critically lambasted but ultimately widely embraced and hailed as genius.

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From Draft NOtices, September-October 2005


—Jorge Mariscal
   

With the Army still short of its 2005 quota by some 16,000 recruits and no end in sight to the disastrous occupation of Iraq, the new school year promises to be one in which military recruiters step up their activities. Pressures to meet their "mission" create the potential for increased recruiter abuse. The New York Times reported that last year the Pentagon investigated over 1,000 recruiting "improprieties," and after one enterprising young man in Denver tape-recorded a recruiter suggesting that he lie about his background, the recruiter was demoted one pay grade. The general stand-down (one-day suspension of all recruiting activities) called by the Army Recruiting Command last May was an implicit admission that more than a few recruiters were using unethical tactics to get young people to enlist.

In light of growing evidence of recruiter dishonesty, it is interesting to contrast the realities on the ground with the image of the ideal recruiter crafted by the Pentagon. The Army Recruiting Command's manual, "The Army Interview," released last April, depicts a fantasy image of the perfect recruiter. At once a piece of inflated nationalist rhetoric and a mundane description of tips and techniques for the successful salesman, the manual describes how the "art and science of recruiting" is designed to "keep the Army connected to America" by "exploiting all available assets in such a manner as to dominate every market area."

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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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