Posted on 09/29/2004 2:34:21 PM PDT by presidio9
“There is always a possibility of the draft returning,” said activist Sam Anderson. “For Black, Latino, Native American, Asian and poor white youth, there is a powerful economic draft that forces our children into the military with promises of discounted higher education, benefits, job skills development and travelling the world. The shrinking civilian job market with sweatshop labor conditions helps create this economic draft. “Hence, the proposed draft legislation does not have to be passed to ensure a multimillion populated standing army for the protection and promotion of imperialism and white supremacy.”
As the 2004 presidential election looms, published reports state that the U.S. military will be reinstating the draft by the spring of next year.
The pending legislation, the bills known as S89 and HR163, are in the House and Senate.
Congress is now pushing the Universal National Service Act of 2003, “to provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons [age 18-26] in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.”
The Bush administration moves silently as little or no focus is being put on this by the media, as other forms of pre-election brouhaha takes center stage.
The draft ended in 1973, when America finally pulled out of Vietnam, Selective Service was abolished in 1975, but was reinstated five years later.
Now, $28 million has been added to the 2004 Selective Service System (SSS) budget in preparation for the military draft.
Anderson is the Education Director at The Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College, and member of the Independent Commission on Public Education.
He told the Daily Challenge, “Once your child reaches 15 or 16 years-old, in 2004 and beyond, they have to sign up for Selective Service. In the No Child Left Behind, they had buried in there, that the military may pursue children who are 14 and a half to 15 years old. They can visit the house or their school, contact them by mail or e-mail. This is buried deep in the 600 pages of the law. If a parent doesn’t want this, then they must request an option out. But, what happened is that they set a date also buried deep in those pages. Some people fought it and won some relief, but you have to go to the high school and ask for an opt out. If the child does not sign up for Selective Service [later] they can be arrested and go to jail. This is not the draft, this is so that they have the names, so that if they have the draft, they can tap into it immediately.”
Folk should not take solace in party affiliation, said Anderson, “The draft could be reinstated by either party. Both the Democratic and Republican parties support the mission of the U.S. policing the world, to have world superiority. As wars evolve they will want more and more people to fight, but at the same time more and more people will oppose the wars. “As the economic draft continues, more and more people will resist. People will find other ways to make money, so the [government] will have to reinstate the draft. [Cong.] Rangel’s draft proposal that he said would be a great equalizer is wrong. The draft has never been that in this country, to have every kid of a certain age signed up; children of the ruling class always got out, or were able to get certain privileged positions. The loop holes will always be there for the children of the rich.”
This Saturday sees the third anniversary of the felling of the World Trade Center and the attacks on the Pentagon. Just after the attack, President George Bush announced that, “We are at war.” After meetings at Camp David, with something like a war cabinet, he proclaimed that the nation must prepare itself for a long battle, adding that he would be calling up 50,000 reservists.
Politicians, media talking heads and everyday people began speculating about whether or not the government would begin looking into reinstitution the draft.
Amped up by a xenophobia-inspiring media, people began enlisting any way.
At the same time, late activist Abubadika Sonny Carson – a Korean vet, told the Challenge, “If there is a draft, I will urge young Black and Latino people to resist it. This is not our war, it belongs to those people who run America. I joined the army when I was 19, because I was misled. I was in an all Black outfit and they put all the young Black men on the front-line in Korea. I became what I am to day, when the Chinese and the Koreans asked us ‘Why were you here Black man, when you can not drink water from the same fountain as others in Mississippi?’ That’s when the realization began to seep in and I began to ask myself, Why am I fighting for someone, who the least of whom, when I am back where I was born, ensures that I can not get the same treatment as the white boy in the next unit?”
Speaking in September 2001, Carson told the paper, “Black folk should ready themselves for the draft coming down. When you see those old vets trying to re-enlist, you know some of those younger Black brothers are gonna be confused enough to call themselves joining up.”
Last week, hundreds, if not thousands of vets joined the tens of thousands (some reports say half to a million) protesters marching through Manhattan as the Republican National Convention took place at Madison Square Garden.
One of the groups –Veterans for Peace stated, “We, having dutifully served our nation, do hereby affirm our greater responsibility to serve the cause of world peace. To this end we will work, with others: toward increasing public awareness of the costs of war; to restrain our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations; to end the arms race and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons; to seek justice for veterans and victims of war; to abolish war as an instrument of national policy.”
According to the Associated Press this past January, referencing their experience, Army National Guard and Army Reserve said that they were expecting to suffer the greatest percentage of losses in the U.S. military.
Antiwar.com, states that as of Sunday the ‘official’ U.S. body count is 985 (almost 7,000 wounded); and between 4-6,000 Iraqi soldiers killed.
While Aljazeera has reported that field studies conducted between March and October 2003, puts the Iraqi civilian death toll at 37,000 (an average rate of 5,285 per month – as many as 84,565 civilian fatalities to date?); infoshout.com put’s the total U.S. and Iraqi military losses at 68,000 deaths; and a commentator on Congress.org proclaimed that the war has cost “$130,000,000,000 - It’s amazing how productive Bush’s war has been—only $2 million per death! Over 20 times the 9/11 death toll – against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.”
On Monday, a huge car bomb on the outskirts of Fallujah killed another seven U.S. Marines. Iraq Body Count (IBC), a volunteer group of British and US academics and researchers, estimate that over 10,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the conflict.
Observers state that traditional draft dodging options of going to college or going across the Northern border have been closed; especially with Canada signing the ‘smart border declaration;’ and new students now only able to postpone joining up until the end of their current semester or seniors at the end of their academic year.
Meanwhile, some military personnel have been quoted as objecting to a whole host of probably reluctant conscripts using up time, finances and resources and experience to have themselves trained, at the behest of this government.
Opponents to the draft in the real world and on websites such as snopes.com, are calling on folk to demand that their elected representatives take a stand on this issue, and at least inform their constituents about what is being planned.
As Anderson and a planning committee prepare to hold a public meeting on September 14 at Manhattan’s Brecht Forum, to discuss the next year’s proposed People’s Convention. he told the Daily Challenge that people said “should be in opposition to the draft and all the wars that the U.S. will fight.”
All of them, the Challenge asked. “Yes,” replied the educator, “as long as this country is a capitalist one, all wars will not be fought in our interest. We must educate ourselves be very aware of the potential reinstatement of the draft, but we must also be aware that there is also already an economic draft that has the youth signing up to fight these imperialistic wars presently, and with more to come. It is not a conspiracy, it is institutional.
"It is structured into U.S. society: with jobs for our young people few and far between; with the outsourcing of U.S. jobs; and young people not having the educational experience needed for certain jobs; these youth don’t want to go to jail or hang out on the street which they see as the options; so they see the military as income, or as getting further on in education."
Since Vietnam the government has played up joining the military to advance their education. But, statistics show that less than 10 % go on to get their degrees. “If a child goes into the military at18 and wants to major in biology in college at the same time, they can’t go full time. So, they do one or two classes, and so what we see is a child who has 24 to 30 credits, they are a quarter way there; and then they get transferred to another part of the world; then they have to wait and start again; or wait until they come back. This constant breaking into their educational course is devastating. But, it is systematic. It doesn’t pay for the rulers of this country to have a military that has an educated rank and file, because then they might question orders, and what they want are grunts.”
Usual communist style.
"They then, in their usual Nazi Style Political Tactics, turn around and accuse REPUBLICANS..."
"Usual communist style."
Nazi or Communist difference side of same coin.
See #26
Yep! If that's what he signed up for, and he earned it serving honorably, then good for him!
Who cares what race/color/creed the person is as long as they're good troopers!
Unnnnh Yup. Hey what's not to like about the military? You get to travel to distant exotic lands....meet distant exotic terrorists...ahhh errr I mean people.....and kill them.... What's not to like?
Funny, it worked for me, my 3 brothers-in-law, my sister-in-law, and at least a dozen of my friends...
NPR did a story on this horsesh*t this evening as well.
The military doesn't need a bunch of stoned dropouts to defeat the towelheads, just the all volunteer force and a united homefront and press supporting them and their CIC.
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