Tag Archives: conscription

The Scourge of Conscription, by Sheldon Richman

Posted on October 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

The best definition we’ve seen of the draft: “. . . slavery with an expiration date and high risk of death and injury, . . .” From Sheldon Richman at antiwar.com:

By now Randolph Bourne’s observation that “war is the health of the state” ought to be such a cliché that it would hardly need to be said. And yet, it must be said – often – because many still haven’t gotten the word.

If the state is the adversary of liberty, as it nearly always has been, then it follows that war is also the ill health of liberty. And when one thinks of war, one ought also to think of conscription because it’s often somewhere close by. In a perverse way, Americans have been lucky. The divisive decade-long Vietnam war and access to the latest war-making technology have made the draft just a bad memory for Americans since 1973 and politically toxic. Repeated attempts to bring it back, even with “national service” packaging fortunately have failed.

Outrageously, however, American men 18-25 must register with the euphemistically named Selective Service System, as they’ve been required to do since 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Make no mistake about it. This is not a registration for a benign contest. As the Selective Service website states:

While there is currently no draft, registration with the Selective Service System is the most publicly visible program during peacetime that ensures operational readiness in a fair and equitable manner. If authorized by the President and Congress, our Agency would rapidly provide personnel to the Department of Defense while at the same time providing an Alternative Service Program for conscientious objectors.

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Conservative Outrage Over the Possible Drafting of Women Obscures the Real Issue, by Laurence M. Vance

Posted on September 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

The government shouldn’t be able to impose the involuntary servitude known as the draft on women or men or any other sex. From Laurence M. Vance at lewrockwell.com:

Earlier this year I asked the question: Will women have to register for the draft in 2021? That day may soon be coming.

Although the draft ended in 1973, the federal government continued to prosecute “draft dodgers” even after the Vietnam War ended. In 1975, President Gerald Ford eliminated the requirement that 18 to 25 year-old male citizens register with the Selective Service System.

During his campaign for president in 1976, Jimmy Carter promised to pardon those who evaded the draft. On January 21, 1977, President Carter made good on his promise and granted an unconditional pardon to hundreds of thousands of young men who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War. Yet, in 1980, Carter reinstated the requirement that men must register with the Selective Service System.

In its final report, issued in 2020, the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS) recommended that Congress amend the Military Selective Service Act to require that young women, like young men, register for the draft when they reach 18 years of age.

Back in July, the Senate Armed Services Committee, with 5 Republican no votes, approved an amendment to the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to require “all Americans” (not just men) to register with the Selective Service System. The final approval of the NDAA was by a vote of 23-3.

Now, the House Armed Services Committee, which contains 31 Democrats and 28 Republicans, has voted 35-24 on an amendment to the NDAA (5 Republicans voted with the Democrats: Jack Bergman, Liz Cheney, Pat Fallon, Scott Franklin, Mike Waltz) to include women as well. The NDAA then cleared the committee in a 57-2 vote.

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Is the Volunteer Military Too Expensive? Or Is Global Intervention Too Expensive? by Doug Bandow

Posted on April 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

The military doesn’t cost nearly as much for a country that minds its own business as it does for one that wants to run a global empire. From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:

The Napoleonic Wars consumed the lives of between 2.5 million and 3.5 million soldiers, most unwilling draftees. Although defeated, discredited, and exiled after years of brutal conflict, the self-anointed emperor responsible for those deaths today is honored – lionized, actually – in Paris. His tomb is located in the Hotel Les Invalides surrounded by commemorations of his many great but costly victories.

Aggressive war and mass slaughter obviously look better through the mists of time. And conscription, which Napoleon used to terrorize a continent, is still routinely employed by nations today.

Today millions of people can be dispatched by a few bombs launched from half the world away. A couple people sitting in a missile silo can unleash hell and more by turning a couple keys. However, the tragic propensity of mankind to engage in war obviously goes back to humanity’s beginning. The horror and cruelty of ancient conflict is almost unimaginable. It was mass killing at its most personal. Massacres required many hands and took much time and effort.

As political control fractured European warfare eventually turned into the far more restricted game of kings. Unless you were unlucky enough to live near a battlefield, you probably wouldn’t be bothered. Indeed, you might not even notice that a war was going on. And reliance on mercenaries helped keep casualties down. They wasted neither their time nor effort, and certainly not their lives, on silly notions like patriotism and loyalty. Protracted conflicts could still be costly, but the numbers of combatants involved look shockingly small compared to modern wars.

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End, Don’t Extend, Draft Registration, by Sheldon Richman

Posted on February 10, 2016 | Leave a comment

From Sheldon Richman at antiwar.com:

This past week demonstrated with blinding clarity that 1) Republicans, contrary to their rhetoric, oppose individual liberty, and 2) the establishment news media really couldn’t care less about the presidential candidates’ views.

After the last Republican debate, the media continued its obsession with the reality-TV and horse-race sides of the election. News readers, correspondents, and “analysts” droned on about Marco Rubio’s robotic repetition during the debate and the insult swaps by Donald Trump and Jeb Bush. You had to read the cable channels’ “news tickers” running right to left along the bottom of the screen to find out that at least some Republican candidates think young women should have to register with Selective Service in case the military draft is reinstituted. On CNN, at least, this story was not deemed worthy of further attention.

Which is more important? Rubio’s short-term memory problem, the Trump-Bush mud-wrestling match, or registration for the draft?

Here’s a clue: the draft is slavery. It is short-term slavery at best, but it’s possibly debilitating and even fatal. Thus registration with Selective Service is – surprise! – registration for possible enslavement. Anyone who supports individual liberty against state power would oppose conscription. This is no close call.

The draft ended in 1973 during the Nixon administration. (Classical-liberal economist Milton Friedman played a key role in its demise.) In 1980, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter signed a proclamation requiring 18-26-year-old men – but not women – to register with Selective Service, supposedly as a signal to the Russians that Carter had noticed their invasion. But the draft was not revived. (We later learned that the Carter administration helped to provoke the invasion by aiding jihadis, hoping Afghanistan would be the Soviets’ “Vietnam.” The 9/11 attacks were blowback from Carter’s operation, and Afghanistan would become America’s second “Vietnam.”)

Ronald Reagan, Carter’s opponent in 1980, criticized draft registration on grounds that it “destroys the very values that our society is committed to defending,” but in office Reagan changed his mind because “we live in a dangerous world.”

To continue reading: End, Don’t Extend, Draft Registration

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Emancipating the Military, Containing the Citizenry, by Fred Reed

Posted on January 23, 2016 | 1 comment

From Fred Reed at antiwar.com:

Those who try to understand military policy often confuse themselves by focusing on minor matters such as strategy, tactics, logistics, and armament. Here they err. For years the central goal of the military, the brass ring, has been independence from control by civilians. It has been achieved.

In time of war, the first concern of the command is to limit the flow of information to their publics. The actions of the enemy are an important but secondary consideration. Thus militaries strive to prevent the dissemination of photos of mutilated soldiers or, as in Washington today, of governmentally tortured prisoners. In the United States, which characteristically fights wars unrelated to the safety of the country, the Pentagon must also keep soldiers from being told that they are being sacrifice for the benefit of arms manufacturers and imperialist ambitions. In wars before Vietnam, this was adroitly effected. You could go to jail for criticizing a war.

In Vietnam, something new happened. The press covered the war freely. Reporters went where they pleased, beyond the control of the military. Their publications ran the results. National magazines printed horrific photographs of what was really happening.

Truth tells. The coverage was one of the two factors that forced Washington to quit the war. The other was the passionate unwillingness of young men to be forced to fight a war in which they had no interest. The war, a source of meaning for Washington’s thunderous hawks and fern-bar Napoleons, was getting them killed.

The military of Vietnam wasn’t very good at fighting, and neither is the military of today. GIs in Asia would assault a hill, usually of no importance, and, after three days, with the aid of helicopters, helo gunships, napalm, artillery, and fighter-bombers, would capture it. This would be called a triumph. The astute observed that if the Americans had to fight on equal terms, without overwhelming material superiority, they would last perhaps ten minutes. This is now a recognized pattern. Note that numerically superior and hugely armed American forces have been outfought for years by lightly armed Afghan goat herds. Since neither the wars nor the soldiers in them are of much importance, this doesn’t matter.

The Pentagon learned a lot from Vietnam: It learned that its greatest enemies are the press and the American public. The burning question became how to keep the goddam public from interfering in wars which were none of its business and, particularly in the award of large contracts.

The problem was solved in two major ways. The first was to end the draft and go to the All Volunteer Army. The command realized that if they conscripted kids from Yale and the University of Virginia to come back in body bags, the prospective conscriptees, their girlfriends, and their families would take to the streets. This would threaten the smooth flow of funds. If volunteer kids from Tennessee died, no one would care.

The second step in keeping the public out of the loop was to control the press. This was done partly by “embedding” reporters in American military units in the victim country. The control was furthered, more by happenstance than plan, by the amalgamation of the major media in a few large corporations which then controlled content. It worked.

To continue reading: Emancipating the Military, Containing the Citizenry

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You’ve Been Warned – Calls for Mandatory “National Service” for Americans Aged 18-28 Has Begun, by Michael Krieger

Posted on June 17, 2015 | Leave a comment

When the first government was constituted, its first act was probably to impose some form of involuntary servitude on someone, and nothing has changed over the centuries. From Michael Krieger at libertyblitzkrieg.com:

CHAPTER ONE

War is a Racket

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

– From Major General Smedly Butler’s War is a Rackett

This is one of the most important articles I will write all year. The statists are coming for your kids, and the conditioning has already begun.

Last night, I came across one of the most horrifying articles I have ever read, which is saying a lot. Before I get into it, take a look at the title and the tagline:

How to Defeat Isis With Millennial Spirit and Service

Terrorism and othe 21st-century challenges require sacrifice shared by all Americans

If you think the title is bad, wait until you read the article. What becomes evident is that this grotesque concept of forced “national service” is being actively discussed at the highest levels of government. What Ron Fournier is doing in his National Journal article is conditioning the public to accept something that is completely unacceptable.

Before we get to that, who is Ron Fournier? National Journal provides a bio:

Ron Fournier is the Senior Political Columnist and Editorial Director of National Journal. Prior to joining NJ, he worked at the Associated Press for 20 years, most recently as Washington Bureau Chief. A Detroit native, Fournier began his career in Arkansas, first with the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record and then with the Arkansas Democrat and the AP, where he covered the state legislature and Gov. Bill Clinton. In January 1993, Fournier moved to Washington, where he covered the White House and presidential campaigns for the AP.

So basically, this guy covered Bill Clinton in Arkansas, moved to the District of Criminals after he was elected President, and now wants to convince you to subject your innocent children into mandatory service to a nation provably run by corrupt criminals and oligarchs.

It sure is some twisted notion of “shared sacrifice,” when those who had nothing to do with the disastrous choices made by the oligarchy are the ones who have to suffer the consequences.

Let’s now take this piece of Nazi-esque propaganda apart piece by piece. From the National Journal:

I know a better way to fight ISIS. It starts with an idea that should appeal the better angels of both hawks and doves: National service for all 18- to 28-year-olds.

Require virtually every young American—the civic-minded millennial generation—to complete a year of service through programs such as Teach for America, AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, or the U.S. military, and two things will happen:

First of all, he confidently proclaims that this scheme will appeal to both hawks and doves. Based on what evidence? Let me provide some evidence against his argument based on a recent Rasmussen poll that 45% of U.S. Voters Concerned Government Will Use Military Training Exercises for Power Grab. Here’s an excerpt from the findings:

Just 20% of voters now consider the federal government a protector of individual liberty. Sixty percent (60%) see the government as a threat to individual liberty instead. Only 19% trust the federal government to do the right thing all or most of the time.

So the American public has no confidence in government, but somehow they are going to gladly line up to serve the corrupt oligarchy? Of course not, which is why people like Ron Fornier want to make it mandatory. Now back to the piece…

1. Virtually every American family will become intimately invested in the nation’s biggest challenges, including poverty, education, income inequality, and America’s place in a world afire.

2. Military recruiting will rise to meet threats posed by ISIS and other terrorist networks, giving more people skin in a very dangerous game.

This may seem like a radical plan until you compare it with two alternatives: the status quo, which clearly isn’t working, or a military draft, which might be the boldest and fairest way to wage the long war against Islamic extremists.

Notice how he offers us only three options, as if that is all the imaginative well of humanity is capable of coming up with. Forced national service, the status quo or a draft. Nowhere does he offer the logical alternative of say: stop preemptively invading and destroying countries for no reason (Iraq, Libya to name a few). Perhaps then idiotic foreign policy decisions won’t create ISIS in the first place.

This is an important lesson in how statists operate. They only offer you statist choices. Kind of like being forced to choose between a Clinton and a Bush for President.

http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/06/17/youve-been-warned-calls-for-mandatory-national-service-for-americans-aged-18-28-has-begun/

To continue reading: You’ve Been Warned

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Kiev’s Bloody War Is Backfiring, by Justin Raimondo

Posted on February 9, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Justin Raimondo, at antiwar.com:

When Ukrainian army officers came to the Ukrainian village of Velikaya Znamenka to tell the men to prepare to be drafted, they weren’t prepared for what happened next. As the commanding officer was speaking, a woman seized the microphone and proceeded to tell him off: “We’re sick of this war! Our husbands and sons aren’t going anywhere!” She then launched into a passionate speech, denouncing the war, and the coup leaders in Kiev, to the cheers of the crowd.

What she did is now a crime in Ukraine: the only reason she wasn’t arrested on the spot is that the villagers wouldn’t have permitted it. But in Ukrainian Transcarpathia, well-known journalist for Ukrainian Channel 112 Ruslan Kotsaba has been arrested and charged with “treason” and “espionage” for making a video in which he declared: “I would rather sit in jail for three to five years than go to the east to kill my Ukrainian brothers. This fear-mongering must be stopped.” Kotsaba may sit in jail for twenty-three years, the prescribed term for the charges filed against him.

Kotsaba’s arrest is part of a desperate effort by the Ukrainian government to intimidate the growing antiwar and anti-draft movement, which threatens to upend Kiev’s dreams of conquering the rebellious eastern provinces. Kotsaba’s particular crime, according to prosecutors, was in describing the conflict as a civil war rather than a Russian “invasion.” This is a point the authorities cannot tolerate: the same meme being relentlessly broadcast by the Western media – that an indigenous rebellion with substantial support is really a Russian plot to “subvert” Ukraine and reestablish the Warsaw Pact – now has the force of law in Ukraine. Anyone who contradicts it is subject to arrest.

Also subject to arrest, and worse: the thousands who are fleeing the country in order to avoid being conscripted into the military. In a Facebook post that was quickly deleted, Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak wrote: “According to unofficial sources, hostels and motels in border regions of neighboring Romania are completely filled with draft dodgers.” President Petro Poroshenko, the Chocolate Oligarch, is readying a decree imposing possible restrictions on foreign travel for those of draft age – which means anyone from age 25 to 60. Ukrainians may soon be prisoners in their own country – but they aren’t taking it lying down.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/02/08/kievs-bloody-war-is-backfiring/

To continue reading: Kiev’s Bloody War Is Backfiring

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