Winter 2005:
Activist Editorials
A New Home for Greatness
Forgotten Oil Wars
Uzbeki Dictator, U.S. Ally
The Draft Debate Heats Up
Remembering as Resistance
Letters

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War Resisters League
The Nonviolent Activist

The Draft Debate Heats Up

By Edward Hasbrouck

n the final month before the November elections, military conscription became a presidential campaign issue, and the subject of national debate, for the first time in more than 20 years. With the election behind us, that debate continues, as do the questions and opportunities it presents for antiwar activists.

It’s odd that campaign pollsters noticed the groundswell of concern about the draft—and its potential effectiveness in mobilizing otherwise acquiescent opponents of the current U.S. wars—before the antidraft movement did. Campaign activity related to the draft included questions during the presidential debates, millions of dollars in television and print ads—by MoveOn.com and other groups—urging voters to make the threat of the draft a factor in their vote, campus speaking tours and web-based appeals to student voters, a flood of front-page and prime-time (albeit mostly ill informed) news reporting on the possibility of a draft and the first floor vote in Congress on reinstatement of the draft since the end of the “American war” in Vietnam.

While neither George W. Bush nor John Kerry did anything to give substance to his claimed opposition to the draft, that’s partly because the organized antiwar movement did nothing to call their bluff. The mainstream media were actually well ahead of the peace movement on the issue, as exemplified by an editorial in the Philadelphia Daily News the week before the election calling on Bush to end draft registration and abolish the Selective Service System, and asking, “If we don’t need a draft, why have registration?”

The answer is that, although “Plan A” for Bush, Congress and the Pentagon is the poverty draft—a volunteer army composed of those who have the fewest alternatives—”Plan B” for all of them remains conscription. It’s unclear how long they’ll be able to rely on volunteers: The more effective the peace movement is at thwarting recruiting and retention—through counter- recruitment, challenges to involuntary “stop-loss” measures, support and advocacy of resistance within the military and creation of economic and educational alternatives to the military—the sooner the military will run out of recruits and re-enlistees in at least some skill categories. I don’t know how likely a draft is, or how soon it may be viewed as “necessary,” but it certainly gets more likely the longer, bloodier and less popular the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and their potential sequels) become.

What If There Is One?
The issue isn’t whether politicians and the Pentagon claim to oppose a draft, but what they will do (now that the election is over) if the military can’t get enough of the soldiers they want, with the skills they want, without a draft. Will they then “reluctantly” support a draft as a “last resort”? Or will they limit or reduce the size of the military and adjust their policies to respect the limits imposed on it—and on them—by the (un)willingness of the people to fight their wars? That depends on what we do now to make it visible that unwillingness to comply with a draft renders it unavailable as a policy choice, no matter what the government wants.

I understand that some counter-recruitment activists see antidraft activism as a rival claimant for scarce movement resources, or feel—like the Democrats in Congress who sponsored the (defeated) bill to reinstate the draft—that conscription might be less racist than the poverty draft. But as a pacifist, I think counter- recruitment, draft opposition and military resistance support work are all part of a common program to deprive the military of its lifeblood of cannon fodder and killers. I’d rather encourage more people to resist, earlier in the process, than acquiesce to the draft as a “lesser evil.” And taking up the question of the draft—the question already being asked in college teach-ins, nascent high school peace groups, PTA meetings and the mass media, among other places—is likely to bring in far more funds for antimilitarist work and recruit far more new peace activists than it would divert from current counter-recruitment projects.

By standing aside from the national debate on the draft, peace organizations have allowed it to be dominated by partisan electoral concerns and have been missing our best chance in a quarter of a century to use the draft as a consciousness-raising hook to reach people in the United States who don’t usually think about their personal relationship to the country’s ongoing state of war. It’s a lot easier to reach people on an issue where they are open and seeking information than on an issue they don’t want to hear about. And it’s a lot easier to get our points of view into the mass media when they are already producing a story on the topic that will run with or without our input, than to get them to cover an issue that isn’t yet on their radar screen.

Those most at risk of a draft are some of those least aware of the threat and least prepared to resist—yet most likely to be able to mount effective opposition and to help build the larger peace movement, given minimal support and outreach from current antidraft activists. A draft of health care workers is slightly further away today than it was in early 1990, when the Pentagon was mobilizing for the possibility of massive casualties in the first U.S.-Iraq war. But while some of the latest moves by the Selective Service on this front have been misinterpreted, the gap between the military’s personnel needs and the (in)effectiveness of the poverty draft for people with civilian job skills is and will likely remain greatest in health care professions.

The Pentagon claims it doesn’t “want” a medical draft, but admits that it would be likely to call for one much sooner than for a general draft. Should we tell health care workers not to worry about a draft until legislation to authorize it is placed on the fast track in Congress? Or should we encourage them to spread the word to their colleagues and start now to mobilize, prepare to resist and use the issue to reach out to the public about the ways that “War is not healthy...”?

Draft Resistance Matters
Since the 1980s, there’s been no national single-issue antidraft organization in the United States. The only national groups focused primarily on the draft are devoted to the rights of conscientious objectors within the system and don’t advocate resistance. And the Solomon Amendments—the legislation that linked student loans and other programs to draft registration—as well as the show trials of a few of those of us whom the government considered the most vocal non-registrants in the 1980s, have been more effective in silencing draft resistance than in suppressing it. That gives war resisters who aren’t at risk of the draft—not licensed in a health care profession and too old for the general draft—a particular responsibility to speak up and call attention to the silent majority of quiet non-registrants and people who once registered, but who have effectively unregistered by moving without telling the Selective Service, as well as the health care workers who will probably be drafted based on professional licensing lists, without any choice of whether or not to register.

Fortunately, the strength of the resistance to draft registration over the last 20 years has been its spontaneity. Most of those who have chosen not to comply with draft registration have done so entirely on their own, with no contact whatsoever with any organized draft counseling or antidraft organization. (Ironically, those very few who have sought draft counseling are more likely to have been steered into timely and complete registration, in the hope of being able to pursue a CO claim if drafted, thereby increasing their risk and reducing their options should there be a draft.) A Newsweek poll just before the election found that 29 percent of young voters are inclined to resist a draft. Yet many potential draftees don’t realize that there are ways that they can resist even if they have already registered, or that prosecuting those who ignore induction orders will likely prove as impossible as was prosecuting nonregistrants.

People are talking about the draft—with us or without us. The antiwar movement can ignore the conversation; we can criticize it, in which case those who are conducting the convresatin will probably ignore us; or we can engage it and bring large numbers of new recruits into our work. War resistance outreach and education can help transform the public perception and response to the threat of the draft from, “How can I stay out of the draft?” to “How can I help prevent the draft, impede the militarization of society and bring the wars being fought in my name to an end more quickly?”

Edward Hasbrouck spent six months in federal prison in 1983-84 for publicly refusing to register for the draft. His website of draft information and draft-resistance advocacy is at http://hasbrouck.org/draft.