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There's been a lot of talk about the draft lately, but most of the recent reports have been written by people unfamiliar with the history of the draft, draft registration, and draft resistance during the 30 years since the end of the Vietnam-era draft in the USA. This Web site will give you some of the facts that the Selective Service System won't tell you, that most reporters don't realize, and that most politicians don't want to acknowledge.
Draft registration in the USA was reinstated under President Carter in 1980, supposedly as part of the preparations for intervention by the USA in Afghanistan on the side of the Islamic fundamentalist warlords and mujahideen who were then fighting against the Soviet Union. The USA put me in prison for refusing to agree to fight on the side of the people who would later become the Taliban and Al Qaeda! It's no wonder that people of my generation have no faith in the ability of the government of the USA to decide for us in which wars, or on which (if any) side, we should fight.
I was one of only 20 people prosecuted for draft resistance in the USA in the 30 years since the end of the Vietnam War draft, and the 25 years since the reinstatement of draft registration in 1980. Most of us were convicted, solely on the basis of our public statements -- nonregistrants who kept quiet faced almost no real risk of prosecution, even then. I spent about 6 months in a federal prison camp in 1983-1984.
(I was prosecuted by Robert Mueller, then a junior Assistant U.S. Attorney and now the Director of the FBI. My case was his first high-profile trial, and my head was a major stepping stone in his political career. While in prison, I was denounced as a yuppie in the pages of the New York Times by Rep. Gerald Solomon (sponsor of the laws denying Federal student aid, which I had never received anyway, to nonregistrants), for having taken the risk of speaking out about my resistance to the draft. Feel free to contact me directly if you want to talk to me about my choices and experiences, or the history of those prosecutions of draft resistance organizers.)
The brief wave of show trials of nonregistrants in 1982-1987 was explicitly intended to silence those like me whom the government considered the "most vocal" nonregistrants. Prosecutions served only to publicize and encourage the resistance, and were abandoned. But since then, the resistance has been almost completely spontaneous. As a grassroots movement of individual direct action, without leaders or organizations, it has also been almost entirely invisible. As a result, most recent reporting on the prospect of a draft has overlooked the significance of the ongoing resistance.
For 25 years, noncompliance with Selective Service registration and address update requirements has been sustained continuously at rates many times higher than the resistance at the peak of the Vietnam war or any earlier war or draft in the USA. Mass direct action (noncompliance with registration) has prevented, and continues to prevent, reinstatement of the draft, and has rendered registration completely unenforceable.
Most of those worried about their vulnerability to a draft are young men, and their friends and loved ones. But health care workers -- men and women of all ages -- are at much more imminent risk of a draft. According to one military doctor, writing in a 2004 medical journal article explaining Selective Service plans: "A physician draft is the most likely conscription into the military in the near future." Also in 2004, a Selective Service spokesperson said, "Talking to the manpower folks at the Department of Defense and others, what came up was that ... they thought that if we have any kind of a draft, it will probably be a special skills draft."
So the more immediate issue is not how soon the military might run short of cannon fodder, but how soon they might run short of doctors, nurses, and 57 other occupational categories of health care workers. The Selective Service plans for a Health Care Workers Personnel Delivery System (HCPDS) are quite different than those for a general draft, and could be implemented much more quickly than a general draft: health care workers would be drafted from professional licensing lists, eliminating the step of registration with Selective Service, and would be presumed already to be qualified. (Selective Service says that the HCPDS would, "Require minimal training for HCPDS draftees, because they are already skilled personnel.)
Most of the debate about the draft presumes that whether there will be a draft will be up to Congress. But no matter what Congress or the Pentagon wants, a draft is possible only if would-be draftees are willing to comply voluntarily, or if the government has the power to enforce the draft. The clear evidence of the response to would-be draftees to registration over the last quarter century is that a draft would prompt such massive resistance that it could not be implemented without a police state, and maybe not even then. In Fiscal year 2004 (the most recent year for which figures have been reported), the Selective Service System referred 162,000 names of suspected nonregistrants to the Department of Justice (DoJ). None of them were investigated or prosecuted by the DoJ.
In October 2004, the House of Representatives voted down a bill introduced by Rep. Rangel to immediately reinstate the draft. He has reintroduced the same bill in 2007, although this year it isn't expected even to make it to the floor of the House. But just because Congress isn't voting for a general draft -- yet -- doesn't mean that both Republicans and Democrats won't vote for it (or at least for a special-purpose draft of health care workers) if and when their war policies lead them to a situation where they can't figure out any other way to get enough soldiers with specific skills. Tellingly, neither Republican nor Democratic leaders, including House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, have yet tried to combine the vote against reinstatement of the draft the draft with any move to abolish the Selective Service System -- which is what they would do if they really were ruling out any future draft. H.R. 424, a bill to repeal the Military Selective service Act, was introduced in the House of representatives on 10 January 2007. But no action has been taken to hold hearings on this bill, debate it in committee, or bring it to a floor vote.
During the 2004 Presidential election campaign, President Bush said that there would be no draft during his second term. But President Reagan said the same thing during his campaign against President Carter, who had reinstated draft registration. After his election, Reagan announced that changed circumstances had led him to change his position and continue draft registration. (More from my blog on Rep. Rangel's bill and whether there will be a draft; more from my January 2005 article in the War Resisters League magazine on The Draft Debate Heats Up.)
Although "Plan A" for Bush, Congress and the Pentagon is the poverty draft, "Plan B" for all of them remains conscription. It’s unclear how long they'll be able to rely on "volunteers". Enlistments and re-enlistments are falling short of the military's goals. Morale in the military is down. More and more soldiers are failing to report for active duty when called up, deserting, going AWOL, or requesting reassignment or discharge as conscientious objectors. "Stop-loss" measures to extend soldiers' terms are increasingly unpopular, and undercut recruiting. (It's one thing to sign up for the National Guard or the reserves as a "weekend soldier", and something very different to sign up for 2 years in combat.)
Only outsourcing and privatizing war-making to mercenaries and contractors (partly by using private "guards" and "security contractors" in combat roles, and partly by outsorcing non-combat support work to civilians, freeing a higher percentage of soldiers for combat) has enabled the military to continue the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this long, on this scale, without a draft.
There are many good reasons to resist the draft. Countering military recruiting, supporting and encouraging resistance within the military, opposing the hiring of mercenaries and the outsourcing of war-making to private contractors, and draft resistance can all be part of a nonviolent people power strategy to stop war by depriving the military of warriors.
Selective Service claims that compliance with draft registration exceeds 90 percent, but they count as "in compliance" every registration they receive, no matter how many years late and no matter whether they have current address information to draft the registrant. The majority of those subject to draft registration register late, often years after their prime draft eligibility, and almost none of them notify Selective Service when they move. The important measure of current compliance is, "For what percentage of would-be draftees in the prime ages does Selective Service have a current valid address, such that they could deliver an induction notice reliably?" Although Selective Service deliberately avoids researching this question, the likely figure is less than 50% -- far too low for a draft to be politically saleable, or enforceable.
There has been no independent audit of compliance with draft registration since those by the General Accounting Office (GAO) in 1982. The most recent GAO report on Selective Service was in 1996, but it didn't attempt to investigate or verify complinace with registration. The GAO did, however, note the concern of the Selective Service System that complinace would be even lower in time of war or national crisis. Accroding to the GAO, "SSS officials stated that unless the mass registration program can achieve high levels of compliance (at least 90 percent of the targeted population), the fairness and equity of the ensuing draft could be called into question."
The most recent Selective Service "test exercises" have been for activation of the Health Care Personnel Delivery System, not for a draft based on the current registrations of young men. But when the SSS has conducted "tests" of its ability to carry out a general draft, it has assumed that all the test induction notices that weren't returned by the Post Office were successfully delivered to the potnetial draftees. That's absurd: in mnay cases, mail is still delivered to an old address even if the addressee has moved. That's especially true if other people with the same last name still live there, as is likely to be the case for many young people who registered at their parents' address, but who have since moved out.
The real question thus is not, "Will Congress enact a draft?", but, "Will would-be draftees submit to a draft?" The clear evidence is that they will not. As was the case during the first USA-Iraq war in 1989-1990, we still won't go. Draft resisters are often accused of being unrealistic, but those who believe that they have the power to impose a draft are deluding themselves and refusing to face the facts.
Selective Service assumes that all registrants are willing to report whenever and wherever they are called up, to fight and kill whomever they are told to kill. In reality, many registrants will resist if drafted. Others registered in the hope or expectation that they will qualify as conscientious objectors. Many people registered only out of fear, and will report only if compelled to do so -- which will prove as impossible as compelling young men to register has proved.
The ultimate decision on whether there will be a draft will be made by those who subject to an attempted draft, as they chose whether to comply. Should there be an attempt to reinstate the draft, I hope you find this information helpful in making those choices.
The titles of the leaflets link to the HTML versions for reading on the Web. The links following each title are to alternate versions in PDF format (for printing as two-sided, three-fold leaflets) and in Wordperfect document format for you to be able to modify for your own use, such as to add contact information for a local organization.
The National Resistance Committee (NRC) was formed in 1980 to oppose registration and the draft, and disbanded following the 1990-1991 Gulf War.
The stated goals of the National Resistance Committee were:
The National Resistance Committee was open to all draft resisters: pacifist and non-pacifist, religious and secular, ideological and individualistic, internationalist and isolationist, young and old, women and men, queer and straight and questioning (and, like me, confused), public and closeted, anarchist, communist, libertarian, patriotic, pagan, feminist, and of course many who didn't identify with any "ism". As a group potentially regarded by the government as a criminal conspiracy, the NRC had no formal structure or officers; its activities were carried out by local and national working collectives and individual activists. We were funded almost exclusively by small individual contributions, many of them anonymous and many of them from the same people who were doing the work.
Like other draft resistance groups, the NRC used as its symbols the rainbow of diversity and the Greek letter "omega" (as at the top of this page), which has been used since the 1960's as the symbol of the resistance to the draft. The omega is the symbol (in physics and electronics) of the unit of resistance, the "ohm", and also symbolizes the Buddhist chant for peace, "om".
From 1980 to 1987, the NRC published 25 issues of a newspaper, Resistance News, providing an open forum for all draft resisters. (Contact me if you are interested in obtaining one of the remaining sets of printed copies.) According to a statement published in each issue:
Gandhi's term for nonviolence was Satyagraha, which he defined as "truth force." The National Resistance Committee has no dogma, Gandhian or otherwise. But we agree with Gandhi that belief in nonviolence implies belief in the power of truth, and in the ability of people to discern it for themselves. Resistance News is devoted to the search for truth. We can only conduct that search, and permit others to do otherwise, if we print the most divergent opinions and encourage open discussion of controversy. Our editorial policy is to print what you write, edited only for length and only with your permission. If we can't afford to publish all your contributions (we couldn't this time [and we never could], we'll save them for the next issue. You are the resistance, and the news of the resistance is the news of your lives. Write to us about it.
Such a policy may seem commonplace today, when the Internet makes it possible and affordable to disseminate huge amounts of information, without the need for as much selectivity. But at the time, it was a radical position. We were using the Internet and other computer networks even in the early 1980's, but the Internet wasn't yet a medium of mass communication. Getting out the word required costly printing and mailing, and relatively few people were willing to pay, often out of their own pockets, to print and distribute the opinions of those they disagreed with, not just their own opinions.
There were, and are, many other organizations involved in draft resistance as well as other activities, organizations for draft resisters from specific religious or political groups, organizations working against the draft through means other than resistance, organizations supporting conscientious objectors within the draft and military system, draft and military counselors and organizations, and local draft resistance organizations.
But from 1980 through 1991, the National Resistance Committee was the only national organization in the USA dedicated exclusively to resisting draft registration and open to all draft resisters. As of 2005, it remains the only such organization to have existed in the USA since the last involuntary inductions into the military in the USA in 1973.
After the U.S. military was driven out of Vietnam in 1975, the antiwar movement -- including many forms of resistance -- forced an end to the draft. When draft registration was reinstated in 1980, massive resistance and the failure of the government's attempts at intimidation through show trials of registration resistance organizers (including myself and other participants in the National Resistance Committee, which was itself investigated and considered for possible prosecution as a criminal conspiracy) forced the government to abandon enforcement of the draft registration law, and no one has been prosecuted for draft or registration resistance since 1987. So we know that draft resistance has the power to stop the draft. But are we prepared to resist the next attempt to bring back the draft?
To every war, and to every draft, there has been, is, and will be resistance. Each generation has its own reasons to resist, and finds and forms its own organizations. I'm sure that new grassroots draft resistance groups and networks are already forming, even if I and other older draft resisters haven't yet heard about them.
I was involved with the NRC throughout its life, and moved to San Francisco in 1985 to take over as one of the editors of Resistance News when Fred Moore (whose historical significance I've written about in a separate article in Peacework magazine) left on one of his extended peace walks.
As the custodian of many of the archives (some of which are included in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection) of the NRC and Resistance News, as well as many of the archives of earlier draft resistance organizations that were passed on to us in the NRC, I'm trying to make some of these materials available, in updated form, to those who might not otherwise get this information and these points of view, and to new generations of draft resisters. These leaflets and other materials reflect the work and contributions of many people. Many members of the NRC's core collectives are still in touch with each other. If you are interested in making use of other draft resistance writings or graphics from our archives, or talking with people who were active in the draft resistance movement in the 1980's, please get in touch.
Please use, modify, and distribute these materials freely and widely, or use them to create your own, with your own ideas. I especially encourage draft and registration counselors to make material advocating draft resistance, like these leaflets, available to those they counsel, to explain the reasons people like us have chosen to resist registration and the draft, and why they might want to do so too. If you don't feel comfortable advocating draft resistance -- either because you don't want to take that legal risk, or because you don't feel it appropriate to encourage other people to take a risk you haven't taken yourself -- you can point people to this and other draft resistance advocacy.
This Web site is hosted in Canada, not in the USA. In Canada, the privacy of information concerning visitors to this Web site is protected by Canadian laws including the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
Reproduction or distribution of this literature in the USA might be considered by some people, such as the Selective Service System and the Department of (in)Justice, to be illegal. On the other hand, both the draft itself, and the laws against advocating draft resistance or conspiring to resist the draft might be considered to be unconstitutional. And prosecutions for draft resistance advocacy or conspiracy have, historically been even rarer (none at all since the Vietnam War) and less successful than prosecutions for nonregistration. But past performance is no guarantee of future returns.
It's your life. Make your own decisions. If you'd like to talk to someone who has made some of the same choices -- in a different era, and in different circumstances, of course -- feel free to get in touch with me. I'm always available to talk to individuals or groups, and to do my best to put you in touch with others who can do likewise, about the draft, draft registration, draft resistance, and the choices I've made. I chose to resist, and while I've made many mistakes along the way, I have no regrets about that choice to resist registration and the draft, to refuse to register, to encourage others to do likewise, and to join together with others to carry on our resistance.
Peace,
Edward Hasbrouck 1130 Treat Ave. San Francisco, CA 94110 USA +1-415-824-0214 edward@hasbrouck.org
[This page and more, including printable versions of leaflets in PDF format, are at http://www.resisters.info and http://www.MedicalDraft.info.]
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