CLMP RADIO March 2, 2005, 7 pm
Bonnie Blackberry & Robie Tenorio with guests Steve Morse & Barbara Goldberg

ROBIE: Steve is from the Oakland Committee of Conscientious Objection. He has also worked on the G.I. RIGHTS HOTLINE for the last 5 years. In the late 60's he was a Conscientious Objector; he did "Alternative Service," including outreach to GI's. Can you give us a brief overview of what it means to be a CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR?

STEVE: I see it as a very broad category that we get to define, not the military or the Selective Service, and I look at it as acting on principles in opposition to the war or militarism that you face. . . Conscientious Objection, in the military, has two categories: if you have a 1-0 you get out, that's a discharge. If you get a 1-A-0 you're still in the military, being a noncombatant. Most of the people we talk to on the Hotline are in the military and have applied for 1-0.

TO GET OUT OF THE MILITARY YOU HAVE TO WRITE UP A CLAIM. (If a draft comes into being it will probably be similar to what exists now.) There are 25 questions including six essay questions like: "When would you use force?" and "What things in your life are consistent with your belief?" Basically, there are three things you've got to show: #1: You have a serious, sincere, (either religious-based or moral/ethical-based or combination) BELIEF. #2. You are opposed to ALL WAR. #3. Your opposition to war has CRYSTALLIZED since you've been in the military.

Now what that means is that you could have had some anti-war feelings prior to joining the military, but it's really come to a head since you've been in the military. "You can't have been a Conscientious Objector and gone into the military;" that's what they say. Most people who contact us have come to see the war and militarism the way it is, up close and personal, and it's totally different from all the pretty pictures the recruiter painted. They see that WAR IS ALL ABOUT KILLING PEOPLE. It makes sense that people's opposition does crystallize after they've joined the military. Now, they can have had experiences earlier in their life that led them to this point.

ROBIE: Actually, THE LAW DOESN'T REQUIRE YOU TO BE AGAINST USING FORCE OR VIOLENCE IN ORDER TO BE A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR. It doesn't exclude your feeling that you would defend your home or your loved-ones. You're not declaring that you're a pacifist, but you have to be in opposition to war. Do you have a sense of how close this administration is to starting a draft?

STEVE: There's a couple of MAIN REASONS THEY'RE NOT STARTING A DRAFT, and the one they'll talk about publicly is that they don't want people in for short periods of time that aren't motivated, that aren't going to be trained and stay. And the second thing is that I think they're worried about SOCIAL UPHEAVAL if they start a draft, and so they won't. They won't talk about that much, but lots of people around the country talk about that. In 1980 they instituted draft registration, and there's still draft registration for males between 18 and 26. Now, they've tried to prosecute a number of people, particularly people who were public resisters to registering for the draft. They've prosecuted maybe 25 people. But what happened was that there was a big opposition. It didn't work for them. When they prosecuted people, fewer people registered. It became a big hew and cry, so in 1986 they stopped prosecuting people. They haven't prosecuted anybody for the last 19 years for not registering. . .

It does show fear of creating social upheaval around the draft, which certainly happened during the Vietnam War. Of course they enforce the Registration Law through various means such as through drivers' licenses and federal loans, but in all states, it's enforced through federal student loans, you can't get them if you don't register.

BONNIE: Do you have any sense of what percentage of people are not registering for the draft?

BARBARA: About 40% of men who are required to register don't within the 60-day period, the 30 days before and 30 days after their 18th birthday. There are 300,000 to 1,000,000 people who are not registered and who have not been prosecuted. But many people who want to go on with their education feel that this isn't the place where they want to draw the line with respect to their participation in the military. AND THEY USE THEIR DRAFT REGISTRATION AS THEIR FIRST STEP IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR CLAIM, BY WRITING, "I AM A C.O.," SORT OF IN PROTEST, AS THEY REGISTER. And then that makes them eligible for their Federal Student Loans. And they copy that card and they keep it with them, so at the time that the draft should be reinstated they would have as evidence that very early on when they first turned 18 at least they were in opposition to war.

STEVE: You write "I am a C.O.," in the margins, and we recommend that you make at least a couple of copies of that, and mail them to yourself, and keep them in a sealed envelope, and that way you'll have a legal record with a postmark of when you did that, and then BUILD YOURSELF A C.O. FILE of all the rallies you go to, or events: anti-war, speakers, demonstrations, pictures of you there, school papers you write, personal statements you write. All those things can be put into a file. Part of that is that a draft board might think you're more sincere because you've done that, and then they might also think that you're pretty well organized and you might have some friends around who might come picket the draft board.

About registration: some people who may not need the student loans or might not have had some reason to register, some people consider registering right before they turn 26. As a male, once you turn 26 then you're no longer eligible to register, and that means you can't get LOANS OR GOVERNMENT JOBS or things like that.

ROBIE: As the draft now stands (if we had a draft), you can't make any claims until you've been sent an induction order, and then you'd have ten days from the issue order to file your claims. In practice that would mean that you'd have as few as five days to act. So that's a reason we want to encourage people to decide now what they're going to do, and to help themselves by preparing a C.O. file for themselves now. What else would you suggest for young people to have in the file that they are preparing for themselves?

BARBARA: Some people are certain about their beliefs and know for sure that they are opposed to war, while others are less certain, like "What if we were attacked here?" or "Maybe there is a war I could fight in." I would suggest that they WATCH FILMS about war, and that they READ EVERYTHING they can, and that they KEEP A DIARY of those experiences, and they jot down their reactions, keep track of the way they're feeling about their participation in war, and about the way that the US and other superpowers fight wars. Not only do they have to be opposed to war but they also have to be opposed to all wars. That means they can't be selective and say, "Well, the Iraq War is obviously immoral and I can't fight in it, so I'm a C.O." Well, yes, you're a C.O., but not legally, according to the government.

Young people should expose themselves, TALK TO SOME VETS, TALK TO PEOPLE WHO DISAGREE WITH YOU, who think war is a good idea, and keep track of how your thinking is developing. Because when you start making your claim, and you go before the draft board, and they start asking you questions, you've got to be able to answer them. So GET CLEAR ON EXACTLY WHY YOU FEEL ABOUT THE DRAFT AND ABOUT THE WAR THE WAY YOU DO.

ROBIE: In your literature you refer to a draft that's already in place, a BACK- DOOR DRAFT. What is that?

STEVE: The POVERTY ECONOMIC DRAFT is really the key draft that's been in place since the conscription draft ended in 1963. And the military has counted on the fact that people will have limited opportunities, and are going to join the military. And the military has sophisticated and aggressive recruiting pitches, and the recruiters go to working communities much more than they go to affluent communities. Just the fact that the National Guard and the Reserves are being deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan is a huge issue. A lot of the people joined the National Guard and Reserves through the POVERTY ECONOMIC DRAFT, just as they did the active military. The other BACK-DOOR DRAFT was supposed to keep them in the states, particularly the National Guard, and then they send them over to Iraq, so that's a second one. And then there's the third one with the STOP LOSS that extends them beyond the time they're supposed to go. So, all those things are really in place. Did you hear the news today about the Vermont Town Meetings? Vermont has the second biggest number of National Guard people per capita being deployed in Iraq. There were 57 town meetings to discuss the War and the Vermont National Guard being deployed over there. There were resolutions in 49 out of 57 towns to call for bringing them back, and in most cases to call for National Guard from other states to be brought back, too, and to call for an end to the Iraq War. This is just DIRECT DEMOCRACY.

ROBIE: That's hopeful. That's what we have to do. We have to take it into our own hands on all levels, with THE NATIONAL GUARD AND STUDENTS EDUCATING THEMSELVES AND EVERYONE EDUCATING OURSELVES on what this war mentality really means. The Pentagon spends two billion dollars a year on recruiting, and every year recruiters convince nearly 400,000 young people to enlist in the military through a program called the DELAYED ENLISTMENT PROGRAM. What is the Delayed Enlistment Program? [see B. Goldman's forum speech]

lst CALLER: I wondered if you folks were familiar with the work of Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grothman, who wrote On Killing, the Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. It's terribly interesting. He's not a pacifist. He's an Army shrink. The study is such an eye-opener. I'm 65 years old. I thought I knew a couple of things, but it's really a very well kept secret that, up until after WWII, around 90% of people in the military didn't fire their weapons in combat or they fired them into the air. This was figured out during WWII by a military psychologist researcher, S. L. Marshall.

After that, they started developing TRAINING TECHNIQUES TO OVERCOME PEOPLE'S RELUCTANCE TO KILL. And what happened was it turned around, and the firing rate went up to 90%, and we had something that we'd never had before, which was massive psychological casualties. All through history this has been the case, not just modern war. Also I wanted to mention the March Harper's article "AWOL in America." And these are things that people might encourage their youngsters to take a look at, or take a look at themselves to arm themselves for helping their children confront these issues.

STEVE: Lt. Col. Dave Grothman in the book talks about how, in order to create that much higher rate of people firing in combat, they had to do a real PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSAULT ON PEOPLE IN BOOT CAMP AND BASIC TRAINING. So, some of the trauma that we hear about on the hotline comes from war and combat and some of it comes from being in training. They're actually abusing people and breaking down their human instincts, really, in order to get them to go over there and shoot at people and risk their own lives for people they have nothing against.

2nd CALLER: The whole thing about marketing to juveniles that by law don't have enough judgment to vote or use alcohol and, in fact, are protected from predatory behavior by adultsÑwhy? Because, as you stated earlier, they are easily led into different situations, their reasoning isn't developed fully yet nor their sense of judgment. How is it that this is accepted in our society, that we allow people whose business is essentially -- the core values of the military are by nature to kill or be killed -- but yet it's being marketed as some kind of career opportunity? . . .

ROBIE: I wanted to talk a little about the Reserves. The Pentagon now is relying heavily on the Reserves and the National Guard. It's 40% of the current force that's being deployed in the "War on Terror."

STEVE: STOP LOSS is from the point of view of the military, as though we have a leak here, we have to plug it up. And the leak would be somebody getting out when they're actually supposed to, when their time is up. People are getting extended. Sometimes it's because their unit is staying over there longer even though their time might be up. It's very hard for people who have jobs and businesses and families. A lot of times they have promised they would be coming back at a certain date and it's been postponed. Often it's been postponed more than once. It's extremely difficult (and the War is a difficult situation anyway) to be in a situation they never intended to be in. It's very demoralizing. But really it's just that they are doing this unnecessary war for geopolitical control and oil, and they are pulling people in wherever they can, and they've gotten the National Guard and the Reserves and they are often needed at home (oftentimes the fire fighters, police, and emergency workers are disproportionately represented in the National Guard and Reserves) and then communities end up short on their emergency service people.

ROBIE: My sense is that the folks who joined the National Guard really didn't plan on going to another country to kill people. You kind of get a feeling that National Guard is more for shoring up the shore in the case of emergency--weather emergency, or a thing like that, not having so much war overtones.

STEVE: The Guard, from a community or human viewpoint, have been used in both positive and negative ways, positive ways such as dealing with floods and disasters, and negative ways, in terms of, like, suppressing strikes and things like that. But that has happened within the US, or within the states; they've never been sent overseas before.

ROBIE: This is the first time--for the WAR ON TERROR. That's pretty major. Now, when the Reserves are being called up, are they showing up? What are the figures on that?

STEVE: Let's talk a little about the IRR because we haven't talked about that, the INDIVIDUAL READY RESERVE. You might think of the "I" as "inactive," because typically the people in the IRR are people who have been in the military for, say, a 4-year hitch of active duty, and there always was an 8 year commitment so that if a person got out after 4 years on active duty, then theoretically they had 4 more years until they were actually totally out of the military. But prior to the last few years, that 8 years seemed to be mostly on paper. But, they didn't do anything, didn't go to meetings, the most would be a physical once a year, and sometimes people didn't get that. So last summer they announced that they were going to call up 5600 people. They did a little of this in the Gulf War, but, other than that, this is the first time, and some of them were people they need in certain categories, like truck drivers. As of January, they had called up about 4000, and about HALF OF THEM HAD CALLED FOR A DEFERMENT. And the Army had granted lots of those deferments. Only a few of those had been denied (that's the opposite of most situations of people trying to get out of the military). Some people just haven't shown up. And they haven't declared anybody AWOL yet, or even deserter status. . . .It's not right to call these people back unless they're choosing to go. They're trying to pull people in wherever they can. (On the Internet we heard of an 84-year old dentist who was asked to go into the military, was offered $30,000.)

3rd CALLER: My name is Mike. I'd like to ask, do you have any videos or pamphlets that one could purchase or rent to show to students in the schools, and do schools allow information on how to counter the recruiter? Like something that would take the young person step by step with questions and answers type of thing?

BARBARA: Yes we do. We have lots of information at the Humboldt Committee for Conscientious Objectors office in Arcata. We're at 1040 H Street. People can come in and pick up information pamphlets anytime. We do have counter-recruitment efforts that some of us are involved in along with Veterans for Peace organizations in the high schools. That is primarily focussed on informing young people about the side of military recruitment that recruiters don't tell them. It doesn't focus explicitly on the step-by- step process of how to get out, but we do that, one individual at a time, on the HOTLINE. So people can certainly call us at the 800 number. If they are local our number is 826-0165.

STEVE: Also down at CCCO we have quite a number of brochures and pamphlets. We also have a video called "Military Myths," which is about 20 min., and for $30 including postage we can send it out. STEVE: There are two DRAFT BILLS IN CONGRESS: HR153 in the House and S89 in the Senate, and they're identical. They've been there since the beginning of 2003. And the Republicans trotted out HR163 in October to vote against it. (It's the first time a bill has ever been brought to the floor for the purpose of voting against it. [laughs] The vote was 402--2, and it was to show that they weren't going to institute the draft.

CCCO Bay Area # is 510-465-1617, toll free: 888-231-2226, and their website is: www.objector.org. **********