Are You Prepared to Avoid the Draft? Excellent Conscientious Objector Info

[chlamor]

There is much talk about the possibility of the draft returning. It seems likely that Conyer's, whatever his motives, will reintroduce legislation to install the draft. The neocon thinktankers are saying we need more boots on the ground to complete the "American Project". Will there be a draft? What would you do if drafted? For more on conscientious objector status here is a superb website and a little info:

"The Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors supports and promotes individual and collective resistance to war and preparations for war.
While most of us are teaching our kids to avoid violence, the US military is extolling the virtues of war. Junior ROTC programs are sprouting like weeds around the country — they’re now in over 2800 high schools."

"The draft ended and the military had to get sneakier — along with JROTC we now have the poverty draft. The Pentagon spends $2 billion on recruiting. They entice youth into the military with promises of college and job training: sounds like a great way out. Eventually, young people learn the truth — instead of being caught in drive-bys, they’re doing fly-bys."

"In 1968 we joined together to protest killing and war. We mobilized successfully against the Vietnam War, but haven’t been able to free our government from its militaristic ways. The Gulf War, the poverty draft, Junior ROTC, hazing, racism, sexual harassment and abuse are all dangers of an unchallenged military. It’s time again to act."
www.objector.org

[thefloyd]

1. If drafted I would serve.

Bottom line. My father and uncle did so I would as well.

[bowens43]

4. Why?

If your father and uncle jumped off of the proverbial bridge would you also?

[thefloyd]

5. Don't give me cliche crap please

The law is the law. Would I agree with the war no would I follow the law yes.

[realisticphish]

8. if the law was to shoot every black person in the face

would you do it? or would you refuse, because you cannot morally bring yourself to do such a barbarous act? that's the situation here.


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[thefloyd]

11. The law is not to shoot every black person in the face

the law is if you are drafted you serve. wither a person likes it or not

[realisticphish]

12. but my point is

if a law is immoral, a person is justified in not complying with a law.

in arguments, what i did is called a "hypothetical quiestion." read up on it.


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[thefloyd]

13. What you did is what every freeper does

Two things that are not related whatsoever. Look you want to dodge the draft and fall in line with Bush and all his little minions be my guest but you and all of the cliche crap you are throwing my way will not change my mind.

[realisticphish]

15. ...what?

what the HELL are you talking about?

dodging the draft because you dont want to die, and dodging because you think war is immoral are totally different things


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[thefloyd]

17. Well not in my book. To me the "immoral" argument

is an excuse. To me not following the law is "immoral"

[G_j]

18. You might want to read up on the Nuremburg trials.. n/t

[realisticphish]

19. law is not based on morality

law is based on public utility, for the most part. we pay taxes not because it is moral to do so, but because it is in the common interest to pay them.

but even allowing what you say. when you compare two moral positions, "breaking the law is immoral" and "killing is immoral" it is up to the person to decide which is more important to them, and act thusly


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[thefloyd]

21. We pay taxes because it is the law. If it were the "common interest

I am sure people would not pay. Just like if there is a draft IT IS THE LAW

[realisticphish]

25. the law is established to protect the common interest

that's the point. the common interest is not always what people consider to be moral. but it has to be done to further society

but you STILL aren't addressing my other point, about comparing the two types of morality. a person who is considering dodging the draft on ethical reasons has to choose which moral issue has precedence


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[thefloyd]

27. Oh I see thanks for explaining the point more clearly now.

To me serving in the militart if drafted is a way to "protect the common interest" I am not a war monger.

You have no other point it is an opinion. To me it is an excuse but to you there are ethical reasons.

[Occulus]

23. Yeah, that Rosa Parks was soooo immoral

Tell us another one. There ARE unjust laws.

Let me bounce this off you:

I have seen Bush as an enemy of the United States before he ever announced his candidacy for the 2000 election. Given that (and his actions since only further prove this), I could not in any conscience at all obey any orders set forth by him or his subordinates.

To do so would be to support a domestic enemy of the People and the Constitution.

[thefloyd]

24. Was sitting in the back of the bus a law or a rule?

Just curious.

[Occulus]

28. It was a law

http://www.vw.cc.va.us/vwhansd/HIS122/BusBoycott.html

"Soon the police arrived and Parks was arrested. She was taken to the police station, fingerprinted, and charged with violating the city's segregated bus law. (That same year, three other blacks had refused to comply with Montgomery's segregated bus law but city officials either dismissed the charges or charged them with disorderly conduct. This time they made a historic blunder.) Her throat was dry but they wouldn't let her drink from the station's whites-only fountain. She was allowed one call, and her mother answered the phone. "Did they beat you, Rosa?" She said no, but she was scared and did not want to spend a night in jail. That evening the Parks family met with Ed Nixon of the Montgomery NAACP, who posted her bond. Nixon had been waiting for a case to challenge the constitutionality of the bus law, but Park's husband was afraid. "Oh, the white folks will kill you, Rosa. Don't do anything to make trouble." But she agreed to challenge the law. Nixon believed that a boycott of the buses, along with an appeal of Rosa Parks' arrest, would bring about enough publicity and pressure on the city to crack the wall of segregation in Montgomery. To lead the boycott, they turned to a twenty-six year old minister who had been in Montgomery for little more than a year. His name was Martin Luther King, Jr."

It was a law after all. Imagine.

According to your argument regarding laws and the morality of obeying them, the entire civil rights struggle of black Americans is founded upon and was sparked by an immoral act.

Explain yourself. Please.

[thefloyd]

30. It was a local law not A NATIONAL LAW

[bowens43]

34. ROFLMAO!!!

You have got to be kidding. So in your mind it's ok to violate local and state law but not national law regardless of the morality of that law?
How does being 'NATIONAL LAW' make it more important then state or local law?

[thefloyd]

36. Well considering the idiots that instituted the law in the first place

I would have to say there is a huge difference. There is a big difference between passing a local law and a NATIONAL draft that must be approved by the federal government.

[Occulus]

38. Ok, fine, I'll bite.

What about the laws in CA that allow sick people to use marijuana? In that case, the state says "yes" and the Feds say "no".

Then there's the assisted suicide law in OR- the one the voters approved not once but twice, only to have Herr Asskroft swoop in and threaten doctors who would abide by the wishes of terminally ill patients. Again, a state law vs. a federal law.

So, given the two above illustrations, which "side" has the moral authority in each case?

[thefloyd]

40. Oooooo you will bite. Man watch out

Legally speaking federal law trumps state law. Morally speaking it is a persons opinion just like with me it is an opinion of mine to serve if drafted. Weither I like it or not.

[Occulus]

42. Strange. It sounded like you were calling it something akin to

a requirement earlier on.

Now it's an 'opinion'.

I guess we're all trying to figure out why you would go willingly fight for a cause you know to be unjust, illegal, and immoral.

You can't say you'd be unwilling to fight when drafted, because you would still go and fight, thus exercising your free will to do so. No one can take that choice from you except you. You DO have many other options, but you're unwilling to exercise them. Therefore, you ARE willing to go and fight, but only if forced, and then unwillingly.

You would thus be wilfully supporting all Bush foreign policy, as military intervention is simply put the most extreme exercise of foreign policy there is.

In other words, your logic just tied itself in knots.

[thefloyd]

44. Well if you go to my first post I say If I was drafted I would go

I had to remind people it is an opinion based on all of the other posts.
You are right my logic was twisted into knots because the other arguments are twisted into knots. Tit for tat

[bowens43]

35. Not following an immoral law is immoral?

You realize that that makes absolutely no sense.

[bowens43]

29. You're the one falling in line with Bush .

It's obvious that you will do as you are told. That's sad. I can't imagine what it must be like to allow others to control me to the extent that I would kill or die for something I don't believe in.

An honorable man will do what he believes to be right. You have stated that you believe the war wrong but will participate anyway. Where is the honor in that?

[thefloyd]

32. You want to know what it is like for something to kill or die

for something they don't believe in talk to vietnam vets. I can give you my fathers email and you guys can have a nice little chat.

[Occulus]

39. You mean to tell us your father went there

KNOWING the cause was wrong?

Yet he went and killed anyway? "His country, right or wrong?" Was that it?

Sorry, but I feel the exact same emotion for those who know a cause is wrong and fight for it anyway as I do for those who know a cause is right and refuse to fight for it at all.

[thefloyd]

41. Good opinions are nice. What about the guys in Iraq right

now that are there and think it is absolute bullshit. Do you disrespect them for doing their duty?

[Occulus]

43. There's a difference between you and them.

You know the policies are wrong. They, for all I know, could have been lied to, and likely probably were.

I have nothing but sympathy for the guys over there right now who went into it thinking they were fighting for our freedoms only to find they were fighting for something very different, something they would have in no way supported had they known the truth.

We here know those truths, but they may not have. If they were lied to in order to get them to sign up, and they now know they were lied to, that's one thing. To know the cause is wrong and still be willing to allow oneself to be forced to support it is 1) illogical and 2) acceptance of the cause and all its falsehoods, lies, and hollow promises.

One cannot know a cause is wrong and support that cause without agreeing to everything that cause entails, thus proving they believe the cause is right.

[thefloyd]

45. You act as if all of them signed up right before the war started

I have no hard numbers but there are soldiers there right now that knew the war was crap and served anyways.

[Occulus]

46. Exactly.

It is those types I reserve the bulk of my ire for.

"I know I shouldn't, and I know it's wrong, but I will anyway because I believe it's right."

Am I the only one who sees the illogic in that?

[thefloyd]

47. Good you can reserve you ire for them whatever you want to do.

[chlamor]

14. The Words of Brigadier General Smedley Butler

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.

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?
Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples:

Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people – didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.
WHO PAYS THE BILLS?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

[Occulus]

22. For me, the law is

"You are gay- you CAN'T serve."

Would you have me be a slave?

How exactly is it ok to say "the law is the law" in that situation?

Your position, for me, is no different than slavery. "You can't if you wanted to but you will if we force you to."

I'm not saying that's my opinion. It's fact, based on my homosexuality.

Would you require me to "follow the law" in such a situation?

[uppityperson]

9. The law says you can serve time in jail instead.

Good luck to you and us all.

[G_j]

20. that is correct

there is a choice. I would prefer prison, and that is what I told them at my draft physical in 1970.

[chlamor]

10. I would hope

that you would contact someone like Treasonous Bastard who is a counselor. There are numerous laws that are unjust. If you haven't already consider taking the time to read "War is a Racket", by Brigadier General Smedley Butler. You can google the title and download/print the entire booklet-It is quite short and concise. Consider the notion that you may be cannon fodder for heartless corporate america if you were in the military.

[bowens43]

26. Why?

Just following orders , huh? I certainly wouldn't blindly follow the law when it conflicts with my beliefs nor would I expect my sons to do so.

[oldfogey]

48. I find your choice

to be commendable.

[Grey Ranks]

49. For those who doubt thefloyd

He is doing what he believes is the honorable choice. Why do you attack him? Are you doing what you think is right? Are you would be secure in both the reasons and results of your decision?

His respect to duty and law is admirable. There are good arguments for going to the war being right and wrong. The only thing we can do is choose for ourselves. Time will be the means by which we judge our actions.

This is a Democracy, which means we all take a part in it. The good and the bad. Some will choose to follow the law because they respect the institution. Others will choose to disobey it. Both are necessary to preserve our beloved Republic and ensure it stands for the liberty and justice.

He may be the one to bring a little humanity into the insanity.

[realisticphish]

50. goody

i'll respect the hell out of him. but it doesnt change the fact that declaring this or that immoral is flagrantly undemocratic, and it doesn't change the fact that i disagree with thefloyds blind adherance to federal law

:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[thefloyd]

51. Thank you very much. I am very appreciative of

your compliments. I am very happy you noticed that I was only talking about how I WOULD HANDLE THE SITUATION and How I view the situation. Merely an opinion.
Thanks

[TreasonousBastard]

2. I'm one of their counselors.

[serryjw]

3. God Speed!

Thanks fopr your good work. War is not the answer....especially * wars. Serving is NOT honorable, it Bushit

[thefloyd]

6. Trust me my father needs a counselor

The guy fucking cries when he even tries to discuss it. Did he enjoy it no. did he follow the law yes

[bowens43]

31. What's this weird obsession you have with the law?

You seem to think that because something is 'the law' that it is right.

[thefloyd]

37. When it comes to serving the country I believe the law is right

There are lots of people in my family and other families that have served and did so even though they objected.

[G_j]

7. good for you and thanks!

How to Protect Your Child from the Coming Draft - Dr. Teresa Whitehurst

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3140157
-----------------------------------------------------

[G_j]

16. "Regaining My Humanity"

http://www.codepinkalert.org/National_Actions_Camilo.shtml

Great news! Camilo Mejia Released from Prison

We were delighted to receive a phone call yesterday, February 15, from Camilo Mejia, letting us know that he has just been released from prison. Some of you might remember Camilo, a courageous soldier who spent more than 7 years in the military, 8 months fighting in Iraq, came home for a 2-week furlough, and decided that he could not—in good conscience—return to Iraq. He applied for Conscientious Objector status, and was declared a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International. But the US military convicted him of desertion, and sent him to serve a one-year prison sentence in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. This happened the same day that Spc. Jeremy Sivits was court-martialed and sentenced to a year in prison for abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, an order Camilo had refused to obey.

For more information on Camilo go to: http://freecamilo.org /

Regaining My Humanity
By Camilo Mejia

I was deployed to Iraq in April 2003 and returned home for a two-week leave in October. Going home gave me the opportunity to put my thoughts in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say. People would ask me about my war experiences and answering them took me back to all the horrors—the firefights, the ambushes, the time I saw a young Iraqi dragged by his shoulders through a pool of his own blood or an innocent man was decapitated by our machine gun fire. The time I saw a soldier broken down inside because he killed a child, or an old man on his knees, crying with his arms raised to the sky, perhaps asking God why we had taken the lifeless body of his son.

I thought of the suffering of a people whose country was in ruins and who were further humiliated by the raids, patrols and curfews of an occupying army.

And I realized that none of the reasons we were told about why we were in Iraq turned out to be true. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We weren’t helping the Iraqi people and the Iraqi people didn’t want us there. We weren’t preventing terrorism or making Americans safer. I couldn’t find a single good reason for having been there, for having shot at people and been shot at.

Coming home gave me the clarity to see the line between military duty and moral obligation. I realized that I was part of a war that I believed was immoral and criminal, a war of aggression, a war of imperial domination. I realized that acting upon my principles became incompatible with my role in the military, and I decided that I could not return to Iraq.

By putting my weapon down, I chose to reassert myself as a human being. I have not deserted the military or been disloyal to the men and women of the military. I have not been disloyal to a country. I have only been loyal to my principles.


..more..

[DU GrovelBot]

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