Author: mopress

Chicago Sun-Times Jan. 6, 2005:

The government is going to double check your filing, so fill out the forms carefully. Of particular importance at the moment, is the fact that the government will check on whether male students have registered with Selective Service for any potential military draft.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/savage/cst-fin-terry062.html

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Washington Post, Jan. 7, 2005:

“I do not think we can stay in Iraq in the fashion we’re in now,” Brzezinski said. “If it cannot be changed drastically, it should be terminated.” He said it would take 500,000 troops, $500 billion and resumption of the military draft to ensure adequate security in Iraq.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54680-2005Jan6.html

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So which path do you think BushCo will follow? Will they hand the country to Sistani and walk away?–gm

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The editor of freeinternetpress.com writes Jan. 7, 2005:

Editor: You know, I’ve had discussions with people in various capacities. Sometimes they cannot officially say “This is true”, but they can make helpful suggestions. Selective Service officials are not saying that the draft will be revived, but they are suggesting that the church gets their [CO alternative service] program ready.

http://freeinternetpress.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2675

The note accompanies a clip from Religion News Service, suggesting that peace churches have been encouraged by Selective Service to get “alternative service” programs ready. The date of the story is unclear. It appears to be fresh, but may date back to Dec. 29:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/158/story_15893_1.html

http://www.ethicsdaily.com/article_detail.cfm?AID=5172

Here’s the horse’s mouth from brethren.org:

2) Church staff meet with Selective Service.

Three staff directors of the General Board met with staff of Selective Service at the agency’s office in Arlington, Va., Dec. 2. The meeting followed up on an unannounced visit to the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Md., on Oct. 8 by Cassandra Costley, director of the Alternative Service Division of Selective Service.

New Windsor has a long history of being a site where Brethren have organized and gathered around issues of conscience and military service, most notably hosting Civilian Public Service workers from 1944-46. Selective Service is the federal agency that registers and maintains a database of young men as they reach their eighteenth birthday in order to maintain an accounting of those available for military service in the event of a military draft.

“We went into this meeting with a clear agenda of opening a conversation with Selective Service in an effort to better understand why this visit to New Windsor occurred, and how we as a church could make clear our historic and active voice as a people of peace and nonviolence,” reported Phil Jones, director of Brethren Witness/Washington Office. Also in the meeting were Brethren Volunteer Service director Dan McFadden and Brethren Service Center executive director Roy Winter.

The meeting lasted well into three hours, Jones reported. Was the New Windsor visit an indication that Selective Service was gearing up for a military conscription program, the group asked. “The answer is no, according to Costley, and her immediate supervisor, Richard Flahavan,” Jones said. Costley, Flahavan, and the newly installed Director of Selective Service William Chatfield, who joined the meeting briefly, all indicated that their work was in regards to preparedness only. The New Windsor visit was made because Costley was in the area for other business and took the opportunity to make an outreach visit.

Flahavan went on to explain that there is no draft and that none is coming as indicated by statements from the White House and Pentagon in recent months, Jones reported. “He also pointed to the late October vote of Congress that overwhelmingly defeated a proposed draft bill” (HR 163), Jones said. “The gearing up for a draft and the sheer amount of funding and staff increases that would be necessary are reasons enough to indicate there will be no draft,” Flahavan stated, indicating that a draft would cost in excess of one half billion dollars to initiate. Most of the meeting was spent in learning more about Selective Service and how its Alternative Service program would operate if there were a draft.

“The fact that they were asking us a lot of questions shows that one of the things we have developed as a peace church is a lot of respect for our position,” commented Stan Noffsinger, general secretary of the General Board. Within a week of the meeting with Selective Service, Noffsinger and Annual Conference moderator Jim Hardenbrook reported on the meeting to the Council of Moderators and Secretaries of the Anabaptist Churches. The council also includes officers of the Mennonite Church US, the Brethren in Christ, the Conservative Mennonite Church, Mennonite Central Committee US, and the Mennonite Brethren USA.

Planning is underway for an Anabaptist churches’ Consultation on Alternative Service, to be held at the Church of the Brethren General Offices in Elgin, Ill. Details will be announced after the first of the year. McFadden will represent the Church of the Brethren on the planning committee along with Noffsinger.

“Now’s the time to talk about the issues of alternative service and its future,” Noffsinger said. “To me that’s the value” of the conversation with Selective Service, he added.

http://www.brethren.org/genbd/newsline/2004/dec1704.htm

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On this point, I think the peace movement can support alternative service on “religious freedom” grounds and other voluntary measures such as a tax form checkoff for a Dept. of Peace. These measures can begin to build pacifist seeds of infrastructure.–gm

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Looking at Google for Retired Gen. Gary E. Luck, who is off to Iraq on a mission assessment for the Pentagon. He seems to be famous for his pro-missile campaign when he commanded Korea. My guess, he will come up with hard-hitting military assessments about what is needed from a command perspective, i.e. no more “Iraq lite”.

On “the future of the military” question, it looks like he’s got a pretty strong commitment to
intervention. The NYTimes report echoes Helmly’s leaked memo, that the Reserves are in extreme distress.

Challenge me for a prediction: a “national service” draft that will pull folks into the reserves. It will be sold politically as a quasi-public service with dual uses: developing civilian talent at home that can help with various civilian needs, yet most useful for emergency deployment abroad. So the draft scare was not just electioneering.–gm

http://www.utne.com/webwatch/2004_147/news/11211-1.html

To help us fully equip the units that need it most, in 2005 the Army Reserve will begin implementing the Army Reserve Expeditionary Force (AREF), consisting of modular force packages organized at the battalion level and below. It allows the Army Reserve to provide sustainability, availability and predictability to both the soldier and the combatant commander. AREF leverages our core competencies of civil affairs, medical, military police and transportation, which are not as readily available in the Active Component Army. Each package rotates through various stages of readiness and responsiveness, culminating in a 9- to 12-month call to active duty every five years.

AREF calls for organizing our go-towar units (AA units) into 10 packages for rapid deployment over a five-year period. The units in Year 1 would be “on alert,” ready to be called to active duty and deployment almost immediately. Units in Year 5 would be reconstituting, most likely from a recent deployment.

The Army Reserve is a very different organization from what it was 20 or 30 years ago. Our units have been deployed more frequently in the last 12 years than during the previous 75 years.

The Army Reserve is changing in deep, profound ways. It is more than just superficial adjustments. It is a total overhaul—a depot-level rebuild—of the organization, while it is fully engaged in supporting the global war on terror-ism. I have compared it to rebuilding an aircraft while the plane is in flight. We are changing the Army Reserve culture so soldiers know that mobilization is the expectation, not the exception. We have implemented tougher, more realistic training to make sure our soldiers are warriors first, technicians second.

http://www4.army.mil/USAR/news/word_2004-12-22.php

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The intent of the Army Reserve is to use the energy and urgency of current Army Transformation initiatives and the operational demands of the global war on terrorism to change from an over-structured, technically focused, force-in-reserve to a learning organization that provides trained, ready, “inactive duty” soldiers poised and available for active service, as ready as if they knew the hour and day they would be called.

The Army Reserve also seeks innovative ways to continue contributing to training across the Army. To support combatant commanders, the Army Reserve is pursuing the creation of the Foreign Army-Training Assistance Command (FA-TRAC), which will conduct foreign army training, a mission that is currently conducted by soldiers of the Army Reserve’s 75th Division (Training Support) Advisory Support Team in Tallafar, Iraq.

The mission of FA-TRAC, similar to the mission of the 75th Division today in Iraq, will be to provide foreign armed forces with advice, training and organizational practices in leadership, soldier skills and unit tactics. Army Reserve soldiers assigned to FA-TRAC will deploy to the combatant command to live, train and eat with the hostnation soldiers. The FA-TRAC will be built from the existing structure of a current Army Reserve division (institutional training). FA-TRAC will provide “plug and play” training teams to the combatant commander.

Since mobilization is no longer an unexpected event, we are striving to reduce post-mobilization training to less than a month and focusing it on critical collective unit tasks, theater-specific training, mission rehearsals and validation.

Click to access Helmly.pdf

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Sustaining members of AUSA: Sustaining Members are major industry leaders, businesses and professional organizations, approximately 25% of whom are international companies. These companies are involved in research, development and production of weapons and equipment for the Army and form the nation’s defense industrial base.

http://ausa.org/membership

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A military philosophy of ed:

Click to access Schneider.pdf

Thanks for your article in Counterpunch, Greg. Children are allowed to watch the tsunami victims but cannot see the victims of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, etc. Children are allowed to play video games enabling a military mentality and learning how to kill before they know how to love, develop compassion, and probably never have a social conscience.

They can go to churches and learn how to lie. They can watch all the inconsistencies and contradictions of american society. They can confuse the flag with an old mattress ticking…[if we have a flag, it should at least be somewhat artistic]

They can learn what a dysfunctional family is by observing their daily experiences with their family, if they have a family. They can learn about the legal system when their parents get a divorce and confuse the children more than they were previously.

They will see through all the crap…then become brainwashed, after which many will believe more lies, while others avoid mainstream everything, except eating. And that will be difficult also. Then these dropouts will learn about consciousness and how they have been going thru life in a sleeplike state.

Social conditioning will become a fun topic to dabble with occasionally. And the story goes on…some die young others die and forget to fall over, while others still keep breathing……

Keep writing Greg,
Joe Ciarrocca

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Just to wish a equally hard punching 2005 as 2004. Your views are a reminder that not all humans are carniverous reptiles: smell, see, attack, eat, smack jaws!

LK

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Thanks, Greg, for telling me all about free downloadable war games! Do you mind if I give them a pass?

You know, it strikes me that conscription (or whatever it’s more nicely called) is simple slavery. So, maybe the guys (and gals) do get a salary, of sorts. So, maybe they do get – if they’re lucky – bandages after getting all shot to heck. Fact is, however, that they don’t seem to have much choice, once Uncle Sam calls. Penalty for disobedience? Well, let’s not go into that, ’cause this is a civilized email. From what I’ve read, I’m not sure the difference (except, perhaps, workplace) between conscription and slavery. Whenever the government abrogates uno itself the right to do as it wishes with one’s life and one’s body, surely there is a name for that. Slavery. (By the way, just how WERE those pyramids built?)

Regards,
Evelyn vd Riet

P.S. By the way: w/ or w/o conscription, the war in Iraq STILL stinks.

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch / OpEd News / Dissident Voice

I was fifty five percent done with my download of America’s Army, the game you can get for free on the internet (or in CD format from your Army recruiter if you don’t have broadband, kid) when notice came down an anti-war list that the Army Reserve is, according to a leaked memo, “rapidly degenerating into a ‘broken force.’” Since memos are to be taken seriously when leaked the day before Congress convenes, I’ve little choice right now but to toggle between my Army made Army game and this Army induced article, which is good preparation, don’t you think for the all-Army future that is bringing purpose and clarity to your muddled life and mine.

The author of the (ahem) leaked memo, James Helmly, is no whiner, having worked his way up from Vietnam-era Private to three-star General and Chief of Army Reserves. In Sept. of 2003 he was quoted in USA Today saying that the Army Reserve is now on “a war footing” and needs to enter full war mode. In fact, he seems to have a pretty clear idea about how Congress can help him fix his ‘broken force,’ according to testimony that he gave to the House Armed Services Committee on March 31, posted at globalsecurity.org. But before we get started on that long, boring agenda for readiness among our children’s children, including perpetual rotation into combat, please start your own download of America’s Army so that you too can begin to acclimatize yourself to the appropriate mood. Meanwhile, please excuse me as I unzip my file.

In a footnote to his Congressional testimony, it appears that James Helmly makes a note to himself to reduce the use of acronyms, “which Congress hates.” Actually, Congress only hates the acronyms it does not use on a regular basis. Some acronyms, like PATRIOT Act, Congress simply loves to speak and hear, even if nobody knows what PATRIOT stands for anymore, the acronym or the word. So Helmly need not give up all acronyms when speaking to Congress, and I like the one he keeps, OPTEMPO. I like OPTEMPO for two reasons, first it does seem to compress the idea of the speed of war, conveying the impression that operational tempo can be conducted at a more rapid flick of the Commander-in-Chief’s wand. As an acronym it conveys an intent to adjust the velocity of things.

The second reason why I like the acronym OPTEMPO is because I find it only three words removed from “statutory” in Gen. Helmly’s testimony to Congress, where he seems to say that a new OPTEMPO for the Army Reserves will require new laws. Since his concerns about what will happen if Congress does not follow his advice have been recently (oops) leaked, we might want to revisit a full paragraph from his March testimony:

Changing the way we employ Soldiers starts with changing the way we prepare for calls to active duty. The current process is to alert a unit for calls to active duty, conduct administrative readiness preparations at home station, and then send the unit to the mobilization station for further administrative and logistical preparedness processing and to train for deployment. This alert-train-deploy process, while successful in Desert Shield/Desert Storm, today inhibits responsiveness. By changing to a train-mob-deploy model, and dealing with administrative and logistical requirements prior to active duty, we will reduce the time needed to bring units to a campaign quality level needed for operations. This will require us to resource more training events at home station through the use of devices, simulators and simulations. As you would expect, this shift in paradigms will increase pre-call-to-active-duty OPTEMPO beyond the current statutory level and will require greater effort and resources to achieve. We are confident that the increased costs will pay significant dividends in terms of readiness and deployability.

You can read the rest of the testimony for yourself, but it looks to me like Gen. Helmly wants to see a beefed up and “rotating” Army Reserve in which soldiers go active on a four or five year rotation. They can work at home, go active, and then rotate back home in what Helmly calls the “train-mob-deploy” model, or what we might better call Bush’s answer to the New Deal. For Helmly, the Army Reserve will need to rely less and less on folks coming out of the Army, more and more on new kids gearing up for their first Army experience. This is handy timing, because older soldiers aren’t coming back to reserves like they used to.

In the new order of things, the Army reservist’s “home station” will be equipped with “devices, simulators and simulations.” Excuse me again, while I click the next button on my InstallShield wizard for America’s Army (these Army downloads are sharp, I gotta say). After clicking everything that says I agree (who knows what we’ll be agreeing to in the future?) the wizard tells me my name and asks me to fill in my organization. Peacefile should do nicely. Install this for anyone on the computer? Why not. Click install. This may take several minutes. Okay, back to OPTEMPO.

OPTEMPO pertains to what Gen. Helmly calls “pre-call-to-active-duty.” In order to provide for the American Army more “predictable and sustainable rotations” of freshly groomed soldiers, Helmly needs good pay and benefits. He needs an advertising budget. He needs support services for families, new computers, and a batch of new contractors who can help secure bases, train leaders, and plan exercises.

“This global war on terrorism, as our president has described, is a long-term campaign of inestimable duration, fought in many different places around the world,” concludes Gen. Helmly’s March testimony. In order to give the President what he needs, Helmly has a pretty clear idea about what Congress needs to do next.

On my home computer, the America’s Army installshield is asking me do I want to install GameSpy Arcade? “GameSpy Arcade is the fast, free way to find games and opponents,” says my nifty dialogue box. “Join millions of other players just like yourself!” I like that exclamation point that follows “other players just like yourself!” I’m going to remember how enthusiastic folks get about that phrase the next time someone calls me a commie because I think equality would be enjoyable, you know, where millions would be just like myself, etc., and we could play these games together more often. “Would you like to install GameSpy Arcade?” Click yes. Oh wow, look at this. Click yes, yes, yes.

What’s cool about GameSpy Arcade, says the screen now in front of me, is that it offers “cheat free servers.” This idea is appealing, because the next time I get my ass kicked online playing WarCraft, I would like to know that it wasn’t because of cheat codes. So okay, sign me up for another download. But I do wonder how GameSpy got itself bundled into the Army install shield. Maybe I could get some help from the info hacks on this. Does the Army take bids for little perks like this? The “wise” wizard also offers SeeMePlayMe and Xfire, both of them service providers that will take your credit card number right away. At last, when I start up the game finally, it confines my cursor inside the military frame, no more toggling here. Either play America’s Army or don’t.

As I roll the credits for America’s Army, looking for the music composer, I think about the creative and strategic genius that is being put to work here with tax dollars that have been borrowed from our children’s children. Free war games all around, in preparation for a future of interminable strike forces and routine rotations into and out of combat. Here is the new American system, ever ready for the next little war in the next little country. Boot up America, your Army is waiting, and your ship of state is puffing hard, damn the leaks and full speed ahead. Click yes to play.

LINKS

Helmly Memo Leaks
http://blog.democrats.com/node/2347

OPTEMPO
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Aug1999/n08181999_9908181.html

Helmly Calls for Reserve War Mode—USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-09-15-reserves-chief_x.htM

Helmly Testimony
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/2004_hr/04-03-31helmly.htm