MoPress

Category: gmoses

  • Anabaptists Join March 4 Summit on Alternative Service

    2) Council endorses Selective Service conversations, alternative service consultation.

    http://www.brethren.org/genbd/newsline/2004/dec3104.htm#2

    The Annual Conference Council has given its endorsement to continued conversations between the General Board and Selective Service in a telephone conference call Dec. 10. The endorsement was given in response to the invitation by Selective Service for the Church of the Brethren, as a historic peace church, to develop a plan for alternative service opportunities. The council also endorsed Church of the Brethren participation in an Anabaptist meeting on alternative service opportunities.

    Earl K. Ziegler, chair of the council, called the group together to discuss the matter at the request of Stan Noffsinger, general secretary of the General Board. Noffsinger turned to the council in its capacity as executive committee of the Conference, reported Conference secretary Fred Swartz. Noffsinger told the council that he considered the opportunity and call to be larger than a General Board program, and an invitation to the entire denomination to be involved in a positive witness to its heritage and faith.

    “The council understood from the background material given that Selective Service, or the Bush administration, have no plans in the offing to institute a new draft,” Swartz reported. “There have been discussions during the past two presidential administrations of the eventual possibility of some kind of general national service. Selective Service officials explained to General Board staff that they want alternative service opportunities to be in place if and when such a program would be launched.”

    The council unanimously agreed to “give the general secretary our encouragement to maximize our efforts to have alternative service opportunities in place” and “to continue to explore the relationship with Selective Service.” The council added a strong urging for all Annual Conference agencies “to renew the task of resourcing the church with tools to guide our youth in their choice of nonviolent service.” Noffsinger reported that he will give On Earth Peace a full report of the conversations with Selective Service and will make sure that agency is a participant in the discussion. “We don’t want to miss the part of providing resources to our youth that will help them understand and embrace the Brethren peace witness,” commented Chris Bowman, moderator of the 2004 Conference.

    Noffsinger and Jim Hardenbrook, 2005 Annual Conference moderator, also reported to the council their participation in a recent meeting of executives and moderators of Anabaptist communions. Although this fellowship has met annually, the Church of the Brethren has not been involved for six years. The meeting also included officers of the Mennonite Church US, the Brethren in Christ, the Conservative Mennonite Church, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) US, and the Mennonite Brethren USA.

    At the Anabaptist meeting, the MCC’s executive director Rolando Santiago brought a proposal urging Anabaptist churches to intensify their witness to service. After Church of the Brethren representatives disclosed the contacts with Selective Service, the group made plans for a consultation of representatives of Anabaptist communions to discuss the tradition’s understanding of service and how to prepare for alternative service opportunities. At Noffsinger’s invitation the consultation will be held at the Church of the Brethren General Offices in Elgin, Ill.

    After hearing the report, the Annual Conference Council took action to support “our denomination’s participation in a consultation on alternative service March 4-6, 2005, to be held in Elgin, Ill., as proposed by the council of moderators and secretaries of the Anabaptist churches, and in which the Annual Conference moderator and General Board general secretary will participate on behalf of the Church of the Brethren.” Council members participating in the meeting were Ziegler, Bowman, Hardenbrook, Swartz, Ron Beachley, Joan Daggett, and Lerry Fogle.

  • Feelin' It? The Draft

    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

    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

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

    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

    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

    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

  • Further Clips on Helmly's 5-Year Plans

    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

    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

    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

    A military philosophy of ed:

    Click to access Schneider.pdf

  • Uncle Sam's Tick-Tock Heart: CounterPunch Readers Reply to 'Boot Up'

    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

    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

    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.