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At the end of last month, the U.S. Selective Service System issued a report assuring President George W. Bush that it would be ready to implement a draft within 75 days. While stirring up a storm of speculation, this report may actually be the least compelling harbinger of a draft.
Far more dire is the skyrocketing need for troops amid plummeting supply. More than 300,000 of the 482,000 soldiers in the US army are already deployed abroad, predominantly in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and the former Yugoslavia. The ratio of two soldiers abroad for every one at home is the opposite of what military strategists say is necessary to maintain a long-term deployment.
It would take 100,000 new troops at home to correct this discrepancy, but the government concedes that new troops are not coming in.
( Read more... )
"[Military recruiters] prey on the fact we can barely afford to go to college," Rodriguez said. "What they don't say is it's so hard to get the GI Bill that less than half do."
... Langley and others say parents need to be educated about parts of the "No Child Left Behind Act," which allow military recruiters to access information about students including their home address, telephone number, and extracurricular activities.
Most are unaware that they can prevent this information from being released by submitting an Opt-Out Form signed by parents or students to the school administration.
Organizers also want to publicize the option for military resisters to find safe haven in Canada. During the Vietnam War, over 50,000 Americans went to Canada to avoid the draft. Today however, Canadian law does not allow foreigners to apply for immediate "landed immigrant status"; they must apply outside of the country and wait up to two years or more for a decision. But Gerry Condon, a former Green Beret who refused to fight in Vietnam and who is organizing support for military personnel who have already gone to Canada to avoid fighting in the Iraq war, says that military resisters can avoid the new law by entering Canada as tourists and applying for refugee status.
from An Army of the Unwilling (linked by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
antiwar_dot_com)
Far more dire is the skyrocketing need for troops amid plummeting supply. More than 300,000 of the 482,000 soldiers in the US army are already deployed abroad, predominantly in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and the former Yugoslavia. The ratio of two soldiers abroad for every one at home is the opposite of what military strategists say is necessary to maintain a long-term deployment.
It would take 100,000 new troops at home to correct this discrepancy, but the government concedes that new troops are not coming in.
( Read more... )"[Military recruiters] prey on the fact we can barely afford to go to college," Rodriguez said. "What they don't say is it's so hard to get the GI Bill that less than half do."
... Langley and others say parents need to be educated about parts of the "No Child Left Behind Act," which allow military recruiters to access information about students including their home address, telephone number, and extracurricular activities.
Most are unaware that they can prevent this information from being released by submitting an Opt-Out Form signed by parents or students to the school administration.
Organizers also want to publicize the option for military resisters to find safe haven in Canada. During the Vietnam War, over 50,000 Americans went to Canada to avoid the draft. Today however, Canadian law does not allow foreigners to apply for immediate "landed immigrant status"; they must apply outside of the country and wait up to two years or more for a decision. But Gerry Condon, a former Green Beret who refused to fight in Vietnam and who is organizing support for military personnel who have already gone to Canada to avoid fighting in the Iraq war, says that military resisters can avoid the new law by entering Canada as tourists and applying for refugee status.
from An Army of the Unwilling (linked by
antiwar_dot_com)
