David Swanson - Remarks in London, England, July 2, 2014

Thank you to Bruce Kent and the Movement for the Abolition of War and to Veterans For Peace and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Thank you to the Stop the War Coalition and everyone else for helping spread the word.

In 8 days, on July 10th Mary Ann Grady-Flores, a grandmother from Ithaca, NY, is scheduled to be sentenced to up to one year in prison.  Her crime is violating an order of protection, which is a legal tool to protect a particular person from the violence of another particular person.  In this case, the commander of Hancock Air Base has been legally protected from dedicated nonviolent protesters, despite the protection of commanding his own military base, and despite the protesters having no idea who the guy is.  That’s how badly the people in charge of the flying killer robots we call drones want to avoid any questioning of their activity entering the minds of the drone pilots.

Last Thursday a place in the U.S. called the Stimson Center released a report on the new U.S. habit of murdering people with missiles from drones.  The Stimson Center is named for Henry Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of War who, prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor wrote in his diary, following a meeting with President Roosevelt: “The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition.” (Four months earlier, Churchill had told his cabinet at 10 Downing Street that U.S. policy toward Japan consisted of this: “Everything was to be done to force an incident.”)  This was the same Henry Stimson who later forbid dropping the first nuclear bomb on Kyoto, because he’d once been to Kyoto. He’d never visited Hiroshima, much to the misfortune of the people of Hiroshima.

David Swanson -

Remarkably, the U.S. Army War College has published a report (PDF) that makes an overwhelming case against enlisting in the U.S. Army.  The report, called "Civilian Organizational Inhibitors to U.S. Army Recruiting and the Road Ahead," identifies counter-recruitment organizations that effectively discourage young people from joining the military.

This is the highest honor the Army could give these groups, including Quaker House, the Mennonite Central Committee, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans For Peace, and Courage to Resist.  Activists often disbelieve in the effectiveness of their own work until the government admits it explicitly.  Well, here is that admission.  And counter-recruitment activists really do seem to appreciate it.

No doubt someone quickly sent the report along to the NSA and the FBI.  The report is, in fact, a few years old, and we have seen the government infiltrating at least some of the organizations named in it during the past few years.

But who really should be reading this excellent report is potential recruits.  In laying out the arguments of the counter-recruitment groups and then trying to refute them, the report's author, Lieutenant Colonel Todd M. Jacobus, makes their case persuasively and his own weakly in the extreme.  I'm not sure if this is intentional subterfuge, drug-induced self-parody, or just intellectual debility.  Regardless, the government will have new appreciation for its standard disclaimer that says the views expressed are the author's alone.

David Swanson -

To: Sandy Husk
Salem-Keizer Superintendent of Schools

I would like to file a complaint about the manner in which my classmate and I were removed from what we were told was a mandatory test known as the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). The staff member known as 1st Sergeant in our school is the one whom removed us from the test. During our removal we caused no disruption.  The only disruption was caused by the manner in which 1st Sergeant removed us.   When we explained we chose to opt out by voiding the test due to its military connection 1st Sergeant informed us as did an administration member Vice Principle Rolland Hayden, that the ASVAB is in no way related to the military. This by itself is a lie.

David Swanson -

"About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War," is a book that should be stacked up on a table in every high school cafeteria, next to the vultures.  Sorry, I mean the war pushers. Sorry, I mean the good recruiters for the services of the profiteers of death. Sorry, you know the people I mean.  That is, unless useful books can make it into classrooms, which would be even better.

Most G.I. resistance in Vietnam, this book points out, came from those who had willingly signed up, not from draftees.  It is often those who believe the hype, who are trying to benefit the world by going to war, who find the will try to benefit the world when their blinders have been removed and they've seen what war is and what war is used for.

"About Face" collects stories of recent resistance within the "volunteer" U.S. military.  These are young people with few job options who choose military "service" but discover it isn't a service.  They all have stories, many of them highlighting particular moments of conversion.  The reality is usually more complex and gradual, but the stories make the point.

Benji Lewis was a Marine in Iraq.  After two "tours" he gave some thought to things that had happened on his first tour, including this:

December 6, 2011

David Swanson -

Please take some time to look through the new website of the new National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy: www.studentprivacy.org

I've just joined the board because I believe a great deal of good can be done.

The National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy is a one-trick pony and that trick is the ASVAB Campaign. In short, we call for the universal selection of Option 8 for students taking the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB in high schools across the country, thereby prohibiting the automatic release of test data to military recruiting services.

Sounds pretty obscure and technical, I suppose.  But this is a relatively easy and proven model of denying the U.S. military what it needs in order to kill our young people by using them to kill others.  Namely, it denies the military the illegal right to violate the privacy of our young people in furthering its recruitment efforts.