Rick Jahnkow -

Many advocates of progressive social change in this country are asking important questions about possible directions to follow after the 2008 election. For the peace movement, this question is particularly challenging because, while there is good reason to celebrate the defeat of the Republican Party and the election of the first African American president, there is also a real danger that Obama’s victory will undercut anti-war protest if he doesn’t move quickly to end the Bush administration’s two wars.

Many liberals might feel overly confident about the degree of change that is coming and decide that the new administration deserves to be given breathing space. It would then become much harder to mobilize opposition if Obama made good on his promise to shift the emphasis on military action from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Rick Jahnkow -

On September 17, 2008, the U.S. Senate was presented with an amendment to the 2009 military authorization bill that would have forced high schools to accept military training. The amendment would have accomplished this by denying all federal funds to any school district that did not allow the various military branches to establish, maintain or operate a unit of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC). Each military branch has its own JROTC program.

The amendment was introduced by Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, and was buried among over 250 other amendments proposed for the 2009 military authorization bill. The method of attaching such amendments to major pieces of legislation is the way Congress passed laws in the 1990s that require colleges and universities to grant access to military recruiters and permit the establishment of college ROTC units. Those laws, which were later upheld by the Supreme Court, paved the way for an amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 that is now forcing school districts to give recruiters access to secondary school students.