Currently it is mandatory for all male U.S. citizens to register for the selective service, also known as the military draft, when they turn 18. Failure to register is classified as a felony and comes with a host of legal challenges. This year (2024) the Senate Armed Forces Committee has created their version of the National Defense Authorization Act so the draft would be extended to women.
The Declaration of Independence states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.âThat to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. "
A draft requiring people to go to war, to kill, murder, and maim people conflicts with life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. It forces people to commit murder against their will and they must live with the emotional consequences of being a murderer for the rest of their lives. No country or state should have the ability to force anyone to murder another for any reason.
A war that is truly needed will be caused by a REAL threat ON AMERICAN SOIL. If such a threat happens, then enough people will volunteer to fight. If not enough people volunteer then the war is obviously not needed or required. Meddling in foreign countries where American soil/people are not directly threatened deserves only voluntary support from Americans. Reasons like âcommunist threatâ or âthey might have a weapon of mass destructionâ are not good enough reasons to force American citizens to murder. Wars or military actions or whatever they call them these days that are not approved by Congress have not âderived their just powers from the consent of the governedâ and deserve only voluntary support from Americans.
Still our elected leaders meet in the âWar Roomâ. This is just bad training that we keep seeing war as the only answer #GoundhogDay
The Tolkien movie portrays very well how boys were enculturated, first to play with their tin soldiers and ultimately to glorify war, only to discover in action, in flesh & blood, âWar is hellâ.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/jq2MFEGJ_Sw?si=jJw7QLnt98BV8FEO
A.A. Milne as well (creator of Winnie the Pooh first for his young son) & Tolkien were both hugely traumatized in their young adult selves by being plunged into the brutal horror of World War l trenches.
I had the good fortune to sit at the feet of World War l veteran elders in London at the Peace Pledge Union (white poppies for peace). Theyâre all dead now of course. Their key message was, Yes, Remember the Dead, but donât glorify war. War is hell. Every November 11, Armistice Day, they would walk together down to the War Memorial in Whitehall to place a wreath of white poppies. Their message could trigger incredible anger from people in the crowd who had been led to believe that only red poppies honour the dead. War propaganda will always push for the single-minded; grieve your dead but donât question war.
Iâm heartily glad that the Peace Pledge Union has prevailed with their message for over a century now. https://www.ppu.org.uk/
Lastly to say, many people have no idea that a high ranking officer in the New Zealand Army successfully initiated a new military idea, âSoldiers Without Gunsâ born out of a searing moment as a Brigadier, withdrawing his troops from Angola civil war: âNow the suffering begins!â A woman elder hurled at him. Roger Mortlock describes how this one voice seared into him like he had been tattooed in the head: Are we not bringing democracy!!! Ultimately, he was primed to try something that had never been tried before; to go as a peace-force but to go in unarmedâŚ
AND he was supported in this initiative by another courageous guy, high ranking politician of the day, Don McKinnon, combined with war-torn Bougainville Pacific Island being matrilineal (land passes from Mothers to daughters); the women wanted to stop the killing.
Original note from Kiwi [Song of the Stone author/professor] the late Barry Brailsford:
âSoldiers without Gunsâ
âIf this documentary is in a cinema near you, see it! You will not be disappointed. Itâs an incredible journey into who we are as Kiwis. I feel so clear about that I would love every child in this land see it before they leave high school. And their parents too! We have so much to be proud of, have been far ahead of our time in significant ways⌠Be inspired⌠Itâs a story few of us know and itâs utterly true.
And feel good!
Ae! Kia Kaha!â
Important to mention the timeline on this initiative. 1990 in New Zealand was designated The Year of the White Heron in which the âPakehaâ government made a formal in apology to the Maori people for breaking the treaties, making a pledge in this generation to do everything in their power to put things to rights. So for us to see what happened some years after that, that this Soldiers Without Guns initiative likely never would have happened but for the formal apology with a genuine intent to heal.
Who would have imagined that in the New Zealandâs military, men and women of every color and creed are doing the Maori HAKA together⌠And in turn what an incredible Peace tool the HAKA turned out to be for Bougainville Pacific Islanders, helping to bring to an end 10 years of civil war.
Review:
"In addition to archival footage dating back 70 years, including gripping scenes of guerrilla warfare, Watson has included interviews with just about every major player in this saga, from NZ Foreign Minister Don McKinnon and Army Commander Roger Mortlock to Bougainville peace leaders Helen Hakena and Ruby Mirinka."
Director Biography - Will Watson
Will Watson -Humanitarian, Film Maker, TEDx Speaker.
Will Watson is an International award winning filmmaker. His first Television documentary won 6 best international documentaries awards. In 2017 his documentary played at the Palais in Cannes during the Cannes Film Festival having won the best documentary at the World Peace Initiative.
Will started out his careers in journalism and publishing in the 90âs and then moved into film making in 2002. His first jobs were as cameraman for BBC, ITV, Al Jeerza, Sky. He then moved up to be a Director of Photographer for larger international films
Will completed a feature documentary called, âSoldiers Without Gunsâ in 2018. The story revolves around the New Zealand Defence Force ending a war using guitars instead of guns. His work on film has led him to creating and being invited to do a TED talk and winning an international humanitarian award.
War is hell. Yes. But itâs also a lack of imagination. In this day and age itâs way too easy to view war on TV like just another sport, or a video game.
Between the warmongers and the war profiteers, there are such big monied agendas that those interest do not WAR to fall out of favor. We are not the first generation to be motivated toward LIFE, as you are.
1870, the original Motherâs Day Proclamtion, Julia Ward Howe (since disguised into a Hallmark greeting card honor âMotherâs Dayâ):
Motherâs Day Proclamation
By Julia Ward Howe
Arise thenâŚwomen of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
âWe will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.â
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: âDisarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.â
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peaceâŚ
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
So far, in every generation there has risen to power men who fall prey to the concept that sending young men (and women) to slaughter is an unavoidable, integral mechanism of a nation state. But Thomas Jefferson said this: âThe Earth belongs in usufruct to the living generation.â Thatâs us! We can re-choose, choose to look at these inherited, legacy beliefs, whereby almost every central government has reaffirmed that sending youth to slaughter is ânormal.â ⌠We get to revisit and review that concept, to delve deeper for what a 21st Century thriving, consciously evolving structure for collective well being would and could deliver. https://purplepoppymeme.blogspot.com/2006/04/womenrise-peace-pole-santa-cruz.html
" There is no way to reconcile conscription with the principles of a genuinely free society. Either people are the masters of their own lives or the government is their master. Itâs one or the other.
With conscription, the government wields the power to order a person to leave his family and his regular life and report to a government facility to serve the state. That is the opposite of freedom. In a genuinely free society, a person has the right to live his life the way he wants â free of governmental interference, so long as his conduct is peaceful and non-fraudulent.
In fact, there is actually no difference between slavery and conscription. Under slavery, a person is being force to serve his master. Thatâs what conscription is based on. Itâs a system in which the individual is being forced to serve his master, with the master being the federal government, and specifically the Pentagon."
