The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)

October 11, 2024 / Edward Hasbrouck / Antiwar.com - Of men in the U.S. who turned 18 in 2023, fewer than 40% signed up for the draft – down from more than 60% in 2020 before the start of the war in Ukraine.

This eye-popping and previously undisclosed admission, as well as other revelations equally damning to plans to increase readiness to activate a draft, was included in documents released recently by the Selective Service System (SSS) in response to a Freedom Of Information Act request.

The SSS maintains a database of eligible male U.S. citizens and residents who could be conscripted if and when Congress and the President institute a draft. Per the law, American males must register within 30 days of their 18th birthday or find it difficult to get a drivers license in some states.

Public statements from supporters of draft registration have justified preparation for a draft as needed for national emergencies, self-defense, or implausible existential threats such as a Chinese invasion of the mainland US. But the lead bullet point in the newly-disclosed SSS talking points to Congress in support of the SSS proposal to automatically register all young Americans for a future draft is the possible activation of a U.S. draft for foreign wars in Ukraine and/or the Middle East.

Fantasies underlying push for conscription are delusional and dangerous

August 13, 2024 / Edward Hasbrouck / Antiwar.com - Doubling down on their recent war-game exercises and report on the (un)readiness of the U.S. to activate a military draft, Taren Sylvester and Katherine Kuzminski of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) have a new article in War on the Rocks, “Preparing for the Possibility of a Draft Without Panic,” laying out why they think the U.S. needs to prepare for a draft in order to be able to win an all-out war with China over Taiwan.

CNAS and War on the Rocks like to describe themselves as “realists”. But their arguments for stepped-up planning and preparation for a draft are strikingly unrealistic, in at least four respects.

First, Sylvester and Kuzminski – like the Selective Service System and the Department of Justice – entirely ignore whether, much less how or at what cost, a draft could be enforced.

The practical difficulty of enforcing a draft in the face of widespread evasion and resistance was the Achilles heel of the last U.S. draft, and has to be central to any realistic plan for a future draft.

You can’t just wave a magic cheerleader’s baton and get every would-be draftee, male or female, to march down to the induction office to ship out for Taiwan, Ukraine, Palestine, or points unknown. Like it or not, many young people won’t go voluntarily. If they would, a draft wouldn’t be needed.

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9/12/2024 / Perplexity Ai - NNOMY, or the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth, is a coalition of organizations in the United States that actively opposes the militarization of schools and the recruitment of young people into the military. Founded in 2004 following a national counter-recruitment conference in Philadelphia, NNOMY aims to connect local, regional, and national activists and organizations to promote awareness and education regarding militarism in educational settings.

July 13, 2024 / Staff / National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth - June 27th, 2024 marks the founding of the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth stemming from the formation of the network at the national counter-recruitment organizing conference held June 25-27, 2004 named Stopping War Where It Begins: Strengthening the Movement Opposing the Militarization of Youth in Philadelphia. (1) 

Through the many cultural shifts and political machinations of the United Sates domestic and foreign policy, the prospects and opportunities for NNOMY have experienced many ebbs and flows.

As the next period ahead unravels, like the presidential election debacle we now see unfolding five month before the next election, the time ahead for NNOMY, and the peace activist community in general seems uncertain and certainly demoralizing with, now two active proxy wars that the current Biden Administration has entrenched the country in. 

With what is being articulated by the Pentagon and its Command Structure, a potential war is looming in Asia for the USA with China over control of the China Sea, and even Polar Ice shipping routes for Russia of Petrochemicals product shipments to Asia being contested by the US State Department, allowing circumvention of sanctions imposed upon it by the US and its G7 coalition of countries, the chances that American youth may become drawn into direct military conflicts that they have little understanding of or little interest to get involved in a war over, are greater than ever.

Additionally, the Southern Command leadership has openly articulated their intention to control the resource extraction of the American Continent as their own without the presence of other international powers present at the table. It is the Monroe Doctrine redux. (2)

Looking back at another time of resurgent US Militarism during the Bush Administration's Iraq war in response to a proven false narrative imposed upon the 9/11 terrorism, NNOMY experienced the height of counter recruitment activism as peace groups correctly intervened into the proceedings of US military recruitment at the high school level, to stem the flow of bodies into a series of unnecessary illegal wars for regime change

Below as a testament and recognition of their efforts are listed the groups on this twentieth anniversary of the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth and their counter-recruitment pages:

Friday, 14 June 2024 / Edward Hasbrouck / Edward Hasbrouck's blog - A proposal to expand registration for a possible military draft to young women as well as young men is moving forward again this year in Congress, along with a seductively simple-seeming but in practice unfeasible proposal to switch from the current system in which young men are required to register with the Selective Service System (SSS) to a system in which the SSS tries to identify and locate everyone eligible for a future draft and automatically register them based on other existing Federal databases from the Social Security Administration, IRS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, etc.

Today both the U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee and the full U.S. House of Representatives approved different proposals to expand and/or make it harder to avoid the requirement for men ages 18-26 to register with the Selective Service System for a possible military draft.

The proposals for changes to Selective Service registration were approved during consideration of the Senate and House versions of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025, a “must-pass” annual bill that typically runs to more than a thousand pages.

The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) approved a version of the NDAA that would expand Selective Service registration to include young women as well as young men. This version of the NDAA will now go to the floor as the starting point for consideration and approval by the full Senate.

Also today the full House of Representatives approved a different version of the NDAA that would make Selective Service registration automatic while keeping it for men only.

A House amendment proposed by Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), a West Point graduate and Army veteran, which would have replaced the provision to make draft registration automatic with a provision to repeal the Military Selective Service Act, was not “made in order” by the Rules Committee to be considered or voted on by the full House. There was no separate House floor vote on the proposed change to Selective Service registration, only a single vote on the entirety of the NDAA as a package.

The SASC markup was conducted in closed session, and only a summary of highlights of the version adopted by the SASC was released. It’s not clear whether the SASC version also includes the provision in the House version of the NDAA to try to make Selective Service registration ‘automatic’ or only the provision to expand the registration requirement (with which compliance is currently low) to young women as well as young men. A spokesperson for the SASC told The Hill today that the full text of the Senate version of the NDAA won’t be released until sometime in July.