This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Consription update:


Anti-draft movement achieves strategic step forward

by mim3@mim.org

A majority of U.$. youth aged 18 to 29 believe that President Bush has the draft in store for them. The self-activism of the youth that has achieved this point is a strategic victory, a step forward. MIM itself takes some credit for stirring the pot in literature distribution, face-to-face discussion and the web site.

True, the youth are letting John Kerry off the hook, because the same National Annenberg Election Survey showed only 8% believe Kerry wants to bring back forced enlistment into the armed services while 51% believe Bush does. However, since Bu$h is the one actually in power directing the military, we have to recognize that the survey result does demonstrate a small step forward in political consciousness. The youth may not have a path for how to get out of the current mess the united $tates made-- with many having illusions about Howard Dean, Greens or libertarians--but they have correctly placed the problem on the agenda.

The conservatives rushed to Bu$h's defense and said it was "ignorance" caused by a "rumor"(1) regarding the draft that started the current trend in youth opinion. MIM would reply the following: 1) If it is all just a rumor, Bu$h can abolish the Selective Service and end draft registration and then there won't be any disputes about what the Selective Service administration said or did not say. 2) It is not ignorance to notice what is going on with troop shortages and war. Quite the opposite, it's called paying attention. 3) The government has no credibility on issues of war and peace-- ranging from the lies in Vietnam to the scare tactics about Saddam Hussein's alleged nuclear weapons. Not surprisingly, youth are going to find a way to figure out things for themselves.

In the first televised debate with Kerry and since then, Bush has stressed that like his "Secretary of Defense" Rumsfeld he is opposed to the draft. At the same time, Bu$h's hand-picked colonial administrator L. Paul Bremer the 3rd who headed Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004 just said that "the United States paid a price for not stopping the looting in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of major combat operations and that we did not have enough troops on the ground to accomplish that task."(2)

The only way that the united $tates could have landed enough troops in Iraq to take control as it did in Germany was to have a draft--and even then the political plan with the details and the general ideology in the air to create change on the scale of Germany or Japan after World War II were lacking. Conversely, the Iraqi people are more prepared to visit the united $tates and straighten it out than the other way around.

Bremer knows very well that Kerry's side picked up his comments to prove that Bu$h never knew what he was doing, but Bremer made the comments anyway because he is desperate to get in his two cents in recent Congress discussions of the military's size and budget. The "competence" faction of the rulers is somewhat upset right now, but we cannot trust any of the "increase the size of the military" politicians as having a real solution. Quite the contrary, their plan will exhaust the all-volunteer military while expanding the budget deficit.

In an attempt to fool the youth just prior to the 2004 election, Bu$h's buddies in Congress sponsored a vote for the draft. It lost 402-2. This was the way the Republican Party tried to stop youth from massively voting against it.(1)

To get the draft, the imperialists know they need some dramatic events like 911, so the politicians can say they had "no choice" but to turn to a draft, just as they said they "had no choice" to go to war to back their lies and distortions about the UN weapons inspections in Iraq. We say to ignore the politicians. They only reflect what is already happening. Just because the politicians talk about how Bu$h did not plan ahead for the peace in Iraq does not mean youth should also fail to plan ahead. It is the casualties in Iraq and the threats Uncle $am makes against other countries that determine the question for those yet to serve.

Notes:
1. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101041018-713207,00.html
2. http://www.iht.com/articles/542686.htm

Don't trust the experts and authorities:


Youth need to figure out the wars for themselves

The following is a list of quotes from a web page. At first the Vietnam War required no draft. It ended up with 500,000 troops in Vietnam. The list of quotes shows that all of the major authorities aside from having completely wrong ideological values also either did not know what they were doing or lied to the public to keep it stoked up for war.

"The training, transportation and logistical support we are providing in Vietnam has succeeded in turning the tide against the Vietcong."
--General Barksdale Hamlett (US. Army Vice Chief of Staff), October 10, 1962

"The spearhead of aggression has been blunted in Vietnam."
--John F. Kennedy, January 14, 1963

"Victory is in sight."
--General Paul D. Harkins, March 5, 1963

"The Vietcong is going to collapse within weeks. Not months but weeks."
--Walt Whitman Rostow (Chairman of the Policy Planning Council of the US. Department of State), July 1965

"Its silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas."
--Ronald Reagan, October 10, 1965

"We must never forget that if the war in Vietnam is lost. . . the right of free speech will be extinguished throughout the world."
--Richard M. Nixon,, October 27, 1965

"Hold on a little longer and pretty soon we will have them on their knees at the bargaining table."
--Sen. Everett Dirksen, January 9, 1966

"The North Vietnamese cannot take the punishment anymore in the South. I think we can bring the war to a conclusion within the next year, possibly within the next six months."
--General S.L.A. Marshall, September 12, 1966

"I believe there is a light at the end of what has been a long and lonely tunnel."
--Lyndon B. Johnson, September 21, 1966

"The military picture is favorable."
--Gen. William C. Westmoreland, April 24, 1967

"We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view."
--Gen. William C. Westmoreland, November 21, 1967

"The troops will be brought home in 18 months."
--General Harold K. Johnson, August 12, 1967

"If I'm elected we'll end this war in six months."
--Richard M. Nixon, 1968

"The enemy is about to run out of steam."
--Gen. William C. Westmoreland, February 2, 1968

"We have the enemy licked now."
--Admiral John S. McClain, February 1969

"I think we've certainly turned the corner."
--Melvin Laird (US Secretary of Defense), July 15, 1969

"The enemy is reeling from successive disasters. . . . We are, in fact. . . winning the war."
--William Buckley, December 20, 1969

"We're on our way up . . . the pendulum is beginning to swing."
--Gen. William C. Westmoreland, April 16, 1972

General Westmoreland's statements to the press and presidents over years in the face of the obvious dangers and immorality of genocidal bombing are proof that strong spirituality is not a good thing.

"Militarily and politically, Hanoi is losing."
--Richard M. Nixon, June 26, 1972

Like their "war on drugs," the imperialists' "war on terror" and war on Iraq are really matters of the spiritual foolhardiness of the middle-class and poor people they seek to misguide. Without understanding places like Vietnam and Iraq better, it is impossible for the public to really know what the rulers have in mind, other than the usual genocide and oil theft. That's why the Iraq War is a reason for youth to study politics more deeply.

If oil and military contracts are not good reasons for a war in your mind, and if you or someone you care for is draft-age (and that includes wimmin who will be drafted), then you need to study the politics of war more seriously.

If it were up to our current rulers descended from J.F.K and Reagan, the united $tates would still be fighting in Vietnam. It was only the deaths of so many young men that caused any rethinking, any independent investigation.

Thanks to Mike Rodriquez for his quotes archive:
http://www.allthepages.org/archives/cat_quotes.html