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NNOMYnews 1058: A Look Back at Council for a Strong America's Mission: Readiness

NNOMYnews 1058: A Look Back at Council for a Strong America's Mission: Readiness

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NNDecember 2023  


"You are part of the national network of peace groups working to stop the militarization of schools and young people! "

 

 

NNOMY News: June - July 2021 -  A Look Back at Council for a Strong America's Mission: Readiness

Hello ,


In 2009 a group of retired military generals formed a "non-governmental" project called "Mission: Readiness" to invoke national alarm that our children were growing up physically unfit to meet the requirements to qualify for military enlistment. Their group, "Council for a Strong America," maintained that this was a "national security issue" and then embarked on organizing interventions into our public pre-school classrooms to promote remedies to the nation. Those children from 2009 in preschools are now of recruitment age and to what result the efforts of these retired generals has been successful is unclear, but what is clearer is that what should have been under the purvue of the National Institute of Health to the exclusion of the Pentagon has gained little community redress and pushback. In this issue of NNOMYnews we re-publish a chapter from the book. War and the Body: militarization, practice and experience by the authors Joseph Burridge and Kevin McSorley that remains the single most extensive analysis of this program and the "banal militarism" that they conclude this program represents.
 
 #ToFatToFight #DemilitarizeYouth #MissionReadiness #CouncilForAStrongAmerica 

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Too Fat To Fight? Obesity, Bio-Politics and the Militarization of Children’s Bodies

Joseph Burridge and Kevin McSorley / War and the Body: militarization, practice and experience - On the 13th of December 2010 US President Barack Obama signed into law a piece of legislation commonly referred to as the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The law had passed a vote in the House of Representatives eleven days earlier, with near unanimous bipartisan support, and had been designed to, among other things, move towards provision of more healthy food for school children across the entire United States via establishing higher nutritional standards through a revised National School Food Lunch Program. One prominent organisation that lobbied strongly for this legislation, garnering significant media attention(BBC 2010, Shalikashvili and Shelton 2010), was Mission: Readiness. This campaign group, populated largely by retired senior members of the US military, addresses a range of issues connected with children, but in this case directly addressed itself to their food consumption, its impact upon rates of obesity, and the consequences that they argued this was having upon American military recruitment. Specifically, Mission: Readiness’ contributions to the debate used an anticipatory logic, and were addressed to an alleged need to do something about American children’s bodies because, increasingly, too many such bodies were considered at risk of becoming ‘Too Fat To Fight’ –the title of one of the organisation’s reports (Mission: Readiness 2010) and this chapter.

 


Food Allergy Research & Education

12 May 2021 / FARE CEO Lisa Gable & Former Adjutants General / Mission: Readiness -
In this episode, Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) CEO Lisa Gable sits down with Mission: Readiness National Director Ben Goodman to speak about the disturbing rise in food allergies and why trends could impact military readiness. Later, General Gross speaks with the former Adjutants General of Arkansas and Michigan, Major General (Ret.) Bill Wofford, USA and Major General (Ret.) Tom Cutler, USAF, about progress on a long-awaited Child Nutrition Reauthorization.

 


 

‘Fighting Weight: How Military Recruiters Take On Obesity, Case By Case

May 17, 2021 / Yuki Noguchi / NPR - In response, about a decade ago individual recruiters around the country started identifying and working with potential recruits who needed to lose dozens of pounds or more to qualify for military service. It isn't part of an official Army-sponsored program; many recruiters simply recognized it was necessary for them to mentor individuals in weight loss to meet their enlistment goals.

"You're even recruiting in a population that is obese," because the condition is so prevalent, says retired Maj. Gen. Malcolm Frost, who served 35 years in the Army and is a member of Mission Readiness, a nonprofit group focused on preparing young people for service. "That's what our recruiters around the nation are dealing with."

 


 

Supreme Court won't review Constitutionality of current male-only draft registration requirement

June 07, 2021 / Edward Hasbrouck / Resisters.info - Today’s decision is bad news — the worst news in years, perhaps decades — for opponents of the draft and draft registration.

The possibility of a Supreme Court ruling that would embarrass Congress by invalidating the current Selective Service registration requirement has been putting pressure on Congress to address the issue, which Congress has been avoiding for decades because it is impossible to look closely at the current draft registration program without it becoming obvious that is has failed. Few people comply, and a draft based on the current registration database would be impossible or at least unenforceable. Few members of Congress want to admit that a draft, currently included in Pentagon plans as a “fallback” option, isn’t a realistic option at all. Today’s decision by the Supreme Court takes the pressure off Congress, and allows the current less than useless (male-only) draft registration program to continue indefinitely. Today’s action by the Supreme Court reduces the threat that draft registration will be expanded to women, but also reduces the already slim chances that registration might be ended. Mostly, it increases the likelihood that men, but not women, will continue to be required to register.

 


 

House Hearing on Selective Service

 May 19, 2021 / Edward Hasbrouck / Antiwar.com - A House Armed Service Committee (HASC) hearing on May 19th heard from witnesses on only one side of the debate over whether to end draft registration or extend it to young women as well as young men. But despite the one-sided panel of witnesses, questions and comments from members of Congress highlighted the failure of the ongoing attempt to get men to register for a future military draft, and the lack of any feasible way to enforce a future military draft of men or women.

The Chair of the Armed Service Committee, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), opened the hearing by noting a written statement submitted by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR). Rep. DeFazio is one of the initial co-sponsors of the bipartisan Selective Service Repeal Act of 2021 (H.R. 2509 and S. 1139), which is pending in the Armed Services Committees in both the House and the Senate.

According to Rep. DeFazio, "President Carter reinstated draft registration in 1980 largely for political reasons. Military draft registration has existed ever since, requiring all men aged 18-26 to register with the Selective Service System (SSS). It should be repealed altogether…. The SSS is an unnecessary, unwanted, archaic, wasteful, and punitive bureaucracy that violates Americans’ civil liberties… It’s beyond time for Congress to repeal the SSS once and for all."

 


 

Will the #US expand draft registration to #women?


 World Beyond War - The U.S. government is going to either expand draft registration to young women (signing them up to be forced against their will to kill and die) in the name of “equal rights,” or it is going to end this outdated barbarism of forcing people into wars. A federal district court has ruled that male-only draft registration is unconstitutional. Contrary to popular myth a draft does not decrease the chances or duration or extent of wars. Learn more at the Background links below.



EMAIL CONGRESS:

If you are from the United States, please click here to quickly email your Representative and your two Senators.

 


 

Connecting White Extremism in the Armed Forces to the Military's Culture

April-June 2021 /  Isidro Ortiz, PhD / Draft NOtices - The revelation that nearly one in five of those charged in the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 had served or were currently serving in the U.S. military has catalyzed analyses and recommendations by military and political institutions, advocacy organizations, and peace advocates; regrettably, only the last have connected the insurrectionist involvement to the culture of militarism.

The initial institutional action occurred one week after the rioting when the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued an "unprecedented" memorandum informing service members that the January 6 assault on the capitol represented "an attack on the constitutional process of the United States." Going against the hopes of the insurrectionists that the military might support their insurgency, the Chiefs declared that the U.S. military would "obey orders from civilian leadership, support civil authorities to protect lives and property, ensure public safety in accordance with the law, and remain fully committed to protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Eliminating any idea that the inauguration of the president-elect would not occur as scheduled, the Chiefs further declared that President-elect Biden would be inaugurated and become the Commander in Chief. They also urged military members to continue in a state of readiness and observation.

 

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Groups ask Supreme Court to declare the all-male military draft unconstitutional

Now the Supreme Court, in a case reminiscent of the lawsuits that brought fame to a feminist lawyer named Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is being asked to force the hand of a reticent Congress by declaring the male-only military draft unconstitutional.

 

“The registration requirement is one of the last sex-based classifications in federal law,” says a petition from the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents a group called the National Coalition for Men. “It imposes selective burdens on men, reinforces the notion that women are not full and equal citizens, and perpetuates stereotypes about men’s and women’s capabilities.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-military-draft/2021/02/18/041299ca-713b-11eb-85fa-e0ccb3660358_story.html

 


#SelectiveService #NoDraftWomen #EliminateTheDraft #WomenForPeace

 

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