By Edward Hasbrouck / Resisters.info / COMD -

On March 25, the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS), after a three-year charade of stage-managed and largely one-sided public events accompanied by closed-door meetings and negotiations among the members of the Commission, released its final report. It recommends that Congress amend the Military Selective Service Act to require that young women, as well as young men, register for the draft when they reach age 18, and inform the Selective Service System each time they change their address until their 26th birthday.

The Commission's recommendations with respect to Selective Service registration are such a naïve fantasy, completely unfeasible and with no foundation in research or reality. The Commission kept its head firmly in the sand, carefully avoiding any inquiry into whether or how the current (unenforced and widely violated) registration requirement for men, much less an expanded registration requirement applicable also to women, could be enforced.

In the report’s 255 pages, there's no mention at all of compliance or noncompliance with draft registration. There's been no audit of the registration database since 1982, and the Commission didn't conduct or ask for one.

The Department of Justice is, and would remain, responsible for enforcement of the registration requirement; but nobody has been prosecuted for non registration since 1986, and in the years that have followed, the DoJ has made neither any estimate of the numbers of violators nor any plan or budget for how to identify, investigate, find, arrest, prosecute, or incarcerate them.

Gary Ghirardi, OpEd - A campaign by the Earth Democracy Project of the U.S. Section of the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom, has given an additional argument to Truth in Recruitment activists which is the fact of military contamination health risks on U.S. military bases nationally and globally.

The recent movie, “Dark Waters,” increased public visibility to the dangers of PFOA/PFOS chemicals also used in fire suppression foam systems on military bases. A lack of concern for proper containment and disposal by the Pentagon coupled with the careless and rampant training with these foams by national and international military base operations, has caused a massive contamination of ground wells used by base inhabitants and surrounding civilian communities for drinking and general household uses. These cancer causing contaminants have been in use for many years now without the public being aware of the extreme health dangers of these chemicals. But some activist veterans, who have experienced mounting health issues are campaigning aggressively to put pressure on the Pentagon to create public awareness about the problem.

As Congress prepares to debate the issue of the military draft, anti-draft activists are calling on Congress to enact legislation to end draft registration entirely.

    The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments March 3, 2020 in a case in which a Federal District Court judge has already ruled that the current requirement for men to register with the Selective Service System for a possible military draft is unconstitutional. A decision on that appeal could come at any time. The National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS) will release its recommendations to Congress regarding the Selective Service System on March 25, 2020.