COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Leaving Military: Conscientious Objector
Amid rumblings of draft, peace churches beginning to plan
By Tom Infield / Knight Ridder Newspapers
Thursday 17, November 2005
PHILADELPHIA – For the first time since the Vietnam War, pacifist churches are thinking of how to prepare young men to become conscientious objectors in the event the draft is resumed.President Bush, leaders of Congress, and military officials all insist that there are no plans for military conscription.
But members of what are often called the historic peace churches – Mennonites, Brethren and Quakers – believe that a draft appears more and more likely as U.S. troops continue to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Army fails to meet its recruitment goals.
"We are probably one terrorist attack – one 9-11 – away from a draft," said Dan McFadden, director of Brethren Volunteer Service in Elgin, Ill.
Leaders of the peace churches, which have their historic roots in Pennsylvania, say that what they may need to do now is prepare in-house programs in which their young men might perform two years of required civilian public service in exchange for not having to go into the military.
The draft ended in 1973. But the Selective Service System, which is charged with maintaining machinery for a draft, is encouraging the peace churches to make contingency plans.
"We do encourage it," said Cassandra Costley, who was appointed last year as director of a new alternative-service division within Selective Service.
"It's not because we expect there is going to be a draft in the next year – or the next five years," Ms. Costley said from her office in Rosslyn, Va. "But our mandate is that we be prepared."
Mr. McFadden was among three Brethren and Mennonite leaders from across the United States who held a telephone conference last month to go over options for alternative service.
"There aren't any definite plans at this point; we are just going to keep talking," he said.
The conference followed up on a March meeting of Anabaptist leaders in Elgin, which also drew Quakers. Ms. Costley and another Selective Service official attended.
Since 1980, all males have been required to register with Selective Service when they turn 18. The draft pool consists of about 15 million registrants.
Church leaders say thousands of their members would surely seek to become conscientious objectors if the draft were reinstated.
An article in the May issue of Quaker Life, a magazine published by Indiana Quakers, advised men with pacifist views to lay the groundwork now for conscientious objector applications later on.
It urged them to "begin to establish a way of life that demonstrates your beliefs actually mean something to you" by attending Quaker worship, doing service projects, and joining peace events.
Recent research done by historian Jean Mansavage for a doctoral dissertation at Texas A&M University shows that 154,000 men were classified as eligible to perform civilian alternative service during the Vietnam War. About 65,500 actually performed alternative service.
The rest, Ms. Mansavage said, either weren't called to duty or were not placed in jobs.
Jack Oshack, president of Quaker-affiliated Haverford College near Philadelphia, is a Vietnam War conscientious objector who worked in a cancer research laboratory and remembers the alternative-service program as chaotic.
Draft boards "basically set people loose trying to find their own opportunities," he said.
Peace church leaders said they would want to ensure an orderly program for their own young men.
Mennonites and Brethren long have operated service organizations that draw members into a year or so of public service – often doing disaster relief or working at day camps – after high school or college. The thinking is that these could be expanded into two-year programs for conscientious objectors.
"We hope to have some of this put together by sometime in the fall, so that we can move forward from there," said Titus Peachy, director of peace education for the Mennonite Central Committee, in Akron, Pa.
Mr. Peachy, who participated in the recent phone conference, guessed that 5,000 to 10,000 Mennonites and Amish men would seek to be classified as conscientious objectors – opposed to all war.
"Beliefs which qualify a registrant for C.O. status may be religious in nature, but don't have to be," the Selective Service reports on its Web site, www.sss.gov.
"Beliefs may be moral or ethical; however, a man's reasons for not wanting to participate in a war must not be based on politics, expediency, or self-interest," the agency writes.
J.E. McNeil, a Quaker and director of the Center on Conscience & War, in Washington, said that Quakers – also known as Friends – had not been as active as Mennonites and Brethren in beginning to prepare for alternative service.
Ms. McNeil, who believes a draft is likely, said: "Friends don't move very fast. We move at a glacial pace in most things. We're kind of looking around and thinking."
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