{"id":41268,"date":"2022-12-07T19:10:36","date_gmt":"2022-12-08T03:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=41268"},"modified":"2022-12-07T19:10:36","modified_gmt":"2022-12-08T03:10:36","slug":"congress-again-backs-away-from-expansion-of-draft-registration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/07\/congress-again-backs-away-from-expansion-of-draft-registration\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress Again Backs Away From Expansion of Draft Registration"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the third time in the last six years, proposals<\/a> to expand the current Selective Service registration requirement<\/a> to include young women<\/a> as well as young men were included in versions of this year\u2019s annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2023, but were removed<\/strong> in back-room House-Senate leadership negotiations.<\/p>\n

All mention of Selective Service<\/a> has been removed from the conference proposal for the FY2023 NDAA<\/a> introduced yesterday in the House Rules Committee.<\/p>\n

As in 2016<\/a> and 2021<\/a>, this year\u2019s proposals to expand Selective Service registration to women<\/a> were bundled into 2,000-page drafts of the NDAA without any hearings<\/a> or floor debate in either the House or Senate, and without any consideration of the alternative bipartisan proposal<\/a> \u2013 which has yet to receive a hearing or floor consideration in either the House or Senate \u2013 to repeal<\/a> the Military Selective service Act and end draft registration entirely.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Again this year, as in 2016 and 2021, these provisions were removed from the final draft negotiated by House and Senate leaders and presented to both chambers<\/a> yesterday for take-it-or-leave-it final approval.<\/p>\n

Some other changes may be made to the latest draft of the FY 2023 NDAA before it is approved, but it seems highly unlikely that provisions to expand (or to end) Selective Service registration will be reinserted into this bill.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t mean that debate about what to do about draft registration is over. Indeed, Congress has never really begun to debate<\/a> the issue. This means only that Congress has, yet again, avoided facing up to the reality that, whether they like it or not, draft registration is an abject failure<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Expanding draft registration to women<\/a> is still a bad idea that won\u2019t go away until Congress ends draft registration<\/a> entirely.<\/p>\n

Congress has punted again, as it did in 2016 and 2021<\/a>, but the ball is still in play. This issue could be raised during consideration of the annual NDAA, or \u2013 preferably, through freestanding legislation that would allow more in-depth consideration and debate \u2013 next year, or the year after that, or ten or twenty years from now.<\/p>\n

The future of Congressional consideration of draft registration is especially uncertain because both the lead advocate for expanding draft registration to women, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-San Mateo, CA), and the lead House Democratic sponsor of the Selective Service Repeal Act<\/a>, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), chose not to run for re-election this year. This makes it critically important to urge other members of Congress to take up the lead in reintroducing and co-sponsoring the Selective Service Repeal Act<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n

More antiwar feminists<\/a> are speaking up for an end to Selective Service, further undermining the bogus claim that preparation for larger, longer, more unpopular wars than people would be willing to fight is somehow a feminist policy. Notably, this year the National Organization for Women<\/a> joined the many other endorsers of the Selective Service Repeal Act<\/a><\/p>\n

For now, unless and until Congress changes the law, all male (as assigned at birth) U.S. residents are still required to register with the Selective Service System within 30 days of their 18th birthday, and report within 10 days every time they chance their address until their 26th birthday \u2013 although few do<\/a>. Draft boards continue to be appointed<\/a> to administer a possible draft.<\/p>\n

The Selective Service System<\/a> has managed to evade meaningful scrutiny of its purpose<\/a> or fitness for purpose<\/a> throughout forty years of failure<\/a> since it was brought out of "deep standby" in 1980. In the absence of a movement for abolition<\/a> of the Selective Service System, it could keep going for another forty years on institutional inertia and Congressional reluctance to throw in the towel and admit defeat in the face of quiet but pervasive and persistent popular disregard<\/a> for the law.<\/p>\n

US war planners assume that a draft is always available as a fallback. Ending Selective Service registration and contingency planning and preparation for a draft would help reign in planning for endless, unlimited, unpopular wars. But that isn\u2019t likely to happen unless the failure of draft registration<\/a> becomes more widely recognized, and unless Congress sees more visible signs that young women will resist<\/a> any attempt to expand draft registration, and older people will support them in their resistance.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m confident that young women<\/a> will resist draft registration, as young men<\/a> have done for decades. It\u2019s up to us to educate, agitate, and amplify<\/a> their resistance.<\/p>\n

Edward Hasbrouck maintains the <\/i>Resisters.info<\/i><\/a> website and publishes the <\/i>"Resistance News" newsletter<\/i><\/a>. He was <\/i>imprisoned in 1983-1984<\/i><\/a> for organizing resistance to draft registration.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the third time in the last six years, proposals to expand the current Selective Service registration requirement to include young women as well as young men were included in versions of this year\u2019s annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2023, but were removed in back-room House-Senate leadership negotiations. All mention of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-41268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41268"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41270,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41268\/revisions\/41270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41268"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=41268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}