July 21, 1980 marked the first day the US government required those of us who were male US citizens turning 19 or 20 in 1980 to register with the Selective Service System in order to be subject to military draft. At the time this seemed very obviously linked to President Carter’s Rapid Deployment Force and the Carter Doctrine. A number of us publicly demonstrated our refusal to comply with the registration requirement. I remember that week discarding registration forms into an oil drum, signs proclaiming „No Blood for Oil!“
Through the 1980s I periodically received letters like the one below warning me of the legal consequences for refusing to register. The language and consequences threatened varied, sometimes sounding merely chastising, sometimes more threatening. I responded to most of them by writing lengthy letters laying out the illegality of US production of nuclear weapons and interventions around the globe, citing the Nuremberg Principles. Nuremberg was for years a sort of a talisman for many of us, at the same time both a vision of how international law could be used to impose justice on war criminals and a reminder that when the criminals were American they would be more likely to receive seats in Congress than stools in a prison cell. I sent my letters by certified mail to the head of the Selective Service, to my Congressional representatives, the White House, various news outlets. I never received any response from Selective Service, other than the certified mail postcards showing the letters had been delivered. Pacifist organization newsletters published me occasionally. Congressional offices issued anodyne boilerplate thanking me for expressing my views. My representatives were always thankful to hear from their constituents.
One of the pieces of correspondence that in my life I am most proud of receiving is a letter from the Nicaraguan foreign minister. In the summer of 1986 the US Congress once again passed a bill giving financial support to the contras, the mercenaries carrying out programmatic rape and murder in Nicaragua from US-backed safe havens in Honduras. The summer of 1986 Iran-Contra had been breaking, and was all over the news. A fellow non-registrant and I were in our naïveté absolutely confident the Senate would not again pass aid to the contras. They did, of course. In the belly of a mad United States there seemed little we could do to express our opposition to an illegal war the US was waging against a small Central American land. We could, however, declare that again, as always, we would refuse to engage in our country’s foreign crimes. The Nicaraguan Ambassador to the US and the foreign minister both thanked us for our efforts. I felt, and feel, honestly, proud.
A mad United States: jeez, from the vantage point of 2020 the 1986 US craziness seems positively sane. Then both Time and Newsweek had cover articles about Nicaragua being closer to the Texas border than was Washington, DC. And the Nicaraguan military had jets! Fighter jets! Soviet Fighter Jets! And look at the size of the Nicaraguan army! Without the contras the Nicaraguans might be marching across Mexico and invading Texas. I kid you not. But there’s no need to kid about US insanity, is there?
July 21, 1980. „No Blood for Oil“: Two Iraq Wars and an Endless War later the slogan still has a ring to it.
