Tag Archives: military

What is, What Isn’t in the NDAA FY22

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The U.S. House passed an amended version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 (“NDAA”) 363-70, with 51 Democrats and 19 Republicans voting against. This version, which authorized expenditures of around $770 billion, would remove key portions which were passed in a prior version passed by the House in November, and faces a Senate vote this week.

Sex and gender in the NDAA FY2022

In regards to sex and gender relations, the current version of the bill does the following:

  • encodes sexual assault into the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) as a crime for the first time
  • requires each military branch to establish an office to handle such crimes,
  • bans military commanders from making decisions about prosecutions in these and other “covered crimes”
  • directs DoD to track allegations of retaliation by victims of sexual assault and harassment, including demographic information on both the purported perpetrator and victim

To gain support from Republicans, Senate Democrats removed key provisions from the House’s earlier version of the NDAA FY2022, including provisions mandating the removal of language in the Selective Service Act only requiring men to register for Selective Service by the age of 18. While the NDAA had passed with bipartisan support in the House, several key Republican senators such as Josh Hawley of Missouri objected to this language on sexist grounds, while Rand Paul of Kentucky objected to the maintenance of the Selective Service System in its entirety.

Far-right Republican members of both houses objected to the bill for purported financial support of gender-affirming surgeries for transgender servicemembers, even though the bill did not include such language and merely failed to include a transphobic amendment banning such support. The bill also fails to codify President Biden’s re-integration of transgender servicemembers.

The provisions in regards to sexual assault and harassment have the support of DoD leadership.

Other provisions

The bill also includes:

  • the establishment of a “multi-year independent Afghanistan War Commission” to examine the beginning, procedure and U.S. withdrawal from the war over the last 20 years.
  • authorizing a 2.7% pay increase for servicemembers
  • authorizing DoD to provide a “basic needs allowance” for qualified low-income servicemembers who have experienced setbacks from the pandemic
  • establishes an “office, organizational structure, and provides authorities to address unidentified aerial phenomena,” aka UFOs
  • requires the President to develop a “Grand Strategy with Respect to China,” including assessments of Chinese activities in military, security, and foreign and economic relations in Central and South America
  • bans the U.S. military from buying equipment made by forced labor camps in Xinjiang Province (a provision added at the behest of Republican senator Marco Rubio)
  • reinforces U.S. policy against Chinese attempts to find a fait accompli against Taiwan

However, Senate Democrats removed a repeal of the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force in Afghanistan from the most recent version. They also removed a provision legalizing marijuana banking, which was pushed by NJ Rep. Ed Perlmutter and passed the House.

Several House progressives voted against the bill due to the largesse of the funding to the military compared to the repeated cuts to the Build Back Better Act which has yet to pass the Senate.

The United States as a Police State

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I was just reading this article on JSTOR from right after Jean-Bertrand Aristide was first forced into exile by the Haitian military, and how one way to bring stability back to Haiti at the time is to create a police state, which had already been tried and failed (the other was to build democratic institutions in Haiti through party-list PR elections and an independent judiciary).

I wonder if this applies to us.

Is this how we maintain the semblance of peace while our elections system is below international standards, maintained by at least 50 election regimes who are in jealous, bitter legal conflict with each other, and threatened by a racist party which is willing to sell the postal service for parts and gum up the census returns to exclude noncitizen residents in order to, among other things, ensure their victory at the polls?

Does the larger body of those who have a monopoly on violence – military, reserve, law enforcement and armed partisan civilians – actually maintain a police state?

We have an incredible number of military bases per capita. I wonder if we have the most domestic military bases in the world, in addition to the most overseas military bases.

We have over 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, and we have the world’s largest prison population, maintained largely by at least 50 state governments.

We live with the legacies (and ongoing practices) of redlining and housing discrimination, draw up discriminatory districts for elections and for boards of education, segregate against multi-family housing through downzoning, and create whole cities from non-annexed land so that those apartment-dwellers don’t move near and hurt the property value.

We keep people apart by force, and have built our entire political system upon keeping people apart through geographical isolation of the undesirables. And we’re supposed to be OK with this when we see the destruction, waste and resentment caused by this forced isolation? When so many of us deride any semblance of overriding responsibility to other Americans in the name of convenience because we’re not one of those city people, only to be the recipient or cause of someone’s receiving of COVID-19?

When the Third Reconstruction comes, I hope it means we can opt out of being residents of any state and just be citizens of this country. I hope it means that we can abolish state prisons, create a federal voter roll for a single voter registration website, replace the U.S. House’s elections with party-list proportional representation (or, as a half-measure, ranked-choice voting), move to single-payer healthcare, and establish not only an affirmative right to vote, but also an affirmative right to participate in free and fair elections.

Military Budget/Size and the Likelyhood of a Coup on U.S. Soil

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Brazil, with the 5th largest country in area size and the 5th largest population, has the 14th largest military and 11th largest military budget. Practicing conscription, this military has not been in conflict with its neighbors since 1870, nor has it been in conflict with any other country since 1945. It has had four coups d’etat and accompanying military dictatorships, the last of which ended in 1985.

United States, with the 4th largest area and the 3rd largest population, has the second largest military and the largest military budget. A volunteer military since the 1970s, this military has been in conflict with or in other countries for 224 of it’s 241 years of independence, including up to the present. It has never had a coup.

North Korea, with the 97th largest area and the 48th largest population, has the 4th largest military and is rumored to spend up to a third of its total income on defense expenses. A conscript military, this country has been in a formal, tightly-held state of war with South Korea since 1950. It has long been ruled by its military through the Kim family.

Comparing between these countries, I’m wondering what sort of role these militaries play in relation to their national populations. Are disproportionately-large militaries and larger military budgets a way to mollify and pacify the public? Are military adventures a way to distract us, as the Argentine military tried to do by invading the Falkland Islands (much to their failure at British hands) while Argentina was under a brutal military dictatorship?

If a military has no conflict abroad or natives to pacify, does that military become restless and more likely to lash out at its civilian government through a coup?

What if we in the U.S. pulled back all of our overseas military installations and detachments, ended the international War on Terror and Drugs, scaled down our military budget from its massive $597B to something like India’s $56B, move more active duty folks to reserve duty, recycled our excess of F-16s and other wasted weaponry, closed some of our excess of domestic bases?

If we did all of that and shifted all of that expenditure to other areas, that might benefit more of our working class, although we’d still have to weather the blowback from the craters we’ve made internationally.

But I fear that our military leaders, if reduced in power, scope and range of conflict, will turn against our civilian government. I fear that a reduced, internationally-neutral military will initiate a coup d’etat in the name of correcting the course of civilian government.

This happens way too much in other countries which have not seen conflict between sovereign countries for an extended time.

And this is ironic for me to say since I live on a military base, lol!

 

Why I didn’t watch #MarcheRepublicaine today

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France is a former colonial power which fought a bitter war against nationalists in Algeria. Most Muslims in France are from Algeria, North Africa and most former French colonies in Africa. Most Afro-French Muslims live in poor “suburbs” on the outskirts of cities like Paris.

France has long played a role in destabilizing and propping up dictatorships in their former African colonies/client states. Chronic racism against Africans and Arabs within France + a paternalistic, antidemocratic attitude abroad = radicalization.

The paternalistic and violent history of UK, France and US in Sunni Muslim Arab, African states gives us our current world. Let’s talk about “freedom of speech” when we begin to listen to speech of those who come from politically-broken peoples. Until then, is masturbatory, self-congratulatory, opportunistic, jingoistic nonsense from a country that hasn’t addressed its violently-bigoted history.

The bodies of innocent dead are not yet cold while the defense of historically-racist French “way of life” is ratcheted upward for the world. Attacks like that on and their attackers are useless, wasteful and bloody expressions of ethnic derangement. But that derangement has a long history and does not comes from a deep, dark vacuum.

If we’re so concerned about threats to the French, or European, or U.S. or Canadian “way of life” by way of violent, rhetorically-explosive Sunni Muslim protests against cartoons of Muhammad of Quraysh, then why is it that we Westerners station militaries in, and bomb the shit out of, predominately-Muslim countries? If we’re so concerned about threats to our freedoms, why is it that we’re so glad to invest militarily in conflicts in these regions? If the French people are so concerned about safety and civil peace, why does France go out of its way to maintain corrupt post-colonial relationships with dictatorships and support violent interventions in order to keep post-colonial borders largely intact?

Why is it that we practically invest into the undoing of former colonies as well as, by indirect way of when citizens of these post-colonial states migrate to countries like France, our own undoing?

Why can’t we in the West practice abroad what we preach at home?

We don’t have to have hypocrites in leadership or violently-hypocritical foreign policies. We can enforce our own absolute neutrality in foreign policy and let the chips fall as they may. We can stop investing militarily in post-colonial conflicts. France can end its “Francafrique” relationship with terrible governments on the African continent. We can stop being so invested in the instability of nations, which could result in troubled migrants being invested in their home countries and stable governances there.

But that would take us taking the thumb out of our assholes, stop pitying about our “decline”, rethinking our status quo and treating Black and Brown lives with more dignity, wouldn’t it?

A 74-year-old Navy veteran who challenged Idaho’s marriage equality ban so she could be buried with her late wife in Idaho’s state-run veterans cemetery will have her wishes respected after Idaho state officials agreed to allow the couple to be interred together.

via Lesbian Veteran Will be Buried with Her Late Wife in Idaho Cemetery – National Center for Lesbian Rights.

We dropped him off with his company just now, and we may see him onto the bus going to AIT in Fort Lee. The way I feel about Brandon right now is something I’ve felt since yesterday. His facade of emotional readiness is only shown to fellow service members. He has been tired and sullen all day, a far cry from January, and none of it is his fault. This is a bittersweet day, and I found it hard to look at him; he, Mom and I know the heavy significance of all of this. There was nothing to celebrate, only to mark. I fear for him.

The beginning of the end of military sodomy laws: the demographic impact

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DADT was repealed by Obama’s signature yesterday of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act. Questions remain on how long the process of implementation will take place, or just how much may have to be discarded (and who should do the discarding) alongside the policy during the process, and it is not known just how much of the implementation may derive from the 87-page report on the survey conducted by the top brass of the Armed Forces.

 
The impact in the long term within the military is harder to measure, with demands growing for a more accommodating inter-personnel culture as LGBT activists continue to follow up on the DADT repeal. But some elements of the impact of the repeal, or perhaps the larger, longer repeal of the overtly-homophobic inter-personnel culture which has existed since the days of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, may be very evident to historians and observers of military history, LGBT history and demographic statistics.
 
 

Continue reading The beginning of the end of military sodomy laws: the demographic impact →

From a furry perspective: DADT

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Today, I sent a PM on FA to WhiteDingo, who commissioned this famous piece – "I Leave at 5" (NSFW) – back in summer 2007, to thank him for having commissioned the piece from Fluke, given today’s events. 

I felt that Fluke’s piece really captured both the fear of impending separation and, if intended, the "illegal" nature of gay relationships for U.S. servicemembers. I can imagine the soldier dog who is forced to treat his mate as an "othertime", "undercover" lover rather than a legitimate, open spouse, and that he must savor these last few minutes of restless, tearful parting at his lover’s indiscreet apartment before he leaves in the wee hours for the post to deploy to wherever the brass may order him and his battalion. Other members of his battalion will be able to receive their well-wishes from their opposite-sex spouses and kids on post before walking the long walk to the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy on the tarmac. 

Of course, many in the battalion may not come back alive, or may come back with nothing more than the breath in their body left intact. Our soldier dog may lose a limb and get a Purple Heart, but then come back and find out that someone has outed him to the brass and he is on his way out of rank and into veteran-style poverty, with nary a support line for himself or his mate after he has been so unceremoniously dumped from service. 

Amazing, in a sad and horrifying way, how this policy stayed in force for so long.

My sincere hope is that the love shared between a servicemember and a spouse, no matter the sexual orientation of the relationship, will no longer be an obstruction to the servicemember’s career. 

Well shit…. (also, the military and authoritarianism in Africa)

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The presidential runoff on Friday is… off.

At least the MDC has the majority in parliament to use against Mugabe and ZANU-PF, legally making him a lame duck. But still…not even a Kenyan-style GNU to make dictatorship life a bit harder for Mugabe.

Meanwhile, African nationalism is a wonderful thing.

So does this mean that Mugabe gets to rule for another decade and keep Zimbabwe in a seemingly-perpetual struggle against perceived British colonialism until the Dear Leader dies?

Maybe its clear that there are quite a few Zimbabweans who are content with an economically-interdependent, multiracial nation-state and do not prefer a military solution to economic or political problems?

I personally object to any use of militant means to gain or maintain power. The post about how the AU should pull either an Anjouan or Togo on Zimbabwe in the case of Tsvangirai winning the run-off without Mugabe budging from his presidential residence, and is not in favor of a military solution to the turmoil caused primarily by Mugabe’s military and ZANU-PF militia.

I’ve objected against the militant rebel coup against Aristide in 2004 (I didn’t say anything about Aristide’s militant usage of police against militant opposition and those civilians who happened to sympathize with such militancy), I’ve objected to the use of the U.S. military in the overthrow of the Hawaiian government and maintenance of the same rule in the archipelago to this day (although it took place in 1893), and I object to the usage of the military and militant, violent means by the Mugabe government to maintain his rule in the country. I’ve never seriously countenanced the post-9/11 wars of the U.S., and I objected to how the military was being used to settle an old score between the U.S. and some country in the other large supercontinent of the world that most folks on this continent can’t find on a map.

I’m fairly anti-military in my stance, at least because I view the military (particularly the political use of violent tactics) as a sign that the entity which uses such means is only losing the argument, or losing control of the argument. Furthermore, if an entity which uses the military or militant institutions (insurrectionist or state-sanctioned) to gain control of the relevant institutions does gain control of such institutions (this includes the ZANU-PF, Afewerki’s ascension to power in Eritrea post-independence, the military juntas of Latin America and Caribbean during the Cold War, or even the Communist guerrilas who gained power in Eastern Europe and formed more than a few satellites around the Soviet Union), it only gives the new ex-rebel governors of the nation-state an incentive to use force against those who are less militarily-abled in order to make short order of an argument or conflict between the entities represented by or sponsoring of the rival militancies (or between the ruling militancy and a significant non-militant institution).

Finally, the people suffer in some fashion. Economies go down the toilet, social services decline in quality, civil freedoms are violated, people die, precedents for authoritarianism are ensured for the foreseeable future, rinse and repeat.

It doesn’t matter who or which institution engages in militancy first: things just happen to go wrong for the future generations.

Of course, I can be a bit of a hypocrite to have such a stance when I’m only a few stone’s throws away from one of the larger Air Force bases in the state of Georgia; also, I AM a bit of a hypocrite since I’m still a beneficiary from my father’s 23-year military service (and I have TRICARE, a military health insurance service, when most people in the U.S. can’t afford the decent health care that I and my mother, among others in my immiediate family, can take for granted for as long as we have periodically-updated military IDs for base and AMWR access).

But I don’t intend to serve in the military.

I’ve never been good with authority figures getting in my face to make a point “crystal-clear” to me. Nor do I feel comfortable with the idea of going to a country where others who dwell by the gun in the same way that any military does desire to direct their guns to my head or other body part.

Nor do I feel like returning the favor to others who are percieved as “our” enemies.