Support growing for keeping
National Guard stateside:
New Jersey, Pennsylvania
legislatures now consider ending
Guard deployments to Iraq
(Teaneck Armory, NJ) — New Jersey this week became the main front in a new national effort to end deployments of the National Guard to Iraq. Led by military families, military personnel, and veterans, hundreds of New Jerseyans rallied recently behind legislation introduced by State Senator Loretta Weinberg, SJR 55, which declares that the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq (2002 AUMF) has expired, and intructs that the, “New Jersey National Guard shall hereafter be limited to service within and on behalf of the State of New Jersey, unless called into federal service pursuant to a declaration of war or a duly enacted and substituting federal statute authorizing the use of military force.”
“The federal government is taking no action to end the misuse of our troops,” said Leigh Davis, spokesperson for the Peace and Justice Coalition, “so we decided to take steps where we could stop it — at the state level.”
New Jersey joins its neighbor, Pennsylvania, in following the lead of Vermont and Rhode Island, which have already begun consideration of Guard defederalization. What makes New Jersey’s entry into the fray different and important is the mainstream perception of the state as a major player in national affairs. Additionally, the issue is already a hot question in New Jersey’s politics, complete with a very vocal grassroots constituency organized against Guard deployments.
“Like other Americans in other states, we’ve concluded that there is no legal or moral basis for keeping our Guard in Iraq. Nearly 4100 U.S.troops and more than 1 million Iraqi people have died; each one, someone’s son or daughter. We must all work to cancel the upcoming deployment of the New Jersey Guard and to bring all troops and the corporate contractors home immediately,” says Paula Rogovin of Military Families Speak Out of Bergen County.
The upcoming New Jersey Guard deployment must be stopped not only because it is illegal, but also because of its human cost, says Vickie White, spokesperson for New Jersey’s Peace and Justice Coalition, an alliance of over 125 social justice and anti-war organizations:
“The pending deployment of our Guard matters because we are losing teachers, doctors, nurses, police officers, fire fighters, and college students, all of whom are vital to New Jersey’s infrastructure. We need them to ensure our ability to manage natural disasters and to serve as peace keepers in times of emergency. New Jersey needs its Guard home, so we can honor our promise to them to insure a legal and moral process for their deployment.”
The Bring the Guard Home! campaign has been fueled by the overwhelming public opposition to the occupation of Iraq, yet lawyers involved in the effort say the legislation that is the central vehicle of the campaign is strictly conservative. “There is no legal basis for continued deployments of the Guard to Iraq; all this legislation does is insures that the states comply with the law,” says Benson Scotch, the lead attorney involved in drafting the Vermont legislation.
Adds Ben Manski, Executive Director of Liberty Tree, a national pro-democracy group, and a Wisconsin attorney, “If the states step up to the plate and adopt this legislation, the U.S. involvement in Iraq will end, certainly, but what may be more important in the long-term is that the American people will be newly vigilant against future attempts to unlawfully and unconstitutionally use the National Guard for purposes of empire.”
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For more information:
Liberty Tree’s Democratizing Defense Program:
http://www.BringtheGuardHome.org
Cities for Peace:
http://www.CitiesforPeace.org
