American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism.
You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.
In the late Fifties and early Sixties, opposition to state terror and aggression and torture and so on was zero. That was a horrible time: the massive Kennedy terror operation against Cuba, the first attacks on Vietnam in 1962, the imposition of national security states in South America.
The Iraq War was the first conflict in western history in which an imperialist war was massively protested against before it had even been launched.
September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what the U.S. government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda before. That's all to the good.
States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.
States are not moral agents.
The list of U.S. vetoes at the Security Council to protect Israeli aggression and occupation is huge.
Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense.
The Vietnamese see their history as an unending series of struggles of resistance to aggression, by the Chinese, the Mongols, the Japanese, the French, and now the Americans.
To summarize, draft resistance can make use of the inegalitarian nature of American society as a technique for increasing the cost of American aggression, and it threatens values that are important to those in a decision-making position.