State Representative Tom Mannion (R-Pelham) has been a champion for peace and liberty since entering the State House in 2022. Last year, Mannion co-sponsored HB229, the ‘Defend The Guard’ bill, which would protect NH Guardsmen from foreign conflict deployments without an official declaration of war. This winter, the House will vote on another bill aimed at protecting New Hampshire’s youth from the US Military draft.
“I have drafted legislation that will help protect Granite Staters’ children from being drafted into DC’s upcoming new batch of forever wars that have nothing to do with us,” the 37-year-old veteran posted on social media about the bill.
Mannion is a Marine Corps infantry veteran with two combat deployments to Iraq. The experience taught him that the US Military’s foreign policy has not made us safer and contends that the death caused by U.S. actions across the planet has increased hatred towards Americans. Following from those wars, the United States fought on the same sides as Al-Qaida in various regime change operations in the Middle East during the Arab Spring, trained individuals in Syria that eventually left to help form ISIS, and is assisting the Saudis in the genocide of the Houthis in Yemen. None of these actions, according to the speaker, has made the union safer and may breed the next generation of terrorists across the globe.
The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) is still in effect, over a decade after bin Laden was killed, and is currently being used as justification for regime change in the African country of Niger. Senator Rand Paul tried to end or fix the AUMF in various ways twice this year, both times failing to get more than 11 votes. Waiting for the House and Senate to correct the massive mistake they made in 2001 by handing unlimited unilateral military power to the Executive Branch is a waste of time.
The Representative has devised a shield to protect the next generation from being drafted and sent to these unconstitutional military conflicts. Borrowing language from sanctuary state policies combined with the exception baked into Defend the Guard, he created this legislation that could have a major impact on protecting New Hampshire’s youth. House Bill 1338 would essentially make New Hampshire into a ‘Selective Service Sanctuary State’. The House killed this bill.
The federal government has a draft registry, which could be activated at any moment by the DC politicians. This is called the ‘selective service’, and it’s mandatory for all adults to register for it (people are automatically added to the list whenever they register to vote or obtain an ID card).
This simply states that New Hampshire law enforcement shall not cooperate with Federal agencies in the locating, apprehension, or transportation of individuals failing to register or show for selective service call ups, unless Congress formally declares war or the homeland is invaded. The bill also creates a check box that allows individuals applying for a driver’s license to indicate that they are a conscientious objector, which indicates that if the draft is ever activated, the individual may oppose it.
“I have several Republicans co-sponsoring, and I’m reaching across the aisle to try and get this as an even R/D split. Pushing back against the ravenous military industrial complex, which is profiting off the deaths of our youth, is a nonpartisan issue,” Mannion wrote on his website.
Another bill that Mannion has filed for the 2024 session would provide for ‘Transparency in Military Recruiting’. “It will require schools and the DMV to provide casualty and suicide rate statistics of soldiers, veterans, and civilians caused by US conflicts of the 21st century whenever military recruiters are hosted, anytime the ASVAB is administered, or when driver’s license applications include the Selective Service registration checkbox. It’s important that young people are given all the information before making life-changing decisions, and military recruiters are not very forthcoming with information that will hurt their quotas. With escalating global tensions, I believe transparency is critically important.”
The legislation would also ‘Repeal Select Service Registration Awareness and Compliance Act’ (RSA 187-A:38-41). The current law prohibits students from enrolling in public (government-operated) colleges if they have not registered for Selective Service (the draft). “This is not the responsibility of the state to enforce and I believe it should be repealed,” Mannion said of the bill.
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