• The campaign can reduce the number of troops in Iraq in the near term. 
  
  
  By reducing the number of bodies the military can send to fight abroad, this campaign can impede the ability of the government to engage in military adventurism.
  
  
  Over 600,000 National Guard and reserve troops have been deployed to Iraq. The government could not have fought the war nor could it maintain the occupation without the Guard. Use of the Guard in this way sets a precedent that needs to be addressed to prevent the future ability of the government to wage wars of choice and aggression. If no additional Guard troops are sent to Iraq, the ability of the government to maintain an occupying force will be dramatically diminished.
  
  
• The campaign can continue to affect the debate on the ongoing occupation of Iraq.
  
  
  Many people seem to think the occupation is about over and that we should move on to a new topic. But no one with any real political power is suggesting that all, or even most, troops leave Iraq; thus, we can anticipate a continuing occupation, for the foreseeable future.  The military cannot function in Iraq without the Guard. If we can get Maryland to refuse to send its Guard to Iraq, the new president and new congress may pay some attention to the issue of ending the occupation.
  
  
• The campaign will help to redress the imperial presidency.
  
  
  Since 1973, when the War Powers Act was passed, most military actions have been preceded by an act of Congress called an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), not a declaration of war. An AUMF legalizes the use of the military by the president and sets out the rationale for its use.  For Iraq, the AUMF was quite narrow, primarily focused on WMD. Since there are no WMD, the AUMF no longer has any bearing on what the military is doing in Iraq. That is, the AUMF is not pertinent to the current U.S. military role.  However, Congress has abdicated its responsibility for oversight of military actions.  All military power essentially resides in the president now. Thus, this campaign is bigger than Iraq. It says that the states have some say in how we send people into combat.
  
  
  The Iraq war set a bad precedent for expansion of presidential powers and war-making; this initiative challenges that precedent.   Success in any state will have a profound impact on democracy, as well as on ending the occupation of Iraq.

• We want to prevent the kind of military adventurism that the Bush administration has engaged in. The National Guard and the Reserves together contributed over 600,000 members to the occupation of Iraq. Without them, the Bush administration could not have continued its illegal occupation all these years.

• We do not believe that the National Guard should serve as a back-door draft. The purpose of the Guard is entirely different from how they have been used over the past eight years. That use is unfair to Guard members in multiple ways, including the fact that the benefits they receive as veterans are inferior to those of the regular military.

• We want to restore the rule of law, and specifically to prevent any future president from starting a war on the basis of material misrepresentations to Congress and the public and then continuing that war and occupation without legal basis, as occurred with respect to Iraq. This legislation is a start in that direction.

• Ending the occupation of Iraq sooner rather than later
• Preventing future wars of aggression
• Restoring and preserving fairness to the men and women of our National Guard
• Restoring the rule of law