Travellinguist's Musings

Military Service.....

We often hear about how heroic soldiers are those who fight in defense of the nation, and all that other pablum which suppresses free discussion and forces the trite statement of all politicians, "I support the troops." There is a certain truth to soldiers as those people who heroically defend their homes, but as we know well, the idea of a standing, professional army was hotly debated in the early years of the United States for good reasons. The civilian militiamen at Lexington and Concord had proven the effectiveness of common people soldiers fighting in defense of their homes, while through the professional British Army, quartered amidst the citizenry of Boston, we learned how soldiers' simple purpose is to kill and to maintain order through the threat to kill. Their job is one of destruction of life and property. Even those military engineers who build, often just build to better deliver the destruction. It is not just that the soldiers kill and destroy, though that is their primary purpose, but because while waiting, while being "on-guard" as it were, for the call to kill and destroy (yes even in defense) they contribute nothing to society. Throughout the history of humankind professional armies have plundered and taken from those civilians around them to maintain themselves. The purposes of quartering troops among the people, as the British did in Boston in the 1770s and as was forbidden by our Bill of Rights, were not just for maintaining order but to make it that the civilians would feed the soldiers and attend to their needs so that the government did not have to worry about it. This was a win-win for the British government since keeping an army in the field is a problem. As we know from the historical accounts and many contemporary accounts, quartered soldiers extract, money, food and virginity from those occupied civilians, terrorizing and living a parasitic existence through the threat of force.
I say this all because the network of amendments to the US Constitution dealing with firearms and quartering are intimately related to each other and the circumstances of the 18th century. We have moved away from this ideal of citizen-soldiers, though we have a National Guard which in many ways embodies this, however the $600 billion a year we spend to maintain our standing army suggests that the founders had more wisdom than they themselves knew. (Of course our active duty army consumes another $200 billion or more to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, so a total of about $800 billion a year and likely more) We have moved away from their ideal and this has cost us treasure and blood in ridiculous amounts. Further it has encouraged vainglory in our leaders so much that they invade countries to "advance our interests" to thereby spread the loss of blood and life to others at no risk to themselves all the while declaring their patriotism and love of country.
It should not surprise us that Iraqis and Afghanis are unhappy with our presence. It is not just the invasion which obviously would upset them, but the reality that they have to live in a way which our Founding Fathers found intolerable, with soldiers quartered in their midst, and destruction in their cities and towns. What has made their lives easier is that the American citizens are picking up the bills to the tunes of billions per month, however, easy is relative when your family member is accidentally shot to death at a checkpoint, or when your door is kicked in in the middle of the night because your suspected of doing something you did't do.
So why this discourse? Well simply it is because war is the problem itself. Our soldiers (and often most soldiers) are often good people who behave honorably, but the condition of war leads them to do things which are anti-humanitarian, and worse, changes some into monsters. However, with a standing professional army and billions of dollars of annual expenditures which need justification, our leaders can too easily pull the trigger on foreign adventures and invasions which just create war and destruction and which do not actually benefit any person except a thin slice of war profiteers. Not only is this destruction an impediment to progress and humanity, but tying down soldiers in the act of destroying means they are not involved in production and peace, which means it is a double loss. They are away from their families and jobs; their sole purpose is to destroy and then rebuild what they have destroyed.
The United States will not abolish firearm ownership and perhaps they should not since the firearm issue was not one of crime but defense. The citizen-soldiers were intended to keep their muskets to serve in the militia, a militia which we don't have any longer. A drastic reduction in our standing army to a level like existed before the Civil War would be in our best interest as a nation and a society. Citizen-Soldiers would stand up in the unlikely event of an invasion and their skill with the freely available arms would make them as effective against an invading force as those rag-tag Iraqi militia rebels are defending their homes against us. The best soldier is the one defending his home. All else just exemplify the professional armies of Europe's past, ravenous beasts which consume the production and livelihoods of all those around them while building nothing of value. They are as much the drain on our economic progress by existing as unproductive soldiers as by the destruction they leave in their midst in executing their duties.

Labels: soldiers professional army FoundingFathers Iraq militia Constitution USA

posted by travellinguist @ 12:06 PM