Posted on 02/04/2004 5:33:51 AM PST by dixiepatriot
I Still Owe the Military Nothing
by Brad Edmonds
My article on the military drew more emails than I've seen since I wrote a couple of years ago that Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry was a commie rat. Then Paul Craig Roberts wrote this week a few good reasons why it's sometimes no fun to be a columnist. Just because it's enlightening and amusing (and a little informative), I thought it would be interesting to discuss the responses to my military article.
Free Republic was the most fun. As Paul Craig Roberts pointed out, some people will invent things they believe were in your article, and focus on those. One reader acted offended that I considered the rank of major "lowly," which I didn't suggest (I was putting it in relation to 2- and 3-star generals); another assumed my dad retired as a major, which I didn't suggest, and which wasn't the case. Others understood that I retired from the CIA, which I didn't. I was there for a relatively short time, and left in 1990. There was little of substance – mostly empty invective – on Free Republic, though one reader successfully corrected my simplification of US foreign policy in the Middle East to "40 years of bombing." I should have linked this article by Adam Young, and referred to "50 years of ham-handed, violent, dictatorial, capricious intervention" instead of "40 years of bombing." I stand corrected. Freepers, as they're called, are self-selected, and virtually all neocons; almost no libertarians are among them. I counted, just for fun, about 70 different posters, 65 of whom were opposed to my viewpoint (about 60 of those without substance).
My emails, also subject to self-selection, were just the opposite. I counted, just for fun, and heard from 114 different people – so far. 105 were in agreement, nine disagreed. Of those who identified themselves as military veterans, 32 agreed while only three wrote to disagree. None of the three claimed to have been a combat veteran, while many of the 32 mentioned the wars in which they saw combat.
Without exception, those who disagreed simply restated the point I wrote to dispel: That we owe our freedom to the military. A few thought they had me on a legal point: Since I noted that Americans' freedoms have decreased, some readers thought I'd confused the purpose of the military (defense from foreign invasion) with civil government (the enactment of laws, the existence of which limits freedom). No, they didn't have me; they made my point – that the military has little to do with freedom.
The only thing the military can do for our freedom is to repel an attack from an invader who, in occupying, would offer us a less free society than we have now. I mean, we must consider the possibility that an occupying force can increase our freedom, right? Isn't this Bush's point in Iraq? So, for our military to have been effective in protecting our freedom, the enemy must be (1) credible; (2) willing and prepared to attack; (3) likely to reduce our freedom if he wins; and (4) repelled by either the action, or the threat, of our military.
This circumstance has never obtained in our history, and probably never will. The British, in 1812, were the single most credible invading threat we've ever faced, and if the British invaded successfully they still might not have had a tremendous impact on our liberty either way. (Remember the Whiskey Rebellion? Our liberty was threatened by our own government in 1791.) Further, the most effective defense we had in 1812 was privateers – private ships, paid only in captured booty (which gave them incentive to preserve the enemy and his ships). So much for the government's military there.
The next "invasion" was the Union army invading the sovereign CSA, which only established once and for all that there was nothing voluntary about the US government. We have never been in any credible danger of being forced to speak Spanish, Japanese, German, or frankly, Russian. (We were in some danger of being hit by Soviet nuclear weapons, but the only deterrent was our own bombs – not men and women, not command structures, since ICBMs could be launched on Moscow from inside the US.)
The USSR was credible, likely to reduce our freedom, and somewhat hampered, if not repelled, by our military (but really mostly by our under-the-table payments to, for example, Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan; and our placements of missiles in Europe), but the USSR was never prepared to attack us. Hitler and Germany never constituted a credible threat to the US, and Hitler himself made no secret that he thought the new world order should consist of Germany, England, and the United States. Japan was goaded into Pearl Harbor, starving and desperate to break up our blockade of oil, steel, etc. against their island; but Japan never had any wish to invade the US. (Freepers take note: Yes, Germany, Japan, and the USSR were evil. Yes they were. I agree. They were still never a threat to us, with our without our military.)
What has made the US an uninviting target for 200 years is the oceans and our gun ownership. As Iraq and Afghanistan have proven in the last three years, making war halfway around the world is expensive, risky, and difficult even for the US, even today, even when attacking pathetically weaker opponents. Universal gun ownership means an occupying force can never succeed. To occupy, you have to step out of your planes and humvees and move on foot. The more the natives own guns and want to resist, the more ground area you have to occupy continuously. With a nation full of rifle-toting rednecks, a hostile foreign power can never succeed. To obliterate us, they would be forced to nuke us.
There is no incentive for any nation to do that to any other: There would be nothing of value to steal afterward, and it would be costly and dangerous for the nation using the nukes. America did it to Japan because we knew Japan was already defeated, and we were the only ones in the world who had nukes. Indeed, to prove the disincentives work: Truman bombed Japan because the Japanese demanded as their only condition of surrender that the emperor remain emperor. They continued to demand this after both bombings, so Truman just gave in. The bombings were for nothing. And with no retaliation for Truman or the US to fear, Truman still stopped, and gave the Japanese what they wanted. They didn't even have rifles.
We have rifles.
Heck, I'd be more prone to believe we owed our freedom to the military if they were here, defending our borders (or even their own headquarters). They're not.
And as to my point that the military is just a tool for Congress and the president, you don't have to listen to me. Listen to a retired Marine general, twice winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, on the subject.
We don't need a standing federal military. If someone invades, militias can pop up, with rifles and perhaps a government commission (while we still have forcible government) to get the job done and then disband until the next invasion. I'll be there, ready to go. Let me know when it happens.
February 4, 2004
http://www.lewrockwell.com/edmonds/edmonds181.html
But the gripping hand is that this idiot almost certainly doesn't believe his own BS. He's being glib about the defense of the nation, when glibness is the last thing needed. He's playing word games. Anyone who's learned critical thinking can see right through him.
Lew Rockwell and his confederates refuse to acknowledge any validity to the American nation, post-Civil War--but I can't help notice that they're quite willing to stay here and take advantage of our society. A pity, actually, since it would be fun to watch them trying to survive in Sierra Leone or the Congo.
Funny, then, how the youth in Iran are saying they like America so much. Apparently our evil foreign involvement is appreciated more by them than by this moron.
> XJH: Since when has there been a country supposedly founded on moral premises rather than thuggery? You may think our morality should be no better than that of the Roman Empire. I think it should be.
Please cite for me an example where the founding fathers pursued a war for the purposes you express. Since they supposedly founded this country on the moral premise you talk about there should be some examples you could give me. Or at least point out in their writings where they proposed such actions. One also has to respect the concept of national sovereignty and legal jurisdiction. Setting a precident for intervention is very dangerous.
>U89: I can name no war where a 3rd party joined in on one side because of altruism.
>XJH: To avoid a historical debate, I'll just respond "so what"? If you think there are never any circumstances under which we should get involved in military action outside our borders, moral or otherwise, just say so.
OK. I'm saying "So." The paramount job of the government is to secure our lives and our liberties for ourselves and our posterity. War, any war puts the nation at risk. To go to war under any but the most necessary dictates of self defense is to reckless endanger the life of the nation which is the very antithesis of the purpose of the government's mandate to protect it. Furthermore so called morality is subjective. Would you want yourself or your children to die for Bill Clinton's idea of morality for example?" History has proven how often wars are pursued for venal purposes or delusions of grandeur but are often masqueraded under the fascasde of morality. I cited the Span Am War, how about W.W.I? Wilson had to protect US bank loans to the Allied Powers and needed combat casualties to have influence at the peace table so he could "make the world safe for democracy." Do you really trust politicians, any politician, who all get to power due to duplicity, cynicism, cronyism and graft, do you really want to take their word for anything? History proves how each administration lies to us in so many ways.
You brought up Klinghoffer so I asked if my memory was correct on the facts of the case, nothing more, nothing less. You are wrong to infer that I meant he got what he deserved. But since you bring it up, in this life our actions do have consequences and mouthing off to crazed, murderous fanatics when you already have two strikes against you is not wise if one wishes to continue living. No, he didn't "deserve" to die but under the circumstances his death was not surprising.
>XJH: The article was saying to disband the standing federal military. To use a trite cliche, he put the cart before the horse. How about first pulling back, then waiting, then getting rid of the military when its apparent there is no threat?
Our debate has not stayed on the exact premise of the article and I can not debate for another so some of my remakes are my opinion and I do not try to explain or justify someone else. The question arose of our overseas actives and having a standing army for defense. I am not against having a standing army but I do question the size of it, our far flung positioning and our overseas activities. As we've discussed I claim our activities over the last 50 years and particularly the last dozen has made us some lethal enemies. You mention that there is a clash of civilizations at foot and I do not reject aspects of that. We need their oil. They need our dollars. Other than that we do not have to interact. Our culture is an affront to some over there and in places TV satellites and VCR's were outlawed as they tried to stem our influence but that is not the motivating factor for the many who hate us to the point they are willing to die for it. What put us at odds with the Iranians for example? Back in '79 they didn't jump up and down over the evils of Charlie's Angles on their TV's. No, they were sore because we put in power and propped up a Shah they considered despotic. And so it goes.
As for the standing army bit I agree with you that we should first pull back, then reorganize but given the realities of today' s mobility and such I could live with a standing professional army as long as it was much smaller in size than it currently is as its present scale is not necessary to protect our borders. With the smaller army people like Albright wouldn't be tempted to play God with it.
There isn't one. It was a different time when mass genocide wasn't quite as common an occurence. Perhaps more to the point, they didn't have the ability to do that even if they wanted to because we were so weak. In any case, I've just asked a simple question which you keep dodging: are you against any American military action outside our borders whether for moral, humanitarian, or any other reason?
One also has to respect the concept of national sovereignty and legal jurisdiction.
Since the only legitimacy a government has is when it is granted by the consent of the governed, any oppressive state has no claim to sovereignity. Or do you think there's some kind of legal and/or moral right to commit genocide against innocents? Exactly which Federalist Papers contains that nugget?
And by the way, I'm not even advocating that we do such interventions. I'm just trying to find out if you have a brightline rule that 1) we should never do it, and/or 2) we would lack a legal/moral right to do it if we did so choose.
Furthermore so called morality is subjective.
You sure you want to go there?
I'm not against having a standing army but I do question the size of it, our far flung positioning and our overseas activities.
I've got no quarrel with that. My quarrel was with the overly broad position staked out by the author.
. Al Qaeda's goal was to kill as many Americans as possible. Nuclear means was not their method. Your assumption is contradicted by reality. And a nuclear deterrent for any large scale act of terrorism against the U.S. is a rather blunt weapon.
I also included some planes and subs patrolling our border if you didn't read closely enough, that should be all the weaponry neccessary to protect the physical United States.
You may, but the author didn't. That's who I was criticizing.
and your method of "deterrent" is not to actually sit and deter---it is to simply attack, in advance, anyone that some Washington brain wizards deem a threat.
It is? Please point to the post where I advocated that. You've used the classic tactic of the extremist -- accuse anyone who disagrees with you of harboring ridiculous views. I don't generally agree with the concept of preemptive attack. But I certainly do believe in bringing death to whomever attacks us first, and to those who gave them aid. So yup, I supported getting Al Qaeda and the Taliban. About all your military could do is wave at them from a few thousand miles away while they laughed at us and planned their next strike. No thanks.
Direct hit!
Try using the late Trevor N. Dupuy's QJMA (Quantified Judgement Model Analysis) method, described in his book Numbers, Prediction, and War. Dupuy got the Pentagon's Studies and Gaming Agency (SAGA) very angry at him, because he managed to develop a very accurate means of modeling ground combat on his own, without a big SAGA contract.
1,000,000 dead and wounded across two very large "forcible entry" amphibious invasions (Operation Olympic would've hit Kyushu; Operation Coronet would've hit the Kanto Plain on Honshu, right outside Tokyo), while fighting opponents who frankly didn't care if they died, as long as they took one gaijin with them...it's a reasonable estimate.
The Japanese plan was to use the world's largest levee en masse--basically, every able (and not-so-able) bodied person--to fight a war of attrition.
Good point! Shoot, any three year old who's missed his nap could do that. And for what? Freedom? Freedom is just another word for nothin' left to lose ...
You have got to be kidding!
True. They just provided shelter, and protection for those who did. When we asked that the perpetrators be turned over, the Taliban refused. What then?
Al Qaeda did, and they don't have any discernable state affiliation. They certainly weren't acting on any state orders.
So what? Are you saying that we should not have gone into Afghanistan to punish them and to prevent them from having a secure base from which to plan future attacks?
Certainly not Saddam Hussein's.
Saddam Hussein has nothing to do with this discussion because I said nothing about attacking Iraq. I was speaking solely of going after the perpetrators of 9/11.
They are criminals and should be handled as such.
That's a nice little phrase, but exactly how would we do that? The people who flew the planes are dead. The people who planned and supported the operation are in Afghanistan. How are we supposed to bring the members of Al Qaeda to justice when they are in another country and protected by the military of that country?
My "extreme" critique of your definition of "deterrent" is nonetheless totally accurate, if you agree with the war against the Taliban and Iraq.
I didn't attempt to justify the invasion of Iraq. I mentioned only the Taliban/Afghanistan, because that was where Al Qaeda was. Do you think we should have used military force to take out Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, or not? And if not, what should we have done?
For what it's worth...that "vocal minority" damn near wound up in charge on August 15th, 1945.
My late father, during his service in the Navy, talked to people who'd been junior high school students in 1945.
They trained to repel the American invasion, and they were perfectly willing to use suicidal tactics to do it. One tactic they practiced was strapping a satchel charge to their back and diving under an American truck, then detonating it. Others who've talked to ordinary folks who were in and out of the Japanese military have heard similar tales.
One thing that is interesting is that the Japanese military did NOT fight a guerilla action, and the incidence of lawless behavior by former Japanese soldiers was close to nil during the American occupation. (By 1947, occupation duty in Japan was much preferred to occupation duty in Germany; there was no analogue to the "Werewolf" movement in Japan.) The Emperor had commanded them to lay down their arms; they did so. That speaks to a very high standard of discipline. Had the orders come down to fight the gaijin to the last drop of Japanese blood...I believe that those orders would've been largely obeyed. And the results would have been sanguinary in the extreme, on both sides.
>XJH: There isn't one. It was a different time when mass genocide wasn't quite as common an occurence. Perhaps more to the point, they didn't have the ability to do that even if they wanted to because we were so weak. In any case, I've just asked a simple question which you keep dodging: are you against any American military action outside our borders whether for moral, humanitarian, or any other reason?
Not so much genocide back then, heh? - like when the colonial British gave the Indians small pox infected blankets? As you say no need to review the history of the world here but there is nothing new under the sun. Our times are not so special. Our technology is advanced but people are the same. The founders drew their wisdom from 5000 years of recorded history . Nature hasn't change any in the last 200. The founders did not pursue moral crusades because they didn't have the ability - they're writings would have reflected that if that were the case and I challenge you to cite an example of what you propose they believed and founded the country on. To the contrary one could cite John Adams for example who said, and I loosely quote "America is the champion of freedom everywhere but the defender of only her own" and " We do not search the world seeking monsters to destroy." I have not dodged your question. I thought it was directly addressed in the last post where I said "OK. I'm saying so." I am against US forces being involved in anything other than strictly defined self defense of this nation alone. Legitimate defense can take us beyond our borders like in naval actions or for example the barbary pirates incident. Once Japan attacked us and Germany declared war on us back in 41 we were within reason to take the war to them. However because of our pre-war machinations to get involved I do not consider our involvement so pure and noble but that is another story.
>XJH: Since the only legitimacy a government has is when it is granted by the consent of the governed, any oppressive state has no claim to sovereignty. Or do you think there's some kind of legal and/or moral right to commit genocide against innocents? Exactly which Federalist Papers contains that nugget?
>And by the way, I'm not even advocating that we do such interventions. I'm just trying to find out if you have a brightline rule that 1) we should never do it, and/or 2) we would lack a legal/moral right to do it if we did so choose.
>U89: Furthermore so called morality is subjective.
> XJH: You sure you want to go there?
National sovereignty is a long standing tradition recognized the world over for many centuries. Only in the very modern era have we decided there is a higher global authority. BTW it was basic conservative tenet that the US should not be bound by UN laws. President Bush did not sign on to the international war crimes treaty and was praised for it on this forum. Are you suggesting that there is one law for the us and another for the rest of the world? Or that the US should be subject to foreign authority? Let's forget that "right to genocide" bit you brought up. As history and recent events amply illustrate we have selective outrage. Serbs supression of insurrection and foreign incursion in their sovereign territory of Kosovo was considered genocide and we had to intervene (on the side of Islamic terrorists). But when those same Islamic thugs kill Serbs and raze historic churches we "see nothing." We "see nothing" wrong with Russian actions in Chetchnia right now. We see nothing wrong with Sherman's march to the sea, with our own western expansion - "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." We "saw nothing" when Indonesia, back in the 70s crushed East Timor and 200,000 people were butchered. We turned a blind eye to Saddam when Iraq was our boy doing the Lords work against Iran in the 80s only to be outraged by these very acts 15 years later when Saddam wasn't our boy anymore. I'll give one more example:
The following are charges against the Nazis from the Nuremberg War Crimes trials.
CRIMES AGAINST PEACE: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing;
WAR CRIMES: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.
Do not jump to the conclusion that Nuremberg reinforces your case. Please bear in mind that Stalin's Soviet Union, our ally, was sitting in judgment at this trail. Now reread that list of crimes and think of just Stalin's war time activities. Now think of our fire bombing of cities in Europe and Japan. We did not limit war to military forces and installation, we laid waste to entire cites with malice aforethought. And if you think that term is strong just last year documents were released from the British archives showing how "Bomber" Harris deliberately chose some small German cities for destruction just because they would burn well. In case there was some doubt as to the morality of wasting cities here's an inside look at what we were thinking. Also remember that quite a few Americans at the time of the Nuremberg disagreed with the idea of these trials as it set a precedent and established a global governance that claims authority beyond the nation state thereby eliminating sovereignty. Now if you're against national sovereignty then I question your conservative credentials as conservatives have historically been opposed to global government.
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