I Still Owe the Military Nothing

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.

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.

Admiral William D. Leahy. 5-star admiral, president of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the combined American-British Chiefs of Staff, and chief of staff to the commander-in-chief of the army and navy from 1942–1945 (Roosevelt) and 1945–1949 (Truman):

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted the ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, quoted by his widow:

". . . I felt that it was an unnecessary loss of civilian life. . . . We had them beaten. They hadn't enough food, they couldn't do anything." And – E. B. Potter, naval historian wrote: "Nimitz considered the atomic bomb somehow indecent, certainly not a legitimate form of warfare."

Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet:

"The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake ever to drop it . . . (the scientists) had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. . . . It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before."

Rear Admiral Richard Byrd:

"Especially it is good to see the truth told about the last days of the war with Japan. . . . I was with the Fleet during that period; and every officer in the Fleet knew that Japan would eventually capitulate from . . . the tight blockade."

Rear Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy:

"I, too, felt strongly that it was a mistake to drop the atom bombs, especially without warning." [The atomic bomb] "was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion . . . it was clear to a number of people . . . that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate . . . it was a sin – to use a good word – [a word that] should be used more often – to kill non-combatants. . . ."

Major General Curtis E. LeMay, US Army Air Forces (at a press conference, September 1945):

"The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb . . . the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all."

Major General Claire Chennault, founder of the Flying Tigers, and former US Army Air Forces commander in China:

"Russia's entry into the Japanese war was the decisive factor in speeding its end and would have been so even if no atomic bombs had been dropped..."

Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, Commanding General of the US Army Air Forces.

". . . [F]rom the Japanese standpoint the atomic bomb was really a way out. The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell. . . ."

Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker, Arnold's deputy.

"Arnold's view was that it (dropping the atomic bomb) was unnecessary. He said that he knew that the Japanese wanted peace. There were political implications in the decision and Arnold did not feel it was the military's job to question it. . . . I knew nobody in the high echelons of the Army Air Force who had any question about having to invade Japan."

Arnold, quoted by Eaker:

"When the question comes up of whether we use the atomic bomb or not, my view is that the Air Force will not oppose the use of the bomb, and they will deliver it effectively if the Commander in Chief decides to use it. But it is not necessary to use it in order to conquer the Japanese without the necessity of a land invasion."

General George C. Kenney, commander of Army Air Force units in the Southwest Pacific, when asked whether using the atomic bomb had been a wise decision.

"No! I think we had the Japs licked anyhow. I think they would have quit probably within a week or so of when they did quit."

W. Averill Harriman, in private notes after a dinner with General Carl "Tooey" Spaatz (commander in July 1945 of the Pacific-based US Army Strategic Air Forces), and Spaatz's one-time deputy commanding general in Europe, Frederick L. Anderson:

"...Both felt Japan would surrender without use of the bomb, and neither knew why a second bomb was used."

General Dwight D. Eisenhower:

"I voiced to him (Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson ed note: a Stalinist spy) my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was at that very moment seeking some way to surrender with a minimum of loss of 'face'. . . . It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

former President Herbert Hoover:

"I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."

Richard M. Nixon:

"MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it. . . . He thought it a tragedy that the Bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be to limit damage to noncombatants. . . . MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off, which I think speaks well of him

Norman Cousins, from an interview with MacArthur:

". . . [H]e saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it did later anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

He makes some good points and some points that are just WAAAYYY out there.

Good points - 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.

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.

Bad points - 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.

Without our military I believe there woiuld have been many countries in the past 200+ years that would have met requirements 1, 2, and 3.

This circumstance has never obtained in our history, and probably never will.

And again, I believe this is due DIRECTLY to our military.

Hitler and Germany never constituted a credible threat to the US

Never let this man into public office.
Hitler's Germany was the most advanced country, next to the USA, in the world. Hitler would have consolidated Europe, Russia, AND the mideast and come a running after the USA. We probably would have been speaking German before 1950.

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.

It seems to me that it is a fairly well known fact that more US lives were saved by this than, almost, any other single event in WWII.

Sure, if you want to prove it every 50 years to the next tinhorn dictator that doesn't remember the last time we opened a can of USA mean on someone.
The militias better have more than rifles though. Somebody better be passing out the grenades, LAWS rockets, machine guns, aircraft, anti-aircraft missiles, etc, with which todays battles are being won. Otherwise we will be toast in short order.

I see no real reason to go into this again with this nitwit, as he is obviously too full of himself to see that some folks really don't give a rat's patootie about what he says, one way of the other. The fool provided a moments distraction for me at the time of the original posting, but his continued silliness now tells me I was right about him in the first place.

Nothing but a loudmouthed REMF with nothing better to do.

By the way, idiot, no one WINS the Medal of Honor. One RECEIVES the medal.

And there ain't no such thing as a Congressional Medal of Honor.

Geez, one would think with all the education and intelligence you have, you'd at least be able to get that right.

Posted by OldSmaj to dixiepatriot On News/Activism 01/29/2004 7:15:12 AM PST #48 of 107

I don't idolize, but I do admire those 99% of the members of the armed forces who have served honorably. But I owe them nothing.

Hmmm. Should I or shouldn't I?

Yeah, I guess I should. Listen pogey-bait, I'm speaking as one those that you owe nothing to: I didn't ask for anything from you, in the first place, you stinking REMF.

I served because I got paid reasonably well to do things that I enjoyed doing. Others may call it what they wish, I called it a job. I didn't fail at it, either. Your stinking ass is still around to spew this crap, ain't it?

Thanks for paying your taxes, so that I could be paid, but otherwise, I really don't give a damn if you live or die.

In fact, you mealy-mouthed wanna-be spook, your type is the same type that did nothing but piss me off day after day, anyway, since all you could do was postulate and present your silly-ass pipe dreams based upon your fabricated imaginings, with no other purpose than to make a pitiful attempt to justify your own job. Good and honorable men died for your Clancy imaginings.

Your type wasted my time and talents on many occasions, with your Cold War crap and the constant doom and gloom crap that never existed.

You would have been better off just keeping your idiotic mouth shut. Tis better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to open ones mouth and verify the suspicion.

CIA, my ass. The good ones don't go around spouting this crap. If you knew half of what you think you know about why someone serves, you wouldn't be wasting your time writing your silliness for Lew Rockwell forums.

But, you, you ignorant James Bond wannabe, you don't know diddly about your subject, best you go back to writing assessments of non-existant planned invasions of Bora-Bora or whatever it is you ring-knocking, joe college CIA dipshits do.

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