Apparently, the author can envision no reason for the United States ever to wield military force overseas. So I suppose the lives of human beings other than Americans have no value to the author. He'd have let the Holocaust, or something even more horrific proceed without a note of concern from the U.S. He's also have had no problem with letting Britain get overrun by the Nazis, or with all of Europe falling under the thumb of the Soviets after WWII. He doesn't seem to consider how that might have affected us here over time if we were the only free country remaining on earth. And one without a standing military. No Navy to ply the oceans, no Air Force.... We couldn't even have stopped the Soviets from putting missiles in Cuba.
What has made the US an uninviting target for 200 years is the oceans and our gun ownership.
Oh boy. This guy is so locked into his little rationalistic world that he assumes everyone plays by the same rules. 9/11 didn't happen because someone wanted to conquer us. It happened because they wanted to kill us. The oceans are no barrier (particularly if the Navy is eliminated), and gun ownership is no barrier to those kind of attacks either. If you permit terrorists who target the U.S. to operate freely outside the U.S., its only a matter of time until they succeed.
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.
How expensive was it for Al Qaeda to kill 3000 Americans? And am I reading this wrong, or is this guy saying that we shouldn't have gone after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Actually, that must be what he's saying, because he advocates eliminating the standing army that is engaging in that war.
Universal gun ownership means an occupying force can never succeed.
That's just false. I'm thinking this guy's military knowledge is limited to computer games or something. Plenty of armed people have been successfully repressed throughout history. In the real world, every person in an occpied country isn't willing to sacrifice his life gloriously. The vast majority will be cowed over time if faced with overwhelming force. But even if he's right, an invasion and ultimately unsuccessful occupation still would mean the deaths of millions, destruction of our economic life and property, and decades of oppression.
Just look at Iraq. Tons of guns there, yet our loss rate is only 1 per day. That's a political issue here, but in military terms, its insignicant. Our occupying force could stay there forever if we wanted it to, particularly if we didn't have the type of scruples we have now. Start wiping out whole villages, murdering mullahs, etc., and you'd see resistance collapse pretty quickly. A little brutality doesn't work, but a lot of brutality does.
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.
Yup, as someone pointed out, too many viewings of Red Dawn here. He's lost in his own romanticism without checking reality. A "nation of rifle toting rednecks"? I dunno, I think most of the people in Greenwich Village probably don't fall under the rubric of "rifle toting rednecks." Lots of rifle toting rednecks in Washington D.C., right? And I'm willing to bet the author doesn't fall under that description either. I'm sure he fancies himself one of the "intellectual leaders" of the resistance.
There is no incentive for any nation to do that to any other
That's just terrible reasoning. This guy is so locked into his own worldview its amazing. When Rome conquered Carthage, it didn't try to take advantage of Carthage's economic power. It didn't try to steal anything. It wanted to eliminate a potential rival. So it intentionally destroyed the economic viability of Carthage by razing the city and sowing the fields with salt. We could become a target not because someone wants to take our wealth, but because someone perceives us as a potential threat, either military or economic. Everyone else in the world does not act solely on the basis of rationalistic economic thought.
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.
Actually, they are. The majority of the U.S. miltary is stationed right here at home. As for those guys overseas, they're killing enemies in Afghanistan before they can come here and kill more Americans.
I'd expect something better from a site that purports to follow the teachings of a brilliant guy like von Mises.
Moronic statement of the year.
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.
"Aunt Bea, you know religion is just the opiate of the massess...Barn, let's get those rich people outta town they're just here to oppress the proletariat."
Then Paul Craig Roberts wrote this week a few good reasons why it's sometimes no fun to be a columnist.
Well if Paul Craig Roberts thinks it's no fun being paid thousands of dollars per year to write his opinion. He can have my job and I'll take his. Weee!
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.
Plus, I had nothing more substantive to write.
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.
And others will extensively quote the great Paul Craig Roberts.
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.
I see the big holes in their arguments.
Others understood that I retired from the CIA, which I didn't. I was there for a relatively short time, and left in 1990.
So it's the readers fault that your writing's unclear.
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,
So, your complaint is that FR isn't an invitation only forum?
and virtually all neocons; almost no libertarians are among them. I counted, just for fun,
tee hee
about 70 different posters, 65 of whom were opposed to my viewpoint (about 60 of those without substance).
It's nice to know that we have a self-selected judge of whose without substance. Although an argument such as "unpatriotic jerk bump" is probably not substantive. Also, it seems your problem with FR is that not everyone or even a clear majority think like you.
My emails, also subject to self-selection, were just the opposite. I counted, just for fun,
tee-hee
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.
So, let's see, you post your message on extreme libertarian anti-war sites and you get responses from people that indicates they agree with you. Is there a correlation here? Try reading it at the next VFW meeting for a more represenative sample of veterans
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.
So lets disarm the disband the military and see how long our freedom lasts or how many idiot wars of invasion we have to fight every year to keep our 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?
Sure, the Romans were a lot more free under the Barbarians and the Scottish were so much better off under English rule. If we don't like our government, disband the military and hope we get some benevolent invaders. Brilliant!
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.
I'm glad that he's omniscent and knows that if we had no military we would never have been invaded and that our possession of nuclear weapons and the greatest fighting force on Earth has not deterred invaders.
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.)
By that tyrannical George Washington. Darn it! Why don't more people on Free Republic agree with this guy!
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.
Well, thanks for simplifying the War of 1812 and the numerous land and sea battles to pirate ships fighting the British.
The next "invasion" was the Union army invading the sovereign CSA,
It's time for the weekly refighting of the Civil War! Yeah!
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.
Unless you're a college student.
(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.)
Great moments in simplification!
The USSR was credible, likely to reduce our freedom, and somewhat hampered, if not repelled, by our military
And I contradict myself.
(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.
That's why Germany invaded England---no, wait.
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.)
So the whole world could have sunk into chaos and evil and we would have been okay and nobody would have bothered us and we don't even need a military. Wow, I stand in awe of your libertarianness.
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.
And they can do that. So, what comfort is this?
There is no incentive for any nation to do that to any other:
Well, you drop about three or four nukes and the good old boys will think about surrendering. And since when are national leaders immune to petty wickedness and senseless acts of violence? This is the history of the world.
There would be nothing of value to steal afterward, and it would be costly and dangerous for the nation using the nukes.
So without our military, we rely our friends in the International Community: the French to bravely stand up and avenge us.
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.
So we shouldn't have any problem keeping our emperor?
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).
The Pentagon is not well-defended? Oh really, I guess I'll just sneak down their and find out what's at Area 51, but I'm sure YOU already know that.
They're not.
Which was implied by my last sentence which means I wasted your time by writing that.
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.
Per chance did the General receive a head injury? Seriously, so many generals say so many different things about war and strategy based to a great degree on politics, why should the fact that a General said something be considered absolute proof when in fact most Generals and Admirals would disagree.
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.
Sure, why not? Militias worked great for the Chechnyans, oh wait! And also the Kosovo Liberation Army! Oh wait again! And the Iraqi Kurds handled things quite nicely on their own before we came on the scene. I detect perhaps a flaw in your argument but this post is most likely not substantive so you can ignore it.
"Sweet ..."
Hey! I know you. You owe me $5.
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 ...