NYT: The Best Army We Can Buy - We lost the link between citizenship and service.

New York Times ^ | July 25, 2005 | DAVID M. KENNEDY

[OESY]

The United States now has a mercenary army. To be sure, our soldiers are hired from within the citizenry, unlike the hated Hessians whom George III recruited to fight against the American Revolutionaries. But like those Hessians, today's volunteers sign up for some mighty dangerous work largely for wages and benefits....

Neither the idealism nor the patriotism of those who serve is in question here. The profession of arms is a noble calling, and there is no shame in wage labor. But the fact remains that the United States today has a military force that is extraordinarily lean and lethal, even while it is increasingly separated from the civil society on whose behalf it fights....

One troubling aspect is obvious. By some reckonings, the Pentagon's budget is greater than the military expenditures of all other nations combined. It buys an arsenal of precision weapons for highly trained troops who can lay down a coercive footprint in the world larger and more intimidating than anything history has known. Our leaders tell us that our armed forces seek only just goals, and at the end of the day will be understood as exerting a benign influence. Yet that perspective may not come so easily to those on the receiving end of that supposedly beneficent violence.

But the modern military's disjunction from American society is even more disturbing. Since the time of the ancient Greeks through the American Revolutionary War and well into the 20th century, the obligation to bear arms and the privileges of citizenship have been intimately linked. It was for the sake of that link between service and a full place in society that the founders were so invested in militias and so worried about standing armies, which Samuel Adams warned were "always dangerous to the liberties of the people."...

[OESY]

David M. Kennedy, a professor of history at Stanford and the author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning "Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945," is working on a book about the American national character.

[mewzilla]

The profession of arms is a noble calling, and there is no shame in wage labor. But the fact remains that the United States today has a military force that is extraordinarily lean and lethal, even while it is increasingly separated from the civil society on whose behalf it fights.

That's a fact, is it?

SNORT.

[Terpfen]

More crap from TNYT...

[OESY]

The Liberal View Of The Military


In American society, soldiers are typically spoken of with reverence, especially in wartime, and rightfully so. Our troops do difficult, extremely dangerous work, far away from their families and generally they work for peanuts and love of country.

Moreover, the sacrifices our troops make are extraordinarily important to our country. As Zell Miller said in his magnificent speech at the Republican National Convention last year:


"Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier.

And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom he abuses to burn that flag.

No one should dare to even think about being the commander in chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home."


Of course, not all Americans look at our soldiers that way. There are plenty of liberals out there who have an entirely different view of our military. So, in the name of fairness and balance, I'm going to show you a column about the military in the New York Times written by liberal history professor David M. Kennedy.

What follows is the summary of the central points of the column which Mr. Kennedy undoubtedly penned far up in his ivory tower at Stanford.

1) The US military is now full of the same sort of filthy Hessian mercenaries who spilled the blood of our ancestors during the Revolutionary War!


THE United States now has a mercenary army. To be sure, our soldiers are hired from within the citizenry, unlike the hated Hessians whom George III recruited to fight against the American Revolutionaries. But like those Hessians, today's volunteers sign up for some mighty dangerous work largely for wages and benefits - a compensation package that may not always be commensurate with the dangers in store, as current recruiting problems testify.


Some will find it offensive to call today's armed forces a "mercenary army," but our troops are emphatically not the kind of citizen-soldiers that we fielded two generations ago - drawn from all ranks of society without respect to background or privilege or education, and mobilized on such a scale that civilian society's deep and durable consent to the resort to arms was absolutely necessary.

2) We're more than 200 years overdue for a military backed coup and you sheeple don't even realize the danger!


But the fact remains that the United States today has a military force that is extraordinarily lean and lethal, even while it is increasingly separated from the civil society on whose behalf it fights. This is worrisome - for reasons that go well beyond unmet recruiting targets.


But the modern military's disjunction from American society is even more disturbing. Since the time of the ancient Greeks through the American Revolutionary War and well into the 20th century, the obligation to bear arms and the privileges of citizenship have been intimately linked. It was for the sake of that link between service and a full place in society that the founders were so invested in militias and so worried about standing armies, which Samuel Adams warned were "always dangerous to the liberties of the people."

3) We need to weaken our military and make it harder and more expensive for our country to send troops into battle!


But thanks to something that policymakers and academic experts grandly call the "revolution in military affairs," which has wedded the newest electronic and information technologies to the destructive purposes of the second-oldest profession, we now have an active-duty military establishment that is, proportionate to population, about 4 percent of the size of the force that won World War II. And today's military budget is about 4 percent of gross domestic product, as opposed to nearly 40 percent during World War II.

The implications are deeply unsettling: history's most potent military force can now be put into the field by a society that scarcely breaks a sweat when it does so. We can now wage war while putting at risk very few of our sons and daughters, none of whom is obliged to serve. Modern warfare lays no significant burdens on the larger body of citizens in whose name war is being waged.

This is not a healthy situation.


4) You know what this country needs? A good old fashioned draft!


The "revolution in military affairs" has made obsolete the kind of huge army that fought World War II, but a universal duty to service - perhaps in the form of a lottery, or of compulsory national service with military duty as one option among several - would at least ensure that the civilian and military sectors do not become dangerously separate spheres. War is too important to be left either to the generals or the politicians. It must be the people's business.


Summing It Up: Our good liberal professor seems to think our military is full of mercenaries who might overthrow the government so we need to weaken the military, make it more difficult to wage war, and have a draft.

I can't say that I agree with Kennedy, but who knows? If he sticks to his guns, there might be a spot for him at the Department of Defense if Hillary Clinton is elected ;D

John Hawkins, rightwingnews.com/

[Restorer]

With the very temporary exception of brief periods during the WBTS and WWI, the US always had a volunteer army till after Pearl Harbor. Only during WWII and the Cold War did we have conscription for an extended period.

[kharaku]

If the New York Times would stop destrying any vestige of patriotism by propagandizing against it wherever it finds it then maybe some would join for patriotic reasons.

[vbmoneyspender]

The real beef the NY Times has with our military is that they do a good job of defending the United States.

[cyborg]

very interesting...I don't know too many people who are in the military for the money exclusively. It's a mix of both.

[KarlInOhio]

Is this the same New York Times that criticizes citizens for volunteering to watch the border?

The profession of arms is a noble calling

That had to hurt the NYT to print.

[BlueNgold]

His insults to the Army by implication include all of our armed forces, and as an Annapolis grad and 10 yr vet let me be among those who offer my posterior for his pucker.

[Obadiah]

I think the author has some useful things to say. However, has he seriously considered how the NY Times would wail and nash their teeth if President Bush were to call for military conscription? My view is that military conscription, similar to that in Israel, will one day again be necessary here in the US. Moreover, the author did not point out the anecdotal evidence that people from the red states are shouldering a larger military burden than the peacnicks residing in the blue states.

[bnelson44]

If you want patriotic citizens you need to support them. The NYT isn't supporting patriotism. So they get harvest what they sow. Then they complain about the product.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

The NYTimes is staffed by a bunch of baby killers!

[SMARTY]

"...increasingly separated from the civil society..."

IN YOUR DREAMS!!! Those boys and girls ARE America and as much so now as military personnel have ever been. You don't build good soldiers without making good citizens first, that makes a great army!

NYT whistling past the grave yard again, I see.

[Hemingway's Ghost]

But the modern military's disjunction from American society is even more disturbing.

I hope Prof. Kennedy takes into consideration the prevailing attitude towards the service in places like New England, where not an insignificant number of parents would react to the prospect of their child going into the service the same way they would as if they were joining a pack of flat-earth cannibals. That, and certain elitist colleges won't even allow military recruiters on campus. What the hell does Prof. Kennedy expect to happen?

[SmithL]

The Submarine Service has always been strictly volunteer. It's a heck of a way to make a mercenary living.

[highlander_UW]

But the fact remains that the United States today has a military force that is extraordinarily lean and lethal, even while it is increasingly separated from the civil society on whose behalf it fights....

If we start cloning soldiers and raising them separate from society maybe this will have some validity, but this author apparently has forgotten that those who volunteer for the military are not out of some vacuum or transported here from some alternative dimension...they ARE citizens and part of civil society. Or does he mean that none of the rabid left takes any responsibility for defending the nation and he's referring to the left as "civil society". If the former, then he's wrong, if the later, he's deluded regarding "civil society".

[facedown]

...is working on a book about the American national character.

Like he'd have a clue.

[Rembrandt_fan]

The author wrote, "But like those Hessians, today's volunteers sign up for some mighty dangerous work largely for wages and benefits...."

Nonsense. All of the men in my family have served since we came over on the boat just before the Civil War, and it wasn't for the pay and benefits. The same was true for most of my buddies when I did my obligation, although we were serving in the 82nd Airborne, and perhaps the percentage of those patriotically motivated might be somewhat higher than those serving in support units, say.

The truth is that liberals since Vietnam have raised their children to despise the uniform, so the gulf has widened ideologically between those who serve and those who don't. Calling modern day soldiers 'mercenary' or comparing soldiering to wage-labor is a convenient way to 're-frame' the issue so that one doesn't notice the real problem. The real problem is that modern left-wing liberalism does not believe our country is worth fighting or dying for--that it believes, in fact, that the whole notion of 'country' is an outmoded anachronism.

[steve-b]

The implications are deeply unsettling: history's most potent military force can now be put into the field by a society that scarcely breaks a sweat when it does so.

That is only "deeply unsettling" to someone who despises the society in question. To people who admire that society, the fact that it is strong enough to support such a burden without damage is a good thing.