Are Americans “military illiterate?” Gannett columnist John Omicinski thinks so and he endorses a “solution” to the problem recently proposed by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James L. Jones — force every American to spend several years in the armed forces.
It is always a bit surreal to read these sorts of defenses of empire. Why should we try compulsory military service and why should the United States abandon its namby pamby aversion to serious wars? Because too many people have already died in America’s previous wars to give up now. In a recent speech, Jones said,
As the pendulum swings between two centuries, a major question is whether our nation will continue to accept its leadership role on the global playing field, as it was bequeathed to us by our ancestors.
Huh? The same ancestors such as Thomas Jefferson who warned Americans against the dangers of a standing army during peace time? Where in the Constitution exactly does it say that the world is simply the United States’ “global playing field”?
Has Jones surveyed what this global game has wrought on the world? Does the United States really want to spend the next century supporting petty dictatorships and looking the other way at state-sanctioned murder, torture and other sundry crimes simply to satisfy Jones’ and Omicinski’s need to have a “global playing field”?
Omicinski laments that if we don’t have compulsory military service, and the accompanying love for war that this would presumably bring, we risk all sorts of unspeakable horrors.
Americans’ low tolerance for taking casualties was part of Saddam Hussein’s strategic thinking in his 1990 invasion of Kuwait. He didn’t think we would fight. He almost was right.
God forbid that Americans come to think of war casualties as a bad thing (much less that they wonder exactly what was accomplished or resolved by the Persian Gulf War, aside from the massive amount of taxpayer money dropped over Iraq for several weeks).
If the military is having problem meeting its recruiting goals, there is a much simpler solution than compulsory service. Listen to Jefferson and his contemporaries and drastically shrink the size of the military and re-focus the military’s mission exclusively to protecting the borders of the United States from hostile military attack. The United States should also end all foreign aid to the various combatant parties around the world.
The 20th century proved pretty clearly that U.S. military force is definitely not a solution. For the 21st century, the United States could at least choose to not be part of the problem.
Sources:
In non-draft era, citizens becoming military illiterate. USA Today, March 15, 2001.