Monday, May 26, 2008
What is an army? Whether you're aware of it or not, this is a fundamental debate in our society today. What is an army and what is it used for? The answer to this question, or rather each individual's answer to the question, will determine the answer to the age-old argument on whether you can support your troops while disapproving of their mission. What does the Pendragon think? Well, in one sense you certainly can support the troops while not supporting their task. The Whig-controlled Congress of the 1840s voted to fully fund the troops in Mexico while still expressing indignation over what they believed was an unjust war by a rival president. This strategy is the only way the jokers in today's Democratic Party can say they're pro-troops with a straight face, or at least that they are pro-troops before they are anti-troops, which amounts to the same thing apparently.
But we're really just arguing semantics here, which is why we never get beyond, "I'm more patriotic than you." What we need to address is the role an army is supposed to play in society. What are armies for? Well, they are for defense and sometimes, we all know, defense requires taking proactive steps. As FDR put it, you don't have to wait for the rattlesnake to bite. But then again, he believed that armies were for winning wars. Today's anti-war crowd does not. To them, the army is a glorified summer camp. It teaches survival skills, gives travel opportunities and helps young people pay for college. No wonder they sport bumper stickers that say, "Support the troops; end the war." To them, all this fighting just gets in the way of the real army business: educational advancement. The military has even tailored its advertisements to this crowd, emphasizing the career opportunities of enlisted men and women. So these protestors are very honest about what they think, but at the same time they are very wrong.
Armies have never been about education, or career advancement, or traveling the world, or even martial skills. Armies exist for a single purpose: to fight wars in defense of their homeland. Unfortunately, the very nature of armies means they are a weapon often abused: if defense means for the commander taking over other countries and colonizing them, then this is what the army will do. The perks offered were a way to offset that, to ensure that the majority of people entering our armed forces were focused on something other than war: serving their country and getting something in return. But that is not primarily what a soldier does. In the words of a noted commentator, soldiers kill people and break things. It's what they do. They're not meant to rebuild and establish infrastructure: that is a job for other people. When armies are put to this work, it goes badly. Why? Because they should not be doing it. Claiming the peace is not a job for the army; it is a job for civilians, preferably civilians of the country doing the claiming. Don't expect to hear this from the mainstream media or the leftist crowd in this country (or even the pseudo-Rightish crowd taking their cue from John McCain), but there is a common ground we could possibly agree on: if the military was allowed to do what it is meant to do, the troops would be home now, enjoying the well-earned gratitude of their countrymen and women this Memorial Day. God bless our troops!
But we're really just arguing semantics here, which is why we never get beyond, "I'm more patriotic than you." What we need to address is the role an army is supposed to play in society. What are armies for? Well, they are for defense and sometimes, we all know, defense requires taking proactive steps. As FDR put it, you don't have to wait for the rattlesnake to bite. But then again, he believed that armies were for winning wars. Today's anti-war crowd does not. To them, the army is a glorified summer camp. It teaches survival skills, gives travel opportunities and helps young people pay for college. No wonder they sport bumper stickers that say, "Support the troops; end the war." To them, all this fighting just gets in the way of the real army business: educational advancement. The military has even tailored its advertisements to this crowd, emphasizing the career opportunities of enlisted men and women. So these protestors are very honest about what they think, but at the same time they are very wrong.
Armies have never been about education, or career advancement, or traveling the world, or even martial skills. Armies exist for a single purpose: to fight wars in defense of their homeland. Unfortunately, the very nature of armies means they are a weapon often abused: if defense means for the commander taking over other countries and colonizing them, then this is what the army will do. The perks offered were a way to offset that, to ensure that the majority of people entering our armed forces were focused on something other than war: serving their country and getting something in return. But that is not primarily what a soldier does. In the words of a noted commentator, soldiers kill people and break things. It's what they do. They're not meant to rebuild and establish infrastructure: that is a job for other people. When armies are put to this work, it goes badly. Why? Because they should not be doing it. Claiming the peace is not a job for the army; it is a job for civilians, preferably civilians of the country doing the claiming. Don't expect to hear this from the mainstream media or the leftist crowd in this country (or even the pseudo-Rightish crowd taking their cue from John McCain), but there is a common ground we could possibly agree on: if the military was allowed to do what it is meant to do, the troops would be home now, enjoying the well-earned gratitude of their countrymen and women this Memorial Day. God bless our troops!
// posted by The Pendragon @ 11:17 PM 
