A Libertarian Problem with the Military Pt. 3

The sports analogy was yours and I was simply responding to it. Football is a game in which people try to score more points than the other side. War is not a game, it is an activity in which one side tries to kill the people on the other side. When the soldier signs his contract, as a practical matter he agrees to obey the orders of the president to wage war against another country, no matter if he believes the war is immoral or violates the principles of aggressive war set forth at Nuremberg. At Nuremberg, the judges punished German officials for attacking another country that had not attacked Germany. They held that doing so constitutes a war crime even if no German court ever found the war of aggression to be illegal. The president ordered his army to invade Iraq despite the fact that neither the Iraqi people nor their govt attacked the United States. That makes the U.S. govt the aggressor power in the conflict. It is not a football game. If you add the deaths of the Iraqi children from the sanctions, which were enforced by U.S. troops, to the number of people killed during the war of aggression and subsequent occupation, the number gets close to 1 million. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, no sports event in history has produced than many deaths. Only one soldier, as far as I know, refused orders to deploy to Iraq on basis that the attack and occupation are illegal and immoral--Lt. Watada, and the military is doing its best to punish him, in order to show the other soldiers--obey the orders of your commander in chief or else, no matter what your conscience says. If a football coach inserted a clause in the contract that said, "By signing this contract, you surrender your conscience and you kill whatever player on the other side that I tell you to kill," there is no doubt in mind that very few football players, if any, would sign the contract. Moreover, if a player does feel that a football coach isn't doing things properly, he can quit without going to jail. The worst thing he might face is a breach of contract action. That's not the case with the military. Soldiers must obey orders to attack any country on earth, no matter how weak or how defenseless those countries are. If they are ordered to drop bombs that will inevitably kill defenseless women and children, they are expected to obey. If they refuse, they are punished. Govt prosecutors are going after Watada viciously, seeking to put him into jail for 7 years for refusing to deploy to Iraq and killing people in a war of aggression. That's the purpose of boot camp, or basic training if you will. It is to destroy all sense of individuality and instill conformity and obedience. In that way, when the president says, "Attack Iraq" or Bolivia or Panama or Cuba, or Iran, the soldier will not question the morality of attacking people in a war of aggression--that is, people who have never attacked the U.S--but instead loyally obey the orders to attack of their commander in chief. One of the primary reasons that the Founding Fathers feared standing armies is because they would also follow orders to kill their own citizenry. That's why soldiers obeyed orders to do what they did to Jose Padilla. They will do the same to any other Americans, if their commander in chief orders them to. Soldiers in a standing army are loyal to their commander in chief, Mr. Shirah, and they will loyally obey his orders to go after "the terrorists" or the "bad guys" regardless of whom their commander in chief labels "the terrorists" or the "bad guys." The key to human growth and development is a society in which people have the widest ambit of choice with respect to peaceful activity. In a political context, that would entail the repeal of such socialist and interventionist programs as Social Security, Medicare, public schooling, and drug laws. When people are free to make their own choices--including bad ones and irresponsible ones--that is when conscience, consciousness, responsibility, and charity are nurtured. When govt punishes people for the peaceful choices they make or forces people to make choices, those traits atrophy. While the military convinces soldiers that they are acting properly in surrendering their conscience with respect to the people that are killed in a war of aggression, the state cannot relieve the soldier of the moral or religious consequences of his choice. That is beyond the power of the state. If you are not familiar with the essay "Conscience on the Battlefield," I recommend it to you. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/read1.html Both the warfare and welfare state are leading our country to catastrophe, both morally and financially. I highly recommend three books to you--all three written by Chalmers Johnson--Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis. Best regards and thanks again for sharing your perspectives with me. Jacob Hornberger

At this point I feel we will have to agree to disagree. I think you can only relate my intent in comparing football in the military in the way you are is because of the choice you have made on how to view the members of the military and the military itself. In a free society, as you state, people must be free to make choices, even incorrect ones. From my perspective the analogy holds because it is simply comparing the utility of tradition and ‘nonsensical’ drills in forming a cohesive team and establishing a common framework for future training and skills development. You want to debate the legitimacy of the Iraq war which was not the focus of your original article or the focus of my replies. The issue I felt we were debating was whether military boot camp training is as you describe and effectively whether military people are as you describe. The first point I think has been proven to be untrue. The people are not drafted, the services have different modes and methods in their training and there is nothing illegal or immoral about a contract to perform the functions in basic training. As you have frequently mentioned the Founding Fathers, I must make a direct note of their establishment of a standing Navy. The Navy of course has its own boot camp and the Marines being a part of the Navy have theirs also. I wonder if you feel that the contracts for the Navy are also invalid. They certainly cannot be illegal as they are in fulfillment of a Constitutionally established agency. Your extrapolation to what may occur in the future is irrelevant to this point. I feel that I have provided enough points to support the latter contention, to include a news article. This will simply butt up against your opinion on military members. It also seems that you focus on legality when that suits your interests and morality when the legality of the issue does not support your desires. The 600,000 children that you state have died did so in part in fulfilling what the world would consider legal sanctions imposed by the United Nations. At this point I imagine your argument will move the morality of the situation. Regarding Nuremburg, it is not my understanding that it is a treaty. It is simply a legal precedent. As it is not a treaty, then the members of the United States Military are obliged legally to follow the directives of the legal entity of the Constitution and the statutes established which govern the military’s relationship with the people their agent the government. Nuremburg itself cannot condemn a war as illegal; it can simply provide a framework and argument for an agency with jurisdiction to declare it illegal. This leads us once again to the area where legality and morality are not synonymous. You wish military people in the name of your definition of morality to commit an act of illegality. A stand which I do not feel you would take as I assume you pay income taxes (the power to tax is the power to destroy) and do not water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. If Nuremburg is in fact a treaty then I will acknowledge the error of my previous statement in this paragraph and hold lawyers and Congress responsible for not prosecuting this issue before I will hold 18-21 year old adults culpable who went through the education system you describe. Further, I will disagree that taking a stand on morality should be without personal sacrifice. In the case of Lt. Watada, as I stated in my prior comments, who we will assume acted out of conscience has been allowed the action and now will pay the price for acting on his/her view of morality. As a libertarian I doubt you would think that a pharmacy should not be able to fire a pharmacist who will not prescribe the morning-after pill to a woman. Even though this pharmacist believes he is acting morally and is not taking part in an act of killing as he would define it; I would think you would believe the pharmacy has its own rights to remove with prejudice its employee. Acting morally does not free one from the consequences of action. Which is the equivalent of your belief that acting legally does not free one from the consequences of action. If your objection now becomes the level of sanction the military may visit versus the pharmacy then I feel that is another issue altogether. The military member swore a different oath and signed a different contract. I am not certain how to address your feelings regarding the military’s loyalty to a commander in chief. Your view seems to reflect a belief that the military is the equivalent of the legions of Caesar. The military is not personally loyal to a particular commander in chief. As an institution, it is loyal to a process established by civilian government which in philosophy if not practice is given its authority by the people of the nation. From this it is incorrect to label the military ‘the president’s army’… it is the United States Army. I feel you evaded most of the remainder of my points. That is certainly your prerogative. I am sure you are busy. Thank you for the discussion. I always enjoy debating issues such as these. I wish you and your organization the best and hope that it experiences success in drawing down the size and scope of government.