KILROY WAS HERE! Nowadays it’s a shock for an ordinary civilian to meet someone who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan because such a tiny (one) percent of Americans voluntarily sign up for the military. Today we have a professional army, backed by mercenaries and “contractors”, vs the traditional “citizen soldier” of the Great War, WW2 and Vietnam which randomly drafted boys to fight. I’m biased in favor of universal conscription of boys and girls where they have the right to choose either the military or civilian ”community service”, such as working disaster areas like the recent Colorado floods. In the 1930s President Roosevelt founded the immensely popular Civilian Conservation Corps as a work relief program for young, jobless unmarried men. This federal agency, charged with flood control, forestation and similar projects, was hugely successful. You enrolled and were paid $30 a month of which $25 went to your family. It kept guys off the street and all that exercise and fresh air made them a lot healthier. I was a member of a wartime U.S. army which, in its own way, was a work relief program. If you didn’t get shot or dismembered in combat, it was a good deal, a life saver for some of us. For starters, you’d never been so well fed, clothed and paid – and if you survived the war, a free education under the GI Bill, miraculously enacted with the help of Congressional southern racists, was yours for the asking. What’s not to like? In going around the country promoting his latest book, former army colonel Andrew Bacevich, a Vietnam vet who lost a son in Iraq, is touting a return to a citizen soldiery. That is, universal conscription of 18 year old men and women who can choose either the military or CCC-type work including as conscientious objectors. Bacevich points out that after World War II, the last time America had a true citizen army, Chief of Staff George Marshall, no war monger, commissioned a study known as the “Military Establishment” document. Marshall pushed for a citizen soldier army as a guarantee against the misuse of power by the military (and political) elites. I can see the problems. The military, which saved my life, is by definition undemocratic. There is a potential for abuse by imperial politicians. Etc. But our present system is unworkable. We have a well-trained “warrior” samurai caste that can’t win wars. These young men and women are sent into hell by affluent politicians who themselves rarely serve and whose children are never at risk. Let’s call it the “Dick Cheney syndrome”; Cheney, a mad war dog, got five deferments in the Vietnam war. George W. Bush? Let’s not go there. A personal note: due to a character flaw I liked the army even the saluting and
Posted on: Thu, 03 Oct 2013 23:12:48 +0000
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