Category Archives: Military

Called to serve?

Top military leaders this past week called for expanding the Selective Service System (the registration wing of the currently idle, but easily re-activated, draft) to include women. Their narrative is that it is simply a matter of fairness. Women currently serve in all branches of the military just as capably as men, so at face value there really is no practical reason to continue excluding them from registration. The fact that this is being brought up now may be entirely innocuous; it was bound to happen sooner or later. Or, it could be an omen that signals this country is setting down a path of expanding, not contracting, its role of interfering in the affairs of foreign nations. An expanding global empire after all requires an expanding police force to maintain order. After more than ten long years of endless warfare our currently all volunteer armed forces is thinning out as they are stretched like an ever expanding net around a globe that refuses to be tamed by American hegemony.

The principled position regarding the SSS and the draft for which it stands is that it is an abhorrent violation of the rights of the individual. It treats our sons and (soon) daughters as mere chattel to be deployed by the state for whatever capricious whim those in power decide will benefit them and their cronies – all the while cloaking such moves under the flag of “patriotism”. Some try to claim it is one’s “civic duty” to serve if called upon by their country but that is but a smokescreen; all civic duties are forms of slavery, differing only in degree but not kind from the more familiar chattel slavery (lack of consent is at the heart of the evilness of slavery). Attempts to legitimizing slavery by calling it something noble is a ploy worthy of the Devil but not honest men. We may recoil in horror at stories of armed guerrillas in some far off country kidnapping young men and boys in order to dragoon them into service for their cause – but, in substance, it is no different than a draft into the armed forces of a modern state. A young person, against their will, is forced to take up arms and murder other human beings (or assist in that murder), and if they do not then they are put to death or imprisoned for decades by their own supposed “countrymen.”

Currently the draft is “inactive”, however the law is still on the books and it can be re-activated at a moment’s notice. For those without children between the ages of 18-26 this may not register on your political radar, but believe me, for those of us with children in this age group (like myself) it is cold comfort that it is inactive when we see that our next President will likely be one of the warmongers Trump, Cruz, or Clinton.

Some have argued it is actually beneficial to have an active draft in place, as it makes politicians more cautious about sending the sons (or daughters) of their constituents off to die. However I think Vietnam put the lie to that argument. President Johnson was all to happy to send 58,000 young men to their death in an utterly pointless conflict that had zero bearing on US security. Now consider that conflicts in Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq also have had zero relevance to US security and we see that politicians will never tire of wasting American lives and treasure in fruitless endeavors. All the more reason to completely end the draft and the SSS once and for all. Women should not welcome this kind of equality.

If the US mainland were actually threatened or attacked the problem would not be getting recruits, it would be organizing the overwhelming number trying to join the fight. By and large most feel the instinct to defend what is theirs; after 9/11 recruitment levels sored. Declining numbers in the volunteer armed forces is not an indication of declining patriotism. Rather it is voting by deed, and this vote loudly proclaims the American population does not view with much seriousness the shrill warnings from the ruling class that danger threatens us on every front. Particularly when those fronts are 8,000 miles away.

Restore Our Freedom

This Memorial Day weekend we are once again drowning in a sea of reminders of what this holiday is truly about; honoring those servicemen and women who have sacrificed their lives in pursuit of protecting our “freedom”. Memorial Day has become the secular state’s equivalent of Easter in the de facto state religion: the Church of the State. In this new religion we worship icons (the flag), we beatify the saints (former presidents) but above all we worship those in the military who involuntarily (the draft) or voluntarily sacrificed their lives upon the altar of the state. They, like Jesus through his death, gave us a gift – in this case it is the gift of “freedom” rather than salvation. Unfortunately the myth of that gift is a lie. This lie allows the political class to maintain their hold on power by simultaneously convincing the noble to serve and the gullible to vote.

Now don’t get me wrong, those who have given their lives are indeed worthy of remembrance and respect. It is the rare individual who will sacrifice not for just his own kin, but for strangers he has never met. Such men and women are true heroes. What I am addressing is the monstrous lie our own government deploys every time they send these brave souls into harms way. To those in government, the citizenry is but mere fodder, to be disposed of with as much regard as one has for Kleenex when blowing one’s nose. Ever since the draft ended (and we stopped forcing young men to kill others at gunpoint) a false narrative has been spun in order to convince those of noble hearts that they are participating in something grand, something larger than themselves, that they are securing “freedom” for their fellow man.

Although superficially plausible (the military protects our freedom) ask yourself, when is the last time this country engaged militarily with anybody that was actually threatening to encroach upon our “freedom” as it were? Was North Vietnam preparing to invade Florida? Was Saddam Hussein ready to roll into Delaware? Yes, I see you there in the back of the class with your hand up going “ooh, ooh, ooh” just busting to remind us all of Hitler or Pearl Harbor. Surely those are example wherein our military protected our “freedom”. Pearl Harbor falls into the same category as 9/11; situations where the passive-aggressive interference of the US (e.g. economic sanctions against Japan, US troops in the middle east) were the direct and proximate cause of these supposed “first strikes” that were in fact counterattacks. That is not “blaming America” to recognize this fact – but it is indeed blaming our politicians who provoked these events. Their recklessness resulted in events that caused us to sacrifice so many needlessly. But seriously, does anyone think Germany or Japan could have invaded and taken over the entire continental United States? Please.

Every military situation this country has been involved in owes its genesis to some initial act by our own government. Even the rise of Hitler is directly traceable to US involvement in World War I (thank you Woodrow Wilson!) insofar as our strong hand during armistice negotiations table made the onerous treaty of Versailles possible. This lopsided treaty punished Germany so harshly it set the stage for Hitler’s rise; absent that treaty Hitler would have remained a bitter nobody.

If we truly wish to honor those troops that have given their lives, we too must fight. We must fight to elect those that promise to pull our military back to our shores and end our ceaseless meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. The biggest threat to our freedom is not from some foreign invader but rather from our own government. We are fast on our way to becoming a 100% permission based society. Consider what freedoms we have already lost and then consider the irony of thanking veterans for protecting these dwindling “freedom”: we must ask for permission from government to get a job, take a drug, start a business, pay an employee, sell alcohol, cut hair, sell any product, teach our children, by a gun, carry a gun, buy health insurance, board a plane, leave the country, enter the country, get married, or leave belongings to loved ones when we die. Likewise no permission is needed from us if the state wishes to enter our homes, cars or persons, guns drawn, looking for “something”. “Papers please!” cannot be too far behind.

So I say to the troops, if you really want to protect my freedom, don’t do it rolling around in a Humvee in some dessert somewhere. Do it by getting yourself elected and being part of the turning of the tide on government trespasses against our freedoms.

Middle Eastern Chess – Check!

So let me see if I have this straight. Even though there was zero evidence that Iraq was involved in the attacks of September 11, 2001 or that Al-Qaida had any operational presence in Iraq, the US invaded Iraq anyway. This resulted in nearly half a million dead Iraqi’s, close to a million Iraqi orphans and a death toll of US military personnel that more than doubled the carnage of September 11. The invasion was the light that brought on the moth-like focus of Al-Qaida to that region. Not content with that mess, the US unilaterally decided to depose Gadhafi, thereby creating a power vacuum in Libya that allowed Al-Qaida influenced forces to move in. The US then fomented instability in Syria by backing Al-Qaida linked rebels there in the hope that they might overthrow Assad. Now with the entire region destabilized, an Al-Qaida splinter group (ISIS – Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) managed to seize Mosul (Iraq’s second largest city) last week using money and equipment the US funneled to its destabilizing pawns in Libya and Syria. With the capture of Mosul they have further enriched their US equipment arsenal (left behind by the fleeing Iraqi army). This situation is so upside down that the US is actually receiving invitations from the Iranians for joint operations to battle ISIS in Iraq. Brilliant. How did we get here? For years the US supported a number of Middle Eastern dictators as long as they supported a Petrodollar based economy that ensured the free flow of cheap oil to the US. But when our pet dictators stopped behaving, the US tried to displace them with more malleable US-friendly social democracies. Unfortunately the exact opposite developed: US-hostile Islamic theocracies. They have a word for that: blowback.

Then again, US opposition to this shift in power (or the one presently underway in the Ukraine) is completely hypocritical. States may differ in ideology, but they all behave exactly the same. The current power shift merely exposes to public scrutiny the operations of the state normally hidden behind a wall of threats: violence by a select few who proclaim to speak for a majority in order that they may impose their will upon a wider population circumscribed by an arbitrary geopolitical boundary.

In fact nothing is really changing in any of these regions. The flags, slogans and draperies of the capital building may change, but the core violation of the right of the individual to live their life as they, and not others, see fit remains. So even though we may personally object to the precepts of Sharia law, are we objecting to the law itself, or are we objecting to its apparent imposition on the people? Would such objections evaporate if 51% of the people there desired Sharia law? Does majority opinion legitimize such laws? Before you answer that, consider this: ISIS is slowly fostering such communal consent via the oldest political trick in the book – bribery. ISIS is taking a page from the placate-the-people-playbook of modern social democracies. In both Syria and Iraq they have organized “dawa”, i.e. social welfare programs for the local populace (food, fuel, medicine) . And just as honeybees are calmed with smoke, so too are people calmed by the ephemeral gifts of those in power. ISIS is run not by warriors, but politicians with guns. Every politician knows that if you give the people something, they will give you their consent (vote) in return – in this case the price is not literal votes but implied consent to Sharia law. So, if you are for “freedom” and “democracy” and assuming you aren’t a total hypocrite then you should be ok with this extension of majoritarian communal consent. After all, democracy is nothing if not the concept that when some people freely make a choice, it is ok to impose that choice on everyone. But, if you realize democracy is the wool the state pulls over your eyes to fool you into believing you have control, then you will also recognize that majority opinion is as legitimate in determining how we should live our lives as a coin toss.

The Debt of Memorial Day

War is ugly. War is dirty. War is perhaps the single most horrifying event one could participate in. And yet despite all of that, there are those who have been compelled, for a variety of reasons (duty, honor, peer pressure, guilt, pragmatism, or in the case of the draft, direct threat) to suppress all natural human instinct and jump headfirst into that icy blackness of omnipresent death that is war. Those that survived we honor as veterans, those less fortunate we honor on Memorial Day. And how should we most appropriately honor the fallen? With parades? With solemn speeches? That may indeed seem the most respectful, but for the vast majority of Americans that is followed more in the breach than in the observance. In fact, most Americans honor those fallen in war in the most appropriate manner possible: living and loving. Memorial Day is spent with family, loved ones and friends. It is a brief respite to take the time we often don’t have to do the things that should matter most. This is how we honor them, by living our lives to the fullest, by doing that which if they were here they would also be doing. I can’t imagine they would want anything less.

However, their sacrifice has put us in their debt. This debt is an obligation not to them, but rather to those presently in the armed services. We have an obligation to recognize the pattern of behavior of the political class who is forever embroiling us in futile and senseless wars that serve no defensive interests of the United States (World War I, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I and II and countless skirmishes (Grenada, really?) Once their saber rattling is recognized, it must be silenced, as it was last fall when those in power were hell bent on sending US troops to Syria, and with one united voice the people told them NO! No more war! No more shall our loved ones be used as mere pawns as the US attempts to widen its scope of global hegemony. No more shall children grow up without a father or mother, sacrificed as they were upon the altar, not of defense, but that of blind patriotic fervor. No more shall innocent men, women and children be slaughtered by US weaponry in an attempt to take out a token “bad guy” in a sea of innocence.

Most who have chosen to serve this country militarily do so because they have an honest desire to DEFEND this country from external attack. But consider this: a truly unprovoked attack has never occurred in US history (save for the War of Independence). If this country prosecuted purely defensive wars, the US military would be more like the Maytag repairman than Rambo. And while the aphorism “the best defense is a good offense” may be apt in sports, it is a hideous affront to morality when employed militarily. But it is this prevention mindset that has caused far more warfare than it could have ever foiled. US meddling in the affairs of others has created numerous enemies where none existed before. That is the paradox of preemptive war; you cause the very thing you were trying to avoid.

So this Memorial Day let us all pledge that we will honor the dead by taking up the mantle of responsibility they have left for us. We shall charge forth boldly against those who would seek to act antagonistically toward other countries in the hope of provoking a response that will justify a call to arms. We the people can prevent war, by obstructing those who would foment war from gaining power. And if we can do that, then perhaps one day there shall be no need for a Memorial Day.