Do we have a "mercenary military"?

[sandnsea]

The fabrication of Senator Kerry slandering the military has unintentionally opened up a host of questions about military service, from recruitment to retirement to the basic nature of our all volunteer system. Sporadic news stories about lowered recruitment standards and raised age requirements become vividly clear when explained by “Nameless Soldier” who states the military has begun to “scrape the bottom of the barrel”. The American Legion takes the opportunity to remind us of the need for an improved GI Bill, (although they continue to miss the target of Senator Kerry’s remarks).

Most surprising is the view from retired Navy Captain John Byron, quoted in Harry Levins’ column today.

“Thirty years of the All-Volunteer Force have given the President a mercenary military unrepresentative of the nation it serves. These kids in uniform aren’t our kids, so those close to us can dodge the risks of military service as we blithely accept the war’s cost in young lives shattered. What happened to the citizen-soldier, to John Kennedy’s ‘pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship’? The (all-volunteer force) killed all this.”

”…Give the chief executive his own army, and by golly, he’ll use it. Well, we did, and he has, starting a war of choice in the Middle East and bogging us down for a dangerous future we could have avoided if he’d had to ask the American people to raise an army, the Constitution’s splendid phrase.”

I can’t help but be taken aback by the words “mercenary military”, as I know any Democrat who used that phrase would be subjected to a mass assault that would make Kerry’s recent battering look like a game of patty-cake. While I really don’t think we are quite at the point of having an actual mercenary military, I do think we turn a blind eye to the trauma this war has brought to so many young lives.

How is it we can allow our media to spend 3 days on a joke when we’ve lost 105 soldiers in Iraq this month? I know I have told my own son we will live in caves before he is taken into one of Bush’s wars. If Bush asked other mothers to “raise an army” of their sons and daughters for this specific war, would they “bear any burden”, or would they join me in those caves? Is dangling promises of bonuses and college funds and freedom the essence of ‘raising an army’ that our Constitution refers? Have we, as a nation, come anywhere near John Kennedy’s call to meet any hardship – when we can’t even pass fuel standards to prevent the need for middle east wars in the first place?

The election is right around the corner and the winds of change are apparently in the air. But voting for change, if that should be the outcome, isn’t nearly enough. Capt Byron presents some challenging questions which require a good long look in the mirror as some of our sons and daughters are “stuck in Iraq”, while others are completely immune from even having to consider making that final sacrifice. Democrats like to say “we’re all in this together”, but when our military does not rise from a cross-section of Americans, we open the door to the kind of military that will respond to a rogue leader over the will of the people. It certainly is something to consider as we attempt to unravel the steps that have brought us to the brink of our own destruction.

Links:
http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/

[donsu]

1. yes we do

nt

[Retired AF Dem]

18. If we do than it is due to the volunteer military

are you suggesting that we should return to the draft? I'm a retiree of the volunteer military and the last thing I would want is a draft. If nobody wants to volunteer and fight to save their country than it isn't worth saving.

[tabasco]

2. That's how republicans think of the volunteer military.

I don't think of it that way, but, in effect, yes we do.

Those who do not serve in the military hire other people to be soldiers, by paying taxes.

I support universal service, myself.

[AndyTiedye]

4. You Want to Give ** The Power to Draft You for Whatever Wars He Wants?

A draft would just be more cannon fodder for more of Bush**'s wars.

[sandnsea]

6. You didn't read the OP

Otherwise you'd see that the premise is that the opposite is true. If we had to "raise an army", as is called for in the Constitution, most people wouldn't send their sons and daughters to die in any of Bush's wars.

[tabasco]

19. No, I don't.

Why do you read things that are not there?

[Greeby]

3. It's getting to the point where

Shrubco are just foregoing the military and using actual mercenaries instead

[StellaBlue]

5. well, duh

Read this:

[genie_weenie]

7. Which is why america

doesn't really care about the people in the service. They are the hidden, the forgotten, the lessers to be ignored and shunned like pan-handlers. Unless you served or have a close friend or family member in the military.

[Greyhound]

10. Exactly. They are the off-spring of the surplus labor class and as such

are easily replaced.

Recruitment numbers down? Just suppress wages for the under-classes a little further and the induction centers will fill up in a couple of months. Just one of the many reasons none of the politiwhores will do anything to reduce the numbers of illegal immigrants coming in.

[Greyhound]

8. I'm not sure I understand your definition of a "mercenary military",

can you help?

We are in the sense that we are using (at an astronomically high price) several mercenary forces to carry out operations, and`as any experienced military leader will tell you, their performance is lackluster at best, and they cannot be counted on to press a difficult situation. OTOH, they can be counted on to carry out civilian slaughter and torture.

Is that what we're talking about?

[sandnsea]

9. It's a Navy Captain's phrase

Not mine.

But the point is that when a military doesn't rise from the actual will of the people, when we don't "raise an army" in the tradition the Constitution sets out - then what we really end up with is a "mercenary military". People who aren't there because they believe in the cause, but because of financial purposes. I don't think we're quite there yet, but we're dangerously close. Besides the use of the private security companys.

[NNN0LHI]

11. Private security companys are the second largest contingent of the...

...coalition of the willing after the US. About 50,000 mercs there last I read.

Don

[sandnsea]

13. Not the point at all

What are we turning our kids into is the point.

[NNN0LHI]

15. My kids would never be involved in this War Crime being committed

Draft or no draft.

I can't speak for others.

Don

[sandnsea]

17. Mine either, but again, not the point

Does that dismiss our responsibility in what the military is and whether abdicating the requirement of the Constitution, that there be no standing army and that they be raised only for a time of war, has actually allowed this President his war of choice in the first place.

[Greyhound]

12. I see, thank you. In that respect I have to agree that we have, indeed,

a mercenary military force.

[sandnsea]

14. Would the draft fix that? n/t

[Greyhound]

21. It would help to alleviate it, yes. If the new recruits were to come from

across the social spectrum, it would reduce the mercenary motivation. OTOH, it would give the politiwhores the ability to further abuse the troops by cutting the already too scarce benefits.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. It's certainly no longer a "citizen army".

It's representative of the underclass. It has been for a long time.

[sweetheart]

20. corporate mercinaries: "contractors"

you hire a contractor to do a job, however distasteful, and experts and professionals
who cannot stand the claustrophobia of traditional command, serve as ronin across
the corporate world, and then disappearing from the payroll, leaving bossman with
all the credit. And as such, what trace of discovery remains to call it a military,
or a corporation either, for that matter. They seem equally to have sold off their
core competence, that the command itself is already superceded by private contractors,
off balance sheet outsiders who run everything without supervision. And those who pay
the most, hire the most senior contractors, in the big 10/8/6/4/3/2/1 accounting firms to
lawyers and bankers that no political force stand in the way of their dominion.

And you can buy anything someone will sell, and in this world, since nothing is sacred,
there is no nationalism, only the consistent hardness of human greed, to take the last
drop of honey before the next guy gets it.