Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is calling for a renewal of conscription, but almost certainly with both a military and a civilian servitude option. I was very active in the late 1970s and early 1980s driving a stake through this bad idea’s rotten heart and I’ll do it again. (I traveled the country through 1979 and 1980 speaking on college campuses and organizing opposition groups; I testified before Congress [and really pissed off Senator Nunn]; I wrote articles for the papers; I organized and spoke at rallies; and I was a founder and national secretary of the Committee Against Registration and the Draft — CARD — which included the ACLU, the National Taxpayers Union, the American Friends Service Committee and other religious bodies, various libertarian groups, the usual assortment of leftists, and some conservatives.)
The idea of introducing conscription is profoundly repugnant. It is:
Immoral to conscript people into doing what you cannot induce them to do voluntarily;
Inefficient to treat human labor as a nonpriced resource that can simply be confiscated and then wasted at no cost to the decision-makers;
Contrary to the national security interests of the United States, since the All Volunteer Force (AVF) has shown itself to be far superior to the conscript army of the past and the addition of a “civilian” option would simply lead to the kind of flabby military that Germany now has, unable to develop professionally because it serves as a cheap source of coerced unskilled labor for old folks’ homes and hospitals;
Incompatible with limited government, since adding millions of young people as involuntary “employees” of the federal government would greatly expand its size and inevitably its powers.
This is an idea that has to be stomped. Now. Letters to lawmakers are very much in order.
If there is imperial overreach (and there certainly is), we should start to ask where we have troops that could be pulled back. How about Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, and Germany, for starters?
(By the way, here’s what Senator Hagel said last year.)
“a ‘civilian’ option would simply lead to the kind of flabby military that Germany now has” — While undesirable for the U.S., I would like to point out that as far as Germany is concerned, that is actually a *good* thing! Better flabby than sending her ‘Peace-keepers’ into Bohemia and Moravia again. If that means dealing with your cadres of lethargic “Sanker-fahrer”, so be it. Our neighbours thank her for it.
j.
Jens raises an interesting point, but not quite connected to the one that I was making. Germany has been free riding off of the defense expenditures of the U.S. for a very long time. That may be good for Germany, but it’s hardly good for the U.S. And I’m not so worried at present, considering the deeply ingrained pacifism in German consciousness, that the German government would invade its neighbors if they had a military that was not as inefficient, ill trained, and ill equipped as they have at present. Unfortunately, the transition to a small but professional and effective military is being hampered by the existence of conscription. Getting rid of Germany’s morally objectionable system of compulsory “service” would have the added benefit of allowing the military to be reformed and transformed into a smaller force better capable of defending Germany, not into a mass army capable of invading its neighbors.
i wasn’t sure if i even wanted to make as serious a point. but now that i look at it, i think it would be fair to say that the german military was for most of the cold war the bulwark of europe. the largest (most underrated) military in europe (not counting the SU but counting the US), having little in truly offensive capabilities (by design), but well equipped to keep the SU tank-brigades at bay long enough to let the U.S. mobilize and the french lob their missiles into germany at the red waves. given our history and the unique historical position were in, it was probably a well thought-out solution. the army now, is indeed rather useless ‘ unless there is a flood in germany. rapid-response troops are rare, in part because conscripts are (usually) not sent abroad. changing political realities (see afghanistan, the balkans) may necessitate that german soldiers strut across other lands again, but as a german, i’d rather we keep such engagements low key. i have no problem with any present engagements, but i would be worried if the political culture of restraint corrodes. this concern, despite assurances otherwise, shall arise in other countries as well ‘ especially if the people still live who heard the sound of germans marching through their towns. a good example is the outrage in paris over a german batallion marching as part of a NATO-unit through the streets of paris. silly?perhaps. understandable? absolutely.
this all calls for restraint in foreign policy and judicious politics. it says nothing for or against conscription. i am sure that we could somehow manage and legislate our professional military into abject uselessness, too. perhaps we don’t need the wehrpflicht for that. but conscription (as immoral as having to pay taxes, by the way ‘ what’s the huffing & puffing here?) has a good reason in germany ‘ beyond eliciting economically inefficient slave-labor from ‘wehrpflichtverweigerer’. the reason is that conscription assures that relatively diverse body of soldiers is flushed through the military every year. not all are poor, not all are conservative, not all are gun-happy, military admiring young men… (though they are more likely not to look into the other options) ‘ which was the case with the Reichswehr that so easily lent itself to utilization by the 3rd reich. this diversity, corny as it may sound, is an essential part of our defense force and our current attitude towards the military. changes in this will not go without being reflected in policy and other attitudes towards matters of war and peace, power and nationalism. the original intents of many these laws have (to me, at any rate), a churchillian character of wise, if unpopular long-term vision for the better of europe. the idea that we can just cast aside such carefully planned inefficiencies and alleged anachronisms reminds me of the policies of the british in the 1920’s. things may not be or seem as drastic ‘ but i can not divine the future… and when it comes to ‘my own’ germany, i’d rather be on the safe side, lest she find herself on the wrong side of history again.
Let me just address the issue of whether conscription and taxation are in fact equivalent: in Jens’s words, “conscription (as immoral as having to pay taxes, by the way ‘ what’s the huffing & puffing here?).” I find taxation to be morally problematic because it requires that you labor for others in order to labor for yourself. (See Robert Nozick’s arguments in Anarchy, State, and Utopia.) However, at least in the case of taxation one is given the choice of whether to labor and how. Under conscription, those choices are denied altogether. You do what someone else wants or your life is taken or you are put in a cage. That’s why the move in many societies from forced labor (whether feudal services or the corvee) to money taxes represented a great advance in liberty, because now one could choose how to earn money and then pay a portion of it to one’s rulers. It’s not complete freedom, but it’s freer than being subject to the lash. Conscription is much, much more more immoral than being taxed. (Of course, there may be some kinds of taxation that could be worse, such as a 100% tax of the sort that Stalin imposed on the Ukrainians, which led to millions dying of starvation. But that’s not what’s being compared here.)
As to whether conscription has made Germany less imperialistic, there’s simply no reason to think it has. Germans suffered conscription under National Socialism, and that didn’t stop them from being ordered off to invade their neighbors. I don’t see how a smaller, more professional, all volunteer military would be a threat to Germany’s neighbors. Conscription in Germany is an obstacle to such a smaller and more professional force. Let’s not create such problems in the U.S. After all, the U.S. has protected Germany for decades. If we lost our ability to protect ourselves, I’m confident that Germany wouldn’t play the role that the U.S. has for Germany.
I would like to e the first volunteer for the new draft resistance effort. Many of us who turned the establishment on their ear during the 60s are are still out here. Back then we had few resources – but that’s not the case now. Go ahead GW make my day – bring back the draft – we have the wisdom and resources now to have the whole country hating you in six months.
read all about it.
BREAKING THE GAZE – by David Betts
(Take a trip though the 60’s without leavin the farm)
http://www.growatree.com/page4.htm