Posted on 02/10/2004 12:55:47 PM PST by dixiepatriot
Four Reasons We Should Abolish the Military
by Brad Edmonds
To address the common claim by neoconservatives that we owe our freedom to the men and women of the US military, I've written recently that we don't owe the military anything of the sort. While many soldiers, airmen, etc. died in combat believing they were defending our freedom, they were misguided in this belief. The "for our freedom" claim is false because our freedoms were won by the founders and written into law by them, hence a military created afterward could have had nothing to do with that; the freedoms then created have only eroded over time, and the military did not prevent this (and could not, not being part of the legislative process); the military has never been necessary to prevent our freedoms being taken by other countries, as historians available all over the web are now making clear; and the military over the last century has only executed the adventurous whims of individual congressmen and presidents, and in so doing has been the muscle behind needlessly making the rest of the world hate us.
Aside from looking at the past, there are compelling reasons we should abolish all government military forces now.
1. Any standing military force aside from the Navy is unconstitutional. The Constitution provides for funding of armies only two years at a time even the typical four-year commitment for ROTC cadets and new enlistees is thus illegal, as presumably it could not be known four years in advance that there would still be a standing Army or Air Force. Many things the federal government does today are unconstitutional, but this is no reason not to continue to consider the Constitution an authoritative document.
2. The private sector could provide heavy-weapons regional defense better than the government. I neglected to mention in recent articles, but included in my "abolishing government" series, that insurers would most likely take up this task. Insurers have the resources and incentive already, and unlike the government's military, if an insurer caused "collateral damage," the insurer would be held responsible, with no protection from lawsuits. Additionally, an insurer would be required to succeed in protecting its customers, which our military isn't; and do at least as good a job of that for the dollar as the next insurer. By contrast, in today's government military, drill instructors are required to be "sensitive" rather than effective; gays and women share close quarters with men, even in combat, to the detriment of combat effectiveness; materiel is often purchased from the lowest bidder (unless the bidder represents a token minority contractor the Pentagon needs, in which case a toilet seat can cost hundreds of dollars); and in general our government military is a playground for the social-engineering initiatives of leftists in Congress, and is not dedicated primarily to its mission. The private sector, were it allowed to provide regional defense without government interference, would be more efficient, more effective, safer, and would never have incentive to engage in social engineering, nor in murderous foreign-policy adventurism and the consequent creation of bitter enemies around the world.
3. Even if the military were both efficient and constitutional, a standing military is a threat to our liberty, as has been proven in US history. The ultimate test of liberty is secession. Even Lincoln himself agreed before he became president that secession is a natural right. What made a slave a slave was that he could not secede from his owner's governance and go into business for himself. What makes the states and all their citizens slaves to the union today is that we are not allowed to secede and govern ourselves. The US military, in the only action it ever took that directly affected American liberty, prevented it prevented the secession of several states by killing 300,000 of their citizens, then over several years enforcing draconian martial law over the survivors.
4. As the military is a government outfit, it can never be efficient. Indeed, as Ludwig von Mises showed, the US military, being a purely socialist government monopoly, can never know how much money it should have or spend, can never have a good idea how much its operations should cost. Right now, the US defense budget is over $1,400 for each man, woman, and child in the US. The private sector could provide a deterrent, enough to prevent any threat of foreign invasion, for probably 1/10 of that which, remember, would still amount to $40 billion. No government agency can ever know what its costs should be; it is a forcible monopoly, and never can face bankruptcy, competition, or loss of customers.
For the most part, the military as we have it is unconstitutional, as have been most of its actions since 1812 (in which war most of the work was done by privateers anyway). The private sector would do a far better job for far less money, as the individual Ross Perot proved in practical terms. The only impact the standing military has on our freedom is to take it away. And the military will eternally waste money because it cannot be governed by market forces, cannot ever know what its costs should be, cannot know what value it should return to stakeholders, and will never have an incentive to do a good job efficiently. In short, just as with any government service such as education or welfare services, it can never work well. This military must be abolished.
February 10, 2004
http://www.lewrockwell.com/edmonds/edmonds182.html
I can sympathize with libertarians' desire to severely reduce both the size and scope of gov't, but it's suicidal to mess around with (let alone eliminate) national defense.
Uh-huh.
Company A holds the nuclear deterrence contract.
Company B wins the recompete.
Company A files a protest...
...and conducts a "readiness exercise" to underline the point that giving the contract to Company B might not be a good idea.
China is not run by fanatical Muslims bent on mass murder. They are power hungry statists, like most world leaders.
And Edmonds' idea would aid and abet them in accomplishing this.
There is a reason that privately-owned military organizations stopped being significant on the battlefield.
The destruction of the American economy would be extremely detrimental to China itself. The only reasonable motivation for Chinese attack of the U.S. is to occupy and control it.
Which Edmonds' idea would make attractive.
Detonating nuclear weapons, leaving the United States a desolate radioactive wasteland, isn't compatible with that objective.
Enhanced radiation weapons do relatively little damage to physical assets--they merely kill the owners thereof.
They would be forced to use conventional means or they would be cutting off their nose to spite their face----and if they're going to do it, what is truly stopping them from doing it now?
The knowledge that it wouldn't work.
Only the threat of response in kind, but that doesn't stop the kind of lunatics you're apparently worried about.
Edmonds' idea would make such an effort eminently feasible, unless you really like the idea of privately-owned nuclear weapons.
True--but the heavy neutron emitters used in enhanced radiation weapons have very short half-lives. It's not the physical damage that is the main problem with nuclear weapons. This still leaves the land and infrastructure useless.
What, again, is stopping China from using nuclear weapons against us? "The knowledge that it wouldn't work." ??? Why wouldn't it work?
Because, dear sir, it would not accomplish the intended goal--the US would retaliate and destroy China.
In Edmonds' ideal world, there wouldn't BE a nuclear force to retaliate with. Just a stout army of yeoman peasants with AK-47s.
Launching the weapons at us would work just fine, they would fly over here and destroy us.
True enough. But a government bent on gaining something from its actions would not pursue such a policy.
That they would be attacked in retaliation is no matter.
Coupled with the next sentence you wrote, this statement is unintentionally funny.
What you have said so far leads me to believe that you don't think other governments behave in a rational, albeit self-serving, manner.
Actually, I do believe that most governments rationally act in their self-perceived self-interests.
If the greatest economy--and thus the only potential rival for global hegemony--could be subordinated to a Chinese Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere for the price of a few nuclear warheads and a modest army of occupation--as Edmonds' proposal would make possible--then it is entirely possible that a Chinese government that perceives itself as "rational" might decide to pursue a policy similar to what I outlined. The rest of the countries in the world would quickly figure out that with America out of the picture, their best bet is to swear fealty to Beijing.
Minimal risk of failure, and great reward for success.
You are convinced that our missiles and our military are the single leash holding back a world bent on the utter destruction of the United States.
Yup. There are, believe it or not, bad people out there in the world.
I don't buy it.
Tough noogies. Reality has a way of disagreeing with you.
Nope. America is going to attract enemies by its mere existence, unless we undergo something truly catastrophic (complete economic breakdown, a massively depopulating plague, et cetera).
A country as large and as prosperous as ours represents a great deal of potential power. Whether that power is actually made manifest or not, a nation seeking hegemony would need to deal with it. If that power is latent and not actual, a decisive move to prevent that power from manifesting itself could be a realistic strategy for the potential hegemon.
Thinking back on how productive those tactics were for the Japanese, Spanish, and Germans, one can't help but wonder if you are a bit prejudiced toward a standing army regardless of the outcome for those employing such tactics.
They worked quite nicely for the Japanese and the Germans, actually, until the *standing armies* of the US, UK, and USSR put paid to them.
Your scenario is rife with the assumption that only a unified command structure can survive and win against an invader, and that only the battlefield tactics of a standing army can win a war against a unified command structure.
Yup--when Side A has a coordinated idea of what the heck they're trying to do, and Side B doesn't, then Side A is likely to win.
I think there are myriad examples otherwise, not least America's one outright failure in interventionism in Vietnam.
Actually, it quite thoroughly proves the argument: the Vietnamese had a unified command structure, and the Americans didn't. This was particularly noticeable in the air war over the North, where the Air Force and the Navy didn't even try to talk to each other, let alone try to fight any sort of coordinated campaign--but it also affected ground operations in South Vietnam (Army/Marine Corps infighting, and even political infighting between the airmobile and leg units in the Army).
This Red Dawn scenario you pose is blindingly predicated on no nuclear forces being used, that the people in the U.S. see the commies coming en masse, and just wait for the commies to show up, get off the boat, and shoot at them in an orderly fashion so they can shoot back.
You stop an amphibious assault at the beachhead--or you get set to fight a long, bloody, and (probably) losing war, because you've handed the initiative to the enemy. If they've gotten to the beach, it's because they have maritime superiority. Maritime superiority means that the invader can take as much--or as little--of the war as he wishes. (Credit to Sir Francis Bacon for that line.) Leaving an invasion beachhead alone for any length of time allows the enemy to build his forces up to gain local superiority.
I don't think any invader facing nukes will be eager to ship thousands of troops across the ocean (unless the Chinese or some other country have developed some hella big planes I don't know about) if they know there's a nice atomic kiss hello waiting for them.
Well, privately-owned nukes are, IMNHO, a non-starter--as are private large-scale military forces.
Here's the problem: the privately-owned military would have to show a profit. Military readiness is an inherently unprofitable line of work--it requires capital assets that could generate a higher ROI elsewhere (i.e., making and doing things that are very obviously in demand).
As I pointed out, the age of the condottieri passed away for a reason--because warfighting ceased to be profitable.
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