Here’s a United States Marine, Roger McGrath, writing in Chronicles magazine (best American monthly by far) about war:
And who is to do it? Certainly not the neoconservatives. They use such terms as moral clarity and the need to project our power — but it is to be done with someone else’s body. A conversation I had with a budding neocon reveals their version of moral clarity. Who was included when he said ‘we’. He looked at me as if I were a bit dense and said, ‘We, the United States.’ ‘Does that mean you?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘the guys in the army.’
McGrath goes on to ask the neocon whether our boys should be put in harm’s way for interests that have nothing to do with the defence of the United States. ‘Are you willing to do what you call the right thing with your own body?’ asks the Marine. ‘Those guys are volunteers — they chose to do it. I’m just finishing my degree and have a good job lined up.’
Need I say more? The neocon is not a soldier and does not plan to become one. Soldiering is for others. In a republic, it is the job of citizens. In an empire, it is imperial forces who do the fighting. Another Marine, Major-General Smedley Butler, twice decorated with the Medal of Honour, making him one of only two Marines in history to win the greatest battlefield decoration twice, had this to say about war: ‘War is just a racket...I believe in adequate defence of our coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes here, then we’ll fight. I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. I would only fight for the defence of our homes and for the Bill of Rights.’
....(I can still remember the stink of dead human flesh) — and the Yom Kippur war, I decided war was not such a good thing after all. All Quiet on the Western Front attests to a common humanity transcending nation, race, and religion. Erich Maria Remarque became a pacifist because he had fought the war in the trenches. The neocons never have and do not plan to, and do not deserve the right to send anyone to die except themselves.
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Those of us who oppose nation building, policing and peace keeping, intervention and meddling see the world differently than many of those who support these things. That is why we think the military should be used only for strictly defined self defense. How many in our armed forces volunteered to spread our values around the world? I'll wager they signed up to defend The United States. As Taki said the "big thinkers" don't have plans for themselves beyond lucrative jobs - usually in government, think tanks or as pundits - and stock holdings in defense contractors. We conservatives don't think highly of communists and socialists but at least people like the Abraham Lincoln Brigade put their own lives on the line to fight for a cause in which they believed. How many of the cheerleaders for global hegemony disrupted their lives, their careers, their families lives to enlist in the army for the duration it will take to create the Pax Americana they envision?