Of course, godly
people wear the uniform of our armed forces.
I was much impressed by Colonel James Wallis, my professor of Middle
Eastern History at Wheaton and a Rhodes Scholar, and also by Brigadier General John WendelI, Wheaton College ’56, a headquarters staff chaplain of the
Illinois Air National Guard who married us.
If good men don’t serve, then who will? is
surely a valid principle. I do perceive
that military life has tendencies to coarsen behavior and replace free thought
with thoughtlessness beyond an obligation to duty as others define it. In the thirteen weeks of boot camp, the
military's goal is to turn you into a tiger by first making you a sheep-- an
automaton who will jump when others order you to do so and kill when others
order you to do so. But I do believe
that a nation should fight to protect itself or to protect its interests. I don’t believe our nation should initiate
war and I’m suspicious of idealistic or moralistic appeals as a motivation for war. “Idealism,” said Aldous
Huxley “is the noble toga that politicians drape over their will to
power.” Generalities, such as
“freedom”, “democracy”, or “justice”, may not have much meaning in countries
that have not gone through the Age of Enlightenment, the Reformation, and the
Industrial Revolution. If the cost in
treasure and blood exceeds whatever can be gained by war, then clearly that war
is not in America’s interest. “We’ve leaned two
somewhat contradictory things,” Secretary of State Henry Kissinger notes. “One, that our
resources are limited in relation to the total number of problems that exist in
the world. We have to be thoughtful in
choosing our involvements. Secondly, if
we get involved we must prevail. There
are no awards for losers.” There is
also that law of life, the law of unintended consequences, that by trying to do
good we bring bad, that crusades and military adventurism can bring not hope
but despair, not life but death, not justice but injustice.
When the war drums are beating
and the dogs of war are straining at the leashes, it is then that we must be
especially skeptical of our leaders, to question them, and to put the burden of
proof squarely in their corner. History
shows time and again that people with power will lie if they can get away with
it, with consequences that can be deadly.
Uncle Reyn wrote that the death of President
Richard Nixon “revived my hatred of his continuing the war in Viet Nam by at least seven months with the additional loss of at least 15,000
Americans. He prolonged the war on the
basis that we wanted to save face. But
at what a useless price.” Reyn enclosed a letter he wrote that was published in 1968
attacking a Viet Nam war apologist. He noted
“Americans practiced genocide on the Indians; maintained chattel slavery longer
than all nations in the world except Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil; seized territory
from Mexico and Spain; grabbed Panama; dropped the atom bomb. It would seem that our problems relate to an
absence of ethics, not an oversupply of it.”
Despite my father’s
refusal to serve with the military, he in later years supported the war
policies of the presidents, from Lyndon Johnson through George W. Bush, and
that puzzled me. I think Dad saw the
actions of presidents in the context of Biblical prophecy. “I notice that President Johnson promises
more cost, more loss, and more agony as regards Viet Nam,” Dad wrote in 1967. “There
certainly is no easy solution. I believe
that in the context of the times that it is important that the Lord’s people
have a scriptural perspective of time.
Time moves forward in the direction of the fulfillment of all things
written in the Word of God.” Perhaps he
also saw this as submitting to the authorities that God ordains, as mandated in
Romans 13. My reading of that chapter is
that in the United States, the governing authority is the constitution, which derives from the
consent of the governed, not our political leadership. Those in the executive branch serve and
submit to us, not we to them. We are
“the higher power” as stated in our constitution: “We the people . . . do ordain and establish
this constitution.” So, when there is
a breach in public trust, we are obliged to press for changes in our government
through lawful channels of redress.
My brothers and I avoided the
draft, the government’s involuntary conscription into the military. From 1948 until
1973, during both peacetime and periods of conflict, men were drafted to fill
vacancies in the armed forces which could not be filled through voluntary
means. The Viet Nam war was winding down, and the draft came to an end in 1973, the year I
finished high school. The registration requirement was suspended in April 1975.
It was resumed again in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter in response to the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and continues to this day.
I briefly considered joining the Air Force when Congress began debating
reinstating the draft during this time.
The University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman wrote in 1968 that “men who agree
on little else about Vietnam would agree on the desirability of not using conscripts to
fight the war. The key question is,
therefore, whether it is feasible to man the Vietnam War with volunteers. I believe the answer is, Yes. Will it be easy to do so? The answer is clearly, No. But that is hardly decisive. The aim of national policy should not be to
make life easy for government officials, whether civilian or military.” As the military struggles to support the
imperial ambitions of the United States, government officials will find ways to make their life
easier by reinstating the draft. A
national emergency—real or imagined-- will spark the drive for the draft. The United States has used its armed forces abroad more than 150 times since
1789. Military planners are concerned
that if there was a major war, registering, drafting, and classifying the first
draftee to basic training would take at least three months. At present, Congress is in no mood to vote
for a peacetime draft, but that could change rapidly given the strength of the
push and the lack of opposition. What
opposition there is arises from the gross inequities that came out of the
Selective Service during the Viet Nam war, in which affluent chicken hawks put in their time
stateside in the National Guard while slum youths bled in the rice paddies of Da Nang.
I’m opposed to a peacetime draft as it
I view it as a form of involuntary servitude. The draft is an inefficient and coercive
allocation of human resources. In 1961,
President John Kennedy announced the call up of a quarter million men. “I am well aware that many American
families will bear the burden of these requests; studies or careers will be
interrupted; husbands and sons will be called away.” As my boys would say: no duh. Conscription, especially during peacetime,
causes social tensions as it prays on the poorest and weakest in our society. It isn’t necessary. Since the collapse of a bipolar world
consisting of the parliamentary democracies against world communism, I don’t
think there is as much need for large standing armies. What is needed are
small and highly trained special force units.
By definition, these soldiers would have to be professionals—people that
are prepared to commit far more than two years of service.
And it is dangerous to our
national interests. Large armies don’t
deter war. They incite war by giving our
leaders options that they would not have to commit troops into combat. A powerful nation is an arrogant nation and
an arrogant and self-righteous nation is a nation that blunders into the folly
of war. And a nation that is prepared to
act preemptively should consider this stark fact: no nation that began a war in
the 20th century emerged a winner.
War is, to invoke a theme in this book, an epistemological act, in which
one or both sides of the conflict begin the war with misperceptions but slowly
and in agony learn reality.
I think if the president was to
declare war on Canada, twenty percent of America would shout “hurray!” If lizard
men from Alpha Centuri were to land in Chicago, twenty percent of Americans would shout “hurray!” And another twenty percent of us go on with
our lives neither thinking much nor caring much on issues beyond that which
feed the belly or feed the purse. How
do the rest of us—the vital center of the remaining forty percent-- respond to
talk of our participation as citizens in times of war or peace? I think Americans like to talk macho and are
patriotic to fault, but our tendency to saber rattle is constrained by a strong
residual isolationism, a distrust of foreign engagements, and a suspicion of
big ideas and messianic crusades. While
we will give the president the benefit of the doubt, that benefit will wear
thin in the absence of a defined end game or a clear victory. Americans hate stalemates, armistices, and
quagmires. Americans are willing to show
loyalty up so long as there is loyalty down.
If they perceive any kind of dishonesty from their commander in chief,
there will be an erosion of support for war, and the president cannot conduct
war without home front support. It has
been said that the first casualty of war is truth, and Winston Churchill
replied that “truth in war is so precious, it must be
protected by a bodyguard of lies.”
Americans understand that there are national secrets, such as troop
movements and weapon schematics. But
they also demand that on broad questions of goals and results that the
president levels with us with utmost frankness, as Lyndon Johnson and Richard
Nixon did not. It is ironic that West Point will aggressively silence or expel a student for lying or cheating but
creates officers so adept at lying and cheating to the point that I have come
to expect no truth from the military in any substantive sense. There may be specific men and women who are
honorable and honest, but they work in an institution that is compulsively and
needlessly corrupt and dishonest, especially in how they recruit and how the
communicate failure. Dishonesty is but
one more weapon in the arsenal, and the military knows how to use that weapon
well. The state is clever and skillful
in its dishonesty. It is for this reason
I prefer to approach questions of public policy from a point of distrust rather
than trust in our leaders and institutions.
It would only take one more major crisis
such as a North Korean drive across the 49th parallel to resurrect
the draft. I believe that the draft is
inevitable so long as American troops are bogged down in another long-term military
commitment, such as the Iraqi war of 2004.
If there is a draft, the question then becomes: what do you do? I would first encourage you to work within
the system, which provides for ample opportunities for avoiding avoid combat
service. Frankly, I like the law the way
it is. Right now, I could drive a truck
through the loopholes that exist. It’s
an example of the inequities within our society that if you know the loopholes,
you can avoid or mitigate the draft. The
rich could evade their draft by going to graduate school, mastering a
critical-skill, moving to a different part of the country, flailing the
physical test, and by hiring lawyers to fight for a more favorable
classification. You have a number of different possibilities in resisting the draft. If you are eligible for the draft, you can
register, register as an objector to war, not register (about a half million
men did not register during the Viet Nam War, and many were never identified),
resist in the tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience, or speak out against
the draft by starting or joining an anti-draft group. Groups that can help you explore your
options include the War Resisters League, the American Friends Service Committee,
and the Committee Against Registration and the Draft. As my father’s
experience shows, gaining conscientious objector status not the easy way out,
nor will it protect you from physical harm as in the case of being a field
combat medic. The draft board will try
to ensure that your beliefs are internally consistent and that you are not
acting selfishly, fearfully, or unpatriotically.
I declined a ROTC scholarship,
primary because of my father’s own CO status.
However, I don’t share his views as a CO. I think that war is inevitable—an inseparable
part of the human condition—and that sometimes the United States must fight for its values and its existence. Thomas Hobbes robustly settled the answer in the 17th century
as to whether the state should at times use force. “Covenants without swords,” he said,” are but
words.” So who will fight for America? I will-- on any American shore. My objection to most wars in which the United States has participated is that they have been unnecessary. Even World War II, the “good war”, perhaps
never would have happened if the United States had not sent troops to France in World War I.
Leo Tolstoy said that “as soon as men understand that their participation in violence is
incompatible with the Christianity they profess, as soon as they refuse to
serve as soldiers, tax collectors, judges, jury, and police agents, the
violence from which the world suffers will disappear.” We must be free to act and to bear the
responsibility for our choices. There is
no higher law than that of conscience, for conscience makes men of us all. In another time and
place, I’m quite certain that both I and my father would have been cannon
fodder. However, if the nation is in
peril there are surely significant actions I and you can take without having to
“join the army, see the world, meet interesting people, and kill them.”
