WEBVTT NOTE 50. The Myth of the Voluntary Military 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 The Myth of the Voluntary Military 2 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:12.000 Ludwig von Mises summed up the essence of government in words that are particularly vivid in wartime. 3 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:18.000 Government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. 4 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:27.000 Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards and hangmen. 5 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:33.000 The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing 6 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:35.120 and imprisoning. 7 00:00:35.120 --> 00:00:40.420 Those who are asking for more government interference are asking, ultimately, for more compulsion 8 00:00:40.420 --> 00:00:43.320 and less freedom. 9 00:00:43.320 --> 00:00:50.240 What about those who are called on to enforce state edicts, whether just or unjust? 10 00:00:50.240 --> 00:00:55.080 Every society includes people who are willing to act as the coercive arm of the state, those 11 00:00:55.080 --> 00:00:59.360 Those who are willing to use violence and freely risk their lives as they administer 12 00:00:59.360 --> 00:01:01.400 the law. 13 00:01:01.400 --> 00:01:05.160 The state has no great trouble recruiting policemen and prison guards. 14 00:01:05.160 --> 00:01:09.440 Are there enough such people to amass a huge army of hundreds of thousands of people who 15 00:01:09.440 --> 00:01:16.440 are willing to risk their lives, carrying out destructive foreign wars of dubious merit? 16 00:01:16.440 --> 00:01:20.440 When you see the pictures of American troops fighting their way through sandstorms in a 17 00:01:20.440 --> 00:01:26.080 In a strange land with strange people seeking to overturn a government and transform a society 18 00:01:26.080 --> 00:01:31.840 that posed no credible threat to the US, being shot at by average Iraqis who are clearly 19 00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:38.160 motivated only by the desire to expel the invader, it's not hard to imagine that US 20 00:01:38.160 --> 00:01:44.240 troops are wondering how it all came to this. 21 00:01:44.240 --> 00:01:48.720 The British Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, claims that the coalition armed forces are 22 00:01:48.720 --> 00:01:53.720 are made up of men and women who made a free choice to serve their country, whereas Iraqi 23 00:01:53.720 --> 00:01:57.920 forces are motivated either by fear or by hatred. 24 00:01:57.920 --> 00:02:04.740 It's hard to say what motivates Iraqi forces, perhaps the desire to repel invasion, but 25 00:02:04.740 --> 00:02:09.380 what he says about coalition troops is simply not true. 26 00:02:09.380 --> 00:02:15.740 The men and women now fighting initially agreed to be in the employ of the military. 27 00:02:15.740 --> 00:02:19.540 The US is not yet conscripting people. 28 00:02:19.540 --> 00:02:25.060 And yet, how many of these would leave Iraq if they could? 29 00:02:25.060 --> 00:02:30.980 What if Donald Rumsfeld announced that anyone now fighting in Iraq is free to leave without 30 00:02:30.980 --> 00:02:32.820 penalty? 31 00:02:32.820 --> 00:02:38.940 What would become of the US armed forces now attempting to bring about unconditional surrender 32 00:02:38.940 --> 00:02:39.940 in Iraq? 33 00:02:39.940 --> 00:02:45.900 It's an interesting question as a pure mental experiment because it highlights the essentially 34 00:02:45.900 --> 00:02:51.020 forced nature of all modern military service. 35 00:02:51.020 --> 00:02:56.660 To leave once the war begins would amount to what the government calls desertion. 36 00:02:56.660 --> 00:03:02.460 This word sounds ominous, but in fact it merely describes what everyone in a civilized society 37 00:03:02.460 --> 00:03:07.460 takes for granted – the right to quit. 38 00:03:07.460 --> 00:03:12.900 Deuteronomy's exhortation to encourage the Israelites into battle includes an invitation 39 00:03:12.900 --> 00:03:15.140 to freely leave. 40 00:03:15.140 --> 00:03:17.900 What man is there that is fearful and faint-hearted? 41 00:03:17.900 --> 00:03:21.900 Let him go and return unto his house! 42 00:03:21.900 --> 00:03:25.860 But there is no such right in the modern US military. 43 00:03:25.860 --> 00:03:31.620 If you try to leave, you face coercion, particularly if you try to leave in wartime. 44 00:03:31.620 --> 00:03:35.620 In this way, the military differs from the police and the ranks of prison guards, jobs 45 00:03:35.620 --> 00:03:39.820 from which people are free to walk away without penalty. 46 00:03:39.820 --> 00:03:45.600 Punishing people for attempting to leave the military to avoid killing and or being killed 47 00:03:45.600 --> 00:03:48.420 is not a new practice. 48 00:03:48.420 --> 00:03:53.100 Mises speaks of the barbarous practices used in the 18th century to keep soldiers from 49 00:03:53.100 --> 00:03:55.500 deserting their units. 50 00:03:55.500 --> 00:03:59.640 The more undesirable wartime conditions become, the more necessary it is for the state to 51 00:03:59.640 --> 00:04:04.200 force people to continue to endure them. 52 00:04:04.200 --> 00:04:08.960 The scene that shocked me most in the movie Gods and Generals, and it was clearly not 53 00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:14.280 intended to be shocking, occurs when an assistant to Stonewall Jackson informs the general that 54 00:04:14.280 --> 00:04:20.520 some soldiers have been discovered in an attempt to desert the army under his command. 55 00:04:20.520 --> 00:04:26.080 The general orders them to be tried in a military court, and if found guilty of attempted desertion, 56 00:04:26.080 --> 00:04:28.160 to be shot. 57 00:04:28.160 --> 00:04:31.640 They were indeed tried and shot. 58 00:04:31.640 --> 00:04:39.080 Thus did these men die for exercising their God-given right to walk away. 59 00:04:39.080 --> 00:04:42.800 One of those shot in the film was a young man recruited by Jackson himself, the son 60 00:04:42.800 --> 00:04:46.280 of a friend who decided to return to the North. 61 00:04:46.280 --> 00:04:50.960 The scene was included to demonstrate Jackson's impartiality. 62 00:04:50.960 --> 00:04:57.860 This general is no respecter of persons, or, more plausibly, personhood. 63 00:04:57.860 --> 00:05:05.640 To me, the scene demonstrated the immorality of all modern notions of military discipline. 64 00:05:05.640 --> 00:05:09.340 As the movie shows, the South believed it was fighting for the right of self-government, 65 00:05:09.340 --> 00:05:13.960 which required that the states be able to exercise their right to leave an increasingly 66 00:05:13.960 --> 00:05:16.480 despotic Union. 67 00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:21.180 But the military command would not allow their soldiers to secede. 68 00:05:21.180 --> 00:05:25.580 The Confederate generals believed that the Union must be voluntary, but the Army itself 69 00:05:25.580 --> 00:05:28.700 must be kept together through coercion. 70 00:05:28.700 --> 00:05:32.460 Of course, Northern armies employed the same practice. 71 00:05:32.460 --> 00:05:36.540 Many Union troops believed they were fighting against slavery, which amounts to nothing 72 00:05:36.540 --> 00:05:42.500 more than forbidding people from exercising their right to flee their alleged owners. 73 00:05:42.500 --> 00:05:46.580 But the imposition of the death penalty for soldiers choosing not to fight, that is to 74 00:05:46.580 --> 00:05:53.180 flee their military owners, was assumed to be a normal part of military discipline. 75 00:05:53.180 --> 00:05:57.700 Both North and South claimed that they were fighting in order to abolish a form of captivity 76 00:05:57.700 --> 00:06:02.980 – the right to self-government in one case, and the right to not be employed against one's 77 00:06:02.980 --> 00:06:05.020 will in the other. 78 00:06:05.020 --> 00:06:11.060 But the ability of the military to imprison and kill fleeing soldiers was never questioned. 79 00:06:11.060 --> 00:06:14.460 It is not often questioned today. 80 00:06:14.460 --> 00:06:19.380 The scene parallels the opening sequence in the movie Enemy at the Gates, when Russian 81 00:06:19.380 --> 00:06:24.500 Russian troops in boats are being bombed from the air by German planes. 82 00:06:24.500 --> 00:06:27.940 Russian troops begin to jump in the water to get away. 83 00:06:27.940 --> 00:06:31.940 Their Russian commander starts to unload his pistol as they leap. 84 00:06:31.940 --> 00:06:37.020 The viewer is rightly shocked by this incredible display of totalitarian brutality. 85 00:06:37.020 --> 00:06:42.220 Yet, in essence, what we are seeing is nothing more than a fast-forwarded version of the 86 00:06:42.220 --> 00:06:47.300 court-martial death penalty scene in Gods and Generals. 87 00:06:47.300 --> 00:06:54.100 Both scenes underscore a reality hardly ever discussed – all modern armies are essentially 88 00:06:54.100 --> 00:06:58.020 totalitarian enterprises. 89 00:06:58.020 --> 00:07:03.180 Once you sign up for them or are drafted, you are a slave. 90 00:07:03.180 --> 00:07:06.960 The penalty for becoming a fugitive is death. 91 00:07:06.960 --> 00:07:11.340 Even now, the enforcements against mutiny, desertion, going AWOL or what have you are 92 00:07:11.340 --> 00:07:13.940 never questioned. 93 00:07:13.940 --> 00:07:17.340 This is remarkable if you think about it. 94 00:07:17.340 --> 00:07:22.300 Imagine that you work for Walmart but find the job too dangerous and try to quit. 95 00:07:22.300 --> 00:07:25.740 You are told that you may not, so you run away. 96 00:07:25.740 --> 00:07:28.580 The management catches up to you and jails you. 97 00:07:28.580 --> 00:07:30.820 You refuse to go and resist. 98 00:07:30.820 --> 00:07:34.180 Finally, you are shot. 99 00:07:34.180 --> 00:07:40.020 We would all recognize that this is exploitation, an atrocity, a crime, a clear example of the 100 00:07:40.020 --> 00:07:56.800 Murray Rothbard frames the question nicely. 101 00:07:56.800 --> 00:08:00.800 In what other occupation in the country are there severe penalties, including prison and 102 00:08:00.800 --> 00:08:06.140 in some cases execution for desertion, for quitting the particular employment? 103 00:08:06.140 --> 00:08:10.300 If someone quits General Motors, is he shot at sunrise? 104 00:08:10.300 --> 00:08:15.720 The military has done a study of what causes people to go AWOL, concluding that the practice 105 00:08:15.720 --> 00:08:21.540 tends to increase in magnitude during wartime, and when the Army is attempting to restrict 106 00:08:21.540 --> 00:08:27.100 the ways that soldiers can exit service through administrative channels. 107 00:08:27.100 --> 00:08:32.620 The same study profiles the deserters, as compared with non-deserters, as less educated, 108 00:08:32.620 --> 00:08:37.340 Having a lower aptitude, more likely to be from broken homes, etc. 109 00:08:37.340 --> 00:08:43.140 All the usual reasons why a person is so dishonourably disinclined to want to be killed. 110 00:08:43.140 --> 00:08:48.200 Finally, this study examined the effects of desertion on the individual, concluding that 111 00:08:48.200 --> 00:08:52.720 choosing to be disemployed from the ranks of the armed and dangerous causes loss of 112 00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:58.940 self-esteem and confidence, as well as embarrassment and even shame. 113 00:08:58.940 --> 00:09:04.380 Well, what else would you expect from someone who has chosen a certain path and failed to 114 00:09:04.380 --> 00:09:09.420 meet the necessary requirements and or sustained the fortitude to meet those requirements? 115 00:09:11.020 --> 00:09:16.540 Now comes the report from Douania, Iraq, heavily cited by a US military spokesperson that 116 00:09:17.180 --> 00:09:21.100 many Iraqi soldiers were fighting at gunpoint, threatened with death 117 00:09:21.100 --> 00:09:23.740 by tough loyalists of President Saddam Hussein. 118 00:09:23.740 --> 00:09:30.180 The officers threatened to shoot us unless we fought, said a wounded Iraqi from his bed 119 00:09:30.180 --> 00:09:32.420 in the American field hospital there. 120 00:09:32.420 --> 00:09:37.580 They took out their guns and pointed them and told us to fight. 121 00:09:37.580 --> 00:09:42.180 It could be that the captured soldiers are only trying to win sympathy, but it would 122 00:09:42.180 --> 00:09:45.500 hardly be surprising if it were true. 123 00:09:45.500 --> 00:09:49.620 To force people to fight when they would rather not is the very essence of modern military 124 00:09:49.620 --> 00:09:52.180 organization. 125 00:09:52.180 --> 00:09:58.060 In modern practice, there is no such thing as a voluntary military. 126 00:09:58.060 --> 00:10:03.220 Whether you are forced into the machine or not, via conscription or via payments in tax 127 00:10:03.220 --> 00:10:09.700 dollars, once you are a cog, you must stay in, no matter how much grinding you do or 128 00:10:09.700 --> 00:10:13.300 how much you are ground. 129 00:10:13.300 --> 00:10:17.060 The slave-like nature of the military commitment has no expiration date. 130 00:10:17.060 --> 00:10:22.820 Yes, there are contracts, but the military can void them whenever it so desires. 131 00:10:22.820 --> 00:10:29.100 Predictably, it desires to void these contracts through so-called stop-loss regulations when 132 00:10:29.100 --> 00:10:34.700 the enlisted most want to leave, when they must kill and risk being killed. 133 00:10:34.700 --> 00:10:38.780 All branches of the military have implemented these stop-loss regulations because of the 134 00:10:38.780 --> 00:10:41.260 war on terror. 135 00:10:41.260 --> 00:10:47.380 This amounts to the nationalization of human beings. 136 00:10:47.380 --> 00:10:54.100 Still, one wonders how much the ranks of the militarily employed would shrink in absence 137 00:10:54.100 --> 00:10:57.040 of anti-desertion enforcement. 138 00:10:57.040 --> 00:11:01.900 If modern Presidents had to recruit the way barons and lords recruited, and if they constantly 139 00:11:01.900 --> 00:11:07.420 faced the prospect of mass desertions, they might be more careful about getting involved 140 00:11:07.420 --> 00:11:15.120 in Unnecessary, Unjust, Unwinnable Wars, or going to war at all. 141 00:11:15.120 --> 00:11:20.040 Peace would take on a new value, out of necessity. 142 00:11:20.040 --> 00:11:26.600 When going to war, they might be more careful to curb their war aims, and match war strategies 143 00:11:26.600 --> 00:11:30.760 with those more limited aims. 144 00:11:30.760 --> 00:11:35.060 In fact, we might discover, through the study of the history of anti-desertion statutes, 145 00:11:35.060 --> 00:11:40.380 The key to the transition from the limited war and decentralized military of the medieval 146 00:11:40.380 --> 00:11:48.860 world to the mass murder of the modern total war, the legalization of desertion might provide 147 00:11:48.860 --> 00:11:54.200 the very key to bringing about a more humane world. 148 00:11:54.200 --> 00:12:00.000 In the meantime, US officials would do well to stop complaining that Iraqi soldiers are 149 00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:04.280 being forced to serve and forced to kill. 150 00:12:04.280 --> 00:12:08.720 A press release from the Air Force announcing its new stop-loss rule says, 151 00:12:08.720 --> 00:12:14.360 We understand the individual sacrifices that our airmen and their families will be making. 152 00:12:14.360 --> 00:12:20.600 We appreciate their unwavering support and dedication to our nation. 153 00:12:20.600 --> 00:12:26.580 One might even have a greater appreciation for their sacrifice, even if not their mission, 154 00:12:26.580 --> 00:12:30.500 if one knew that it were undertaken willingly.