Is a civilized and enlightened military possible?

From Middle East Online :

8 Apr, 2009

Has the US created a permanent war economy and de-enlightened warrior culture? Now that the US is ready to lead the world on nuclear disarmament, will it show the way and reform its army into a civilized and enlightened military? Asks Dallas Darling.

 
Years ago at Fort Riley, Kansas, home of the Big Red One, I can still recall having long discussions with a sergeant from the Vietnam Era. Since he was familiar with massacres and atrocities committed during the Vietnam Conflict (on both sides), we often discussed the Just War Theory and the differences between fighting an Offensive and Defensive War. Most of all though, we discussed if it was possible to be a soldier-indoctrinated and trained to kill and destroy the “enemy”-and still maintain a sense of humanitarian values and feeling in time of war. (In thinking back to Vietnam and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, maybe the most important question was not in asking how would they greet us, but how would/did we greet them!)

I was reminded of our conversations for three reasons. First, three Iraqi brothers were recently killed in Mosul in a botched military raid. Several months ago a female editor for Iraq's Biladi TV was critically wounded when US troops opened fire. Again, US forces just killed a 12-year old girl in Hurriyah in northern Iraq when the driver of the car did not stop at a check-point. In Afghanistan, hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed due to faulty intelligence or being mistaken for suspected terrorists. Over the past several years, there have been other crimes like executions, stealing and rape committed by US forces against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Second, the newly signed Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and US military forces states that US forces are not supposed to do anything in Iraq without first coordinating with the Iraqi government or provincial leader. In other words, occupation forces can no longer have contact with Iraqi civilians, such as arrests or personal and home searches and seizures, until applying for an Iraqi court issued warrant. At the heart of the SOFA agreement is who has final jurisdiction over US troops and their behavior and actions: Iraq or the US? And what does this agreement mean for US forces?

Third, and since the United States prides itself on being founded on the principles of the Age of Enlightenment, remember that critical thinkers examined the military and concluded in an enlightened and civilized society a professional or standing army would be disbanded after a war was over. They also rejected the professional army in favor of a natural army composed of all able-bodied citizens, equal in arms and used only for defensive purposes. Enlightened thinkers too imagined militaries and war, along with their propaganda of killing, would eventually come to an end for a new peaceful and humanitarian way of thinking and living. (1)

Furthermore, reasoned individuals objected to monarchies in which kings held absolute power and used armies to preserve their power and suppress democratic dissent. They also denounced kings that continually enlarged their forces by grinding the people down to poverty and starvation. (Montesquieu advised the legislative body to be in complete control of the military versus a king or executor.) Other thinkers, like Voltaire, called soldiers hired thugs, murderers and the scum of the nation. (2) Philosophers believed militaries and wars impoverished people, leveled democracies, and depopulated the world.

Even Adam Smith, author of 'The Wealth of Nations', wrote that “Among the civilized nations of modern Europe…not more than one hundredth part of the inhabitants of any country can be employed as soldiers, without ruin to the country which pays the expense.” (3) He believed military budgets should equal only one percent of a nation's productive output. Smith considered large armies as the most unproductive organizations and their conquests as the greatest crimes. In truth, Smith believed large standing and professional armies would create enormous debts and bankrupt nations. (Today, for example, the US devotes 42 percent of its total product and employs some 12 percent of its labor force directly or indirectly to the armed forces and military production.)

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