No Coercion

Blogs and opinion columns across the country and across the political spectrum (that is, the artificial conservative-liberal political spectrum) are no doubt calling for Americans to “remember 9/11″ and similar robotic utterances. But what are we supposed to remember, exactly? Like most people, I was shocked at the 9/11 attacks and had the natural human urge to lash out at whoever committed those atrocities and anyone who might be vaguely related to them. Thus did I support the American invasion of Afghanistan, and thus did I proudly serve in the fourth troop rotation of Operation Enduring Freedom, stationed at Bagram Airfield with my National Guard unit.

But I’ve studied and learned a lot since that time and have since removed myself from the unhealthy nationalistic rage that previously clouded my faculties. The fact is that the United States attacked a country (yes, a country controlled by a primitive, violent, despicable regime…like many others around the world) that was not threatening American citizens. It’s common knowledge that humans have a tendency to sort themselves into tribal divisions. The state has taken full advantage of that unfortunate evolutionary holdover and convinced a great many people from both of the state-sponsored parties that anyone who opposes the U.S. government or its totalitarian and interventionist policies actually opposes the American people and our “freedom.” Yes, some of the Islamic fundamentalists probably oppose our freedom…but so do the Christian fundamentalists who live here among us! The main problem is our government, despite the wishes of most of the people it rules, has taken it upon itself to try to remake the world in its own image (which is especially contradictory and destructive since there are so many different ideas within the state apparatus of what the image actually is).

What it comes down to is:

1) The people who attacked us were murderous religious maniacs who happened to be using a particular country as a base of operations.

2) We had no right to invade either Afghanistan or (most certainly) Iraq (though the people who lost family members in the 9/11 attacks would, I think, be justified in hiring private security forces to seek out and capture or kill bin Laden and his co-conspirators).

3) Continuing the support of our presence in either country is not much different than supporting a mugger who has begun to beat and rob an innocent person based on the argument that this person, now confused and disoriented, is ripe for further mugging by others until we “stabilize” his situation.

In memory of the terrible events of 9/11/01, I suggest we call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of American troops and other personnel and money from Iraq and Afghanistan.

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I’ll say right up front that I’m not going to win many friends with this post, especially among those with whom I served.

It’s that time of year again: Veteran’s Day. The time when we all go around patting the troops on the back and thanking them for their service and for fighting for us and defending our freedom.

There’s just one little problem: they’re not actually defending our freedom.

There’s a case that could be made that they’re defending Iraqi freedom or Afghan freedom, or that in times past they defended South Vietnamese freedom or South Korean freedom or the freedom of various European nations. But they were not defending Americans’ freedom. But to make the case that our troops are defending OUR freedom, you would have to show that they repelled or resisted an unprovoked invasion of person or property. But as far as I can tell, the only two times that’s happened was the Revolutionary War and the Civil War (in which the Confederate forces legitimately attempted to resist the aggression of the Union forces following the South’s perfectly Constitutional secession). After perusing the very long list of conflicts in which America has been involved since its birth, I found no other instances of major unprovoked aggression by a state actor with the exception of Pearl Harbor (and leaving aside the possibility that Roosevelt may have allowed the attack to happen in order to get the American public to support a declaration of war, our entrance into WWII had nothing to do with protecting Americans from another imminent attack).

So, the military isn’t in the business of defending our freedom. But what about enhancing our security? Now that seems to make more sense. Except that nearly every U.S. military action, being offensive rather than defensive, actually tends to reduce our security by creating rallying cries for lunatic terrorists. After all, even us non-lunatics would be pretty pissed off if Iran started bombing our neighborhoods to try to kill someone who had flown a plane into an Iranian building.  Now think about that situation except the bombing country is a big, intimidating superpower, and the bombed country is a primitive, impoverished country loaded with fundamentalist Muslims. Uh oh.

So, it turns out that the military doesn’t defend our rights or keep us safe. Now I don’t blame them for these shortcomings. The troops are doing what they think is right. They’re following orders. They’re eating up all that stuff about defending the Constitution (I certainly did). Unfortunately, they’re just like any other national military - they’re one of the tools the state uses to maintain power and enlarge itself. The troops are good people who just happen to believe that elected officials know what they’re doing and have good intentions (neither of which is generally true in actuality).

And, in theory, they could actually keep us safe (at least from foreign aggression) by actually remaining stationed only in America and only engaging in purely defensive operations. They could also theoretically defend our freedom by standing up to the government when it tries to confiscate our income or property or restricts how we run our businesses or forces us to get insurance or prevents us from trading with certain people. But of course that would be considered a rebellion, just like Lincoln called the southern states’ decision to secede a “rebellion” (so rebellion was good enough for the Founding Fathers but not for anyone that comes after them apparently).

If you want to thank someone who really defends your freedom, thank a defense attorney. After all, they’re entire livelihood is based on holding the government feet to the fire and keeping it from violating rights. We may not like a lot of the people they defend (and trust me, they don’t like them either), but they’re probably the only reason we still have even a semblance of personal liberty in America.

Just to be clear, I’m perfectly fine with honoring veterans. Just like I honor anyone else who goes to work and performs the tasks they had agreed to, although I strongly affirm the rights of our troops to terminate their service to the state at any point if they come to the conclusion that they’re not okay with being used to further the immoral ambitions of a coercive government. And I look forward to the day when society goes out of its way to honor those who produce goods and services that people actually need and get paid voluntarily rather than by taxes taken from people against their will.

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Veterans Day was a few days ago, and as usual, I kept hearing that perennial mindless refrain (uttered as if by Pavlovian response), that we should “honor veterans because they’re over there fighting for our freedom and keeping us safe.”

Excuse me, but no, they’re not.

Our troops are in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting for Afghanistan’s and Iraq’s freedom (regardless of whether they want it) and trying to keep the Afghan and Iraqi people safe (even if it’s actually having the opposite effect). There is NOTHING our troops are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq (or in any other country) that is even remotely promoting American freedom and safety (I served in Afghanistan, and I assure you, we were not protecting your right to free speech or making sure you slept safe at night). On the contrary, our actions in both theaters have made us demonstrably LESS safe since we continue to breed resentment and create more terrorist recruits determined to do us harm. And last I checked, our freedoms were being rapidly eroded by a Bush administration consumed by the darkness of totalitarianism and using a nonsensical and Orwellian “War on Terror” to justify the emerging police state.

Don’t get me wrong–I don’t blame the troops for any of this. I blame the political leadership. The troops are simply doing what they agreed to do when they signed up. They’re fulfilling legally binding employment contracts, a noble and honorable thing. They should be honored because, deep down, they really did join because they thought they would get a chance to defend our freedom and keep us safe. It’s not their fault they ended up being used as tools to accomplish some fanatical neoconservative reordering of the Middle East in a grand scheme that Bush believes was hand delivered to him by some omnipotent being. I mean, they really couldn’t have seen that one coming, especially when most of them sign on the dotted line right out of high school (or even during their senior year like I did).

I find it particularly abhorrent that our government continues to send troops into Afghanistan to fight al Qaida and the Taliban while simultaneously empowering those enemies by trying to shut down opium farming in the country. Our failed war on drugs apparently hasn’t caused enough ruin in our own country, so we felt the need to export that ruin to a country that could actually emerge as a prosperous and peaceful place if it wasn’t for the fact that Western politicians with a poor grasp of human nature and an even worse grasp of economics have decided that certain substances, including heroin, must be banned by the coercive state.

So yes, honor veterans if you like, but do it for the right reasons. And let’s get some folks elected (like, say, Ron Paul) who will stop putting the people that signed up to defend America and the Constitution in the position of having to carry out self-defeating (and very un-American) foreign policy around the world.

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