the folks on the left as well.

I totally agree with the sentiments expressed above. But the hard truth is that there will always be more than enough folks in their late teens and early twenties who will willingly and eagerly volunteer to join the fight. They won't know or care much about the politics, the foreign policy, or even the perfidiousness of our leadership. Instead, they will be joining for reasons having to do with "proving themselves," "meeting the test," "answering the nation's call," etc., etc. Don't we all remember how we were at that age? So there will always be more than sufficient people to do anything and go anywhere that the then-current administration deems necessary or desirable. After they've paid the human price, most of them will echo what's been posted above. But by then there will be a new generation to repeat the same, sad, heart-breaking cycle. Maybe I'm feeling extra cynical today, it being a grey, snowy day here in the northeast....so I'm eager for someone out there to tell me how wrong I am.

I suspect that the current generation of veterans will look back at these wars and how the Vietnam generation approached it and take from that view some lessons on how to appropriately frame an argument against war. Between groups like IAVA and programs like "troops to teachers," I see the potential for an emergent narrative that there are other, and perhaps better, ways to serve your country.

I make a point to stop at every Girl Scout stand selling cookies lately to tell them the story of the shipment of cookies a troop sent us in Iraq in 2003. It was like Christmas, and I like to tell the girls that their "Operation Thin Mint" program really does make a difference to people overseas. It's important to me to let people know people do appreciate their efforts. The girls and their mothers usually thank me for my great service to the country. I make a further point to look them all in the eye and tell them "When you turn eighteen, you go vote. That's every bit as much service to the country as being in the military-- and it may be more important."

From the economy to foreign policy, the underlying tone of people's complaints these days is that the government is some kind of third party that acts counter to or in dismissal of their concerns. I think this generation of vets, which feels more disaffected by how the citizenry abandoned their obligation to the national cause than how the political leadership handled it, is in a position to influence the national dialogue in a direction toward renewed civic involvement. Discussions of "having skin in the game" will leave forums such as this and enter a broader national context. Whether it reaches a critical mass such that it can truly influence things remains to be seen.

But I know I'm not the only guy that stops and tells Girl Scouts war stories and how important it is to vote. And if three vets who read this blog start doing the same, well, we're three steps closer to critical mass.

. . . to those who have noexperience of it." Pindar 5th c. BC

Your dead on FG42.

JG how is war always wrong? What are we going to tell the kids Jim? That war is always wrong? That it is always the worst direction to take? You stick to that narrative and play the victim, I won't nor will anyone I know or work with take that route. I assure you we will also relay that while we may have terrible leaders at the Flag Level and terrible civilian leadership as well, no one is going to say we were lied to, that we did not go into these conflicts thinking this was Iwo Jima or Pearl Harbor or whatever constitutes a "good war". Most will go into their civilian lives with the knowledge that they did what they were asked to the best of their ability and under great constraints but none will whine about it or cry that they were victims. You serve because you want to serve, the people who pull the strings may be wretched things but someone has to do it. I think we run in very different circles JG, very different circles.

Here is the complete quote without the play on words:

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”-John Stuart Mill

just how many wars were fought by John Stuart Mill?

That makes the statement any less true? Was more of a post to illustrate the proper quote compared to JGs play on it but the quote still rings true.

It's really just the typical guff of people who don't have to do the killing and dying; the Cheney, Bush and Blair - to name but a few, who will rile up the "patriotic" mob for the bloodletting.

And how often is it all really necessary? Very rarely I'd venture to suggest.

But I'll see your Mill and raise you an Owen:

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Naw, it's not, it's true, saying that the Bush & the other Neo-Cons "guff" about or are the ones who would use that is false on it's face. There are things that are worse than war, I would hope you do too.

WWI and Owen? The War was necessary for some that were attacked. I think we can think of many times when war would have been necessary. Owen and others complained, as we do to this day, about the GO's of his day and the terrible waste of men like so much water spilled from buckets....We can cite poets, great philosophers and leaders have said about war throughout the ages but guess what? War is not EVER going to stop, some are necessary some are not but they will always go on.
So, I'll raise you with a Kipling and Roosevelt and call with an Orwell-

"Four things greater than all things are,
Women and Horses and Power and War."
-Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of the King's Jest

"The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer."-Theodore Roosevelt

“The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …” ? George Orwell

but to your point about what do we tell the children? My English teacher brought that in one morning - Xeroxed (remember that?) and off curriculum. We discussed it, line by line. It had a deep impact on me as a fourteen year old and it grew with me.

I joined the army but the images aroused by Owen's words never left me. They spoke to failure. Of a catastrophic dereliction of the duties of a society. Yes, there should have been a fight but against another enemy.

When finally he himself paid the price - the loss of his son - he wrote:

"If any question why we died
Tell them, because our fathers lied"

War is and always will be a terribly powerful thing.

And primitive and wasteful and usually unnecessary.

Something I've never understood - in the modern, democratic context - is why we don't punish those who fail to exercise "other means". Instead we honor them with medals and statues and such. Strange stuff.

Not sure I agree that it is usually unnecessary but I agree we do not always need to do it but that is usually as a result of hindsight that we understand that, kind of late.
As for the medals and statues, the military doesn't make the calls for war, need to talk to our civilian leaders on that one.

Jim read Samuel Huntington's book the Soldier and the State. When I was a Midshipman I found this because I took the initiative to learn, and I am glad I did. It talks about the History of the Officer Corps, and describes the ethic of the professional warfighter. If you have studied warfare for a bit of time you begin to understand how incredibly awful it is. You realize however, it is inevitable. There is an ethic described by huntington:

pg 79 Summary: Conservative Realism (last sentence)

"The Military Ethic is thus pessimistic, collectivist, historically inclined, power-oriented, nationalistic, militaristic, pacifist, and instrumentalist in its view of the military profession. It is in brief, realistic and conservative. "

When will the professional warfighter ethic return? Tell your son to study the profession in which he is about to engage in. It is Civilian controlled, but being a professional soldier is a most glorious profession.

Some are even right. But as we've learned in the last decade, you can even fight the right war the wrong way. You mistake my words, ESIII. Our generals are as much to blame for the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan and the squandering of precious lives as much as politicians.

A more responsible American citizenry would have demanded a clear plan for Afghanistan prior to going in, and they would have stuck by it. Even after reading the Army's first installment of its own recorded history of Operation Enduring Freedom, I'd argue that no clear strategic or operational objective was defined. The American public wanted only vengeance, and beyond Bin Laden and the Taliban the military and government really had no idea what they wanted. If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it. Now we're all just grasping at straws as we shuffle toward the door. The military leadership is rudderless, the political leadership is fumbling for some way to save face while meeting campaign promises, and all the while the vast majority of the citizens stopped caring a long time ago. The former is a consequence of the latter.

I'm not categorically against war. But I wouldn't have my child follow a brain-dead leadership into combat. You could say I'd sooner fight "Bush's war" than execute Franks' plan.

A great little exchange. Fundamental disagreement expressed with erudition and respect. Thanks.

See, I can agree with a lot of what was written in that last post but the first was more akin to what I hear by someone being dramatic for the cameras or peers in the vein of "You don't know what I've seen" or the classic view of "troops as victims". I have low tolerance for that type of narrative and wish more vets would not go down that path especially when so few have actually seen any combat in either of the theaters. I don't see a generational gap nor a change on service, the only thing I see in our citizens is a continued dis-interest in anything beyond their own little world, if anything I would advise people to encourage more people to join and from a wider economic spectrum. I am almost to the point where I want a draft for ALL 18 year olds to join some kind of National Service (easy Byron). Your a good writer Jim, don't waste it with what sounds like a bit of bitterness when all you were really just saying is that our leaders were bloody awful.

I only used Mills because I hear it invoked so often against those who protest going to war. I deliberately twisted it, not as an act of bitterness, but to demonstrate there are more than one thing that are worse than war itself.

I think we'll only get a governmental push toward national service once vets start hanging out en masse at recruiting depots across the country and telling potential enlistees how the military and government screwed them. When the Peace Corps, law enforcement and civil service jobs start filling up faster than military ranks, then Washington's edict about how we treat our vets will be made clear to our leaders, and they'll have to treat them better. And I'm not talking about pay and bennies. I mean going to war with an actual plan to win.

“A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers. … Any soldier worth his salt should be antiwar.” Gen. Norman H. Schwarzkopf

He followed that with "And still, there are some things worth fighting for."

"I only used Mills because I hear it invoked so often against those who protest going to war. I deliberately twisted it, not as an act of bitterness, but to demonstrate there are more than one thing that are worse than war itself."-

I understood how you were using it just did not agree with it is all. I am not a fan of the path that some vets take into bitterness or self-pity. I love your last line about Frank' and Bush and think there is a lot truth in it but I think it is pretty obvious that I have never been a fan of the GOs or their line of thought so I am an easy sell.

I don't think vets hanging out en masse and discouraging recruits will help and actually think it will only hurt, we need more people serving in all aspects not less. Right now the working and middle class take the brunt, we need to have mandatory service and in all aspects with some changes made to the civilian arms like Americorps, Peace Corps, etc.... I would prefer to see a national movement towards mandatory service instead of a national movement to discourage it.

"And I'm not talking about pay and bennies. I mean going to war with an actual plan to win."- Could not agree more.

is that it is too easy to read that into it: >I am not a fan of the path that some vets take into bitterness or self-pity.

I have known few vets whose prime motivation was self-pity and bitterness when arguing for better stewardship. I know what you are talking about, but I do not see it as a major problem.

See, I do not know anyone like that personally in my community either nor do I know that many who were in the combat arms who follow that path. I do see a good amount who follow that path and now write for the Huffington Post and who I read in other areas and of course the comments section. Most did not see any combat and have a political axe to grind but they gain credence due to their service in many folks eyes, not mine but the average layman's. All of a sudden they are speaking as if they are 'experts' on anything to do with the military due to having served a few years and usually not in a combat arm. This is all anecdotal and I only base this off what many of my civilian friends back home say in conversations after they read those articles or from what they see in the media but none the less it concerns me. It also concerns me when I see numbers of "vets" who are at homeless shelters who get used in the media all the time too and for the most part are those who have either been chucked out of service or were never in, again this just concerns me. JG's original post read as though it was going down that path but he quickly cleared things up for me. I just do not want that to be the narrative of our time in these wars is all.

... in his memoirs of his despair as a junior officer at finding himself serving beneath a lazy and corrupt commander. he indented to resign his commission but was talked out of it by a brother officer. It's a remarkable passage in his book, perhaps recounted too briefly.

We need to have respect for the soldiers who have fought in these wars. Anyone who hasn't been placed in live combat situations as dangerous as these Middle Eastern wars can't really claim to understand what it is really like. We therefore need to listen to these men who have been there and put a high weight on their opinions. It is easy for someone in the comfort of their homes in America advocating that we need another war, without really understanding the consequences. It is hell on earth and many young men will not make it home in one piece.

It's still that way, at least in the Marines. It's very common for Marines to try to jump ship from a unit the instant they find out it's not going to deploy in support of OEF.

I did everything I could to get transferred to an infantry battalion and deploy to OEF. That's not an unusual or special attitude. I'd be happy to go back again as well, but there are so many "waiting their turn" that it's unlikely I'll go back. With that said, I'm ever mindful of the mantra, "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it."

Some of my fellow company grade officers would probably perform sexual favors on anyone or anything in exchange for deployments (particularly deployments as far from the flagpole as possible). Others, particularly those who have been 4+ times and would like to see their kids grow up, are less eager.

In observing my peers, I have noticed a difference among the generation that joined before 9/11 and the generation that joined after 9/11. The post 9/11 Marines knew they were joining while the nation was at war. They are, on average, more eager to deploy than their more senior peers. Part of that is youthful exuberance and inexperience, but part of it is also that this is my generation's challenge. For all the apathy I see among my peers, I'm impressed by how a few million of us have responded to that challenge.

Anyone can, if you quote selectively enough, be said to be for or against anything. Context, context, context. I'm a big fan of Orwell in the sense that he advocated against any propaganda at all, but it's a shame that he is just so quotable especially with regard to ESIII's "intellectual pacificsts" quote. I love that one.

However, I think that President Eisenhower's words are timeless. No, not the military-industrial complex, but the part about an alert and knowledgeable citizenry. The military is, after all, another tool states employ to achieve their goals and throwing away an asset in an activity as competitive as global politics seems absurd.

Let the military serve as an example to the citizens, to rise up and participate in their own small way. Whatever that may be.

Actually I am a big fan of using quotes within the context of the times and taking what you can from them. I think when folks quote Roman Generals and read in wonder how those guys motivated their troops they need to remember that the Romans were a "little" more liberal with their physical punishments for discipline infractions than we were. I think T.R.'s times were one of military adventurism sure but that is not the point of the quote and I believe that pacifism is always a choice made by those who can afford to have that choice due to those of us who will fight. It is often the least moral choice, what would be the right choice if you had the ability to stop a mass murderer but did nothing? Do you think Ghandi would have succeeded with his actions against the Japanese if they had pushed into India and displaced the English? There are times for non-violent action but there are times when it is truly an act of a coward who is usually just being a coward under the guise of the high moral ground.

As for Orwell, his views on politics, socialism/marxism and the corruption of power are as true today as they were then I think, he may not be in vogue anymore with the fall of the USSR but he is still relevant.

Speaking of Roman generals, have you had a chance to read Plutarch yet? Without quoting any Roman generals (I don't think I ever did that), I think you have the wrong impression about why I suggested Fabius Maximus to you. He's quite "modern." It's a quick read--only about 20 or 30 pages.

I think you are right in your approach to quoting from past observers. Some truths are timeless, and if you understand the context, the more you can get from what they have to say to us now. JPWREL has a great observation on Afghanistan, BTW. Lost the bubble on where it is though.

Orwell was a socialist to his dying day, as far as I know.

Of course, "we are all socialists now," and have been for quite some time, since at least the New Deal. The military in particular is a Communist society in all but name-from each according to his needs, to each according to his abilities, free health care, food and lodging, central management, discipline, a Party Line, Goodthink, Crimestop, etc. And really you can say the same for any government job, minus the discipline.

As far as pacifism is concerned-of course, it's a crock of shit. War is in our very DNA, as is abhorrence of war. What young man doesn't want to prove himself, to put everything on the line(hipsters excluded.) But these days, I don't think the USG is worth going to war for anymore. The only way to present the guys we're fighting as an existential threat to America and somehow worse than the guys we'll replace them with if we succeed is through massive hyperbole. In reality, it is all they can do to put IEDs in the road down the way from their house without blowing themselves up.

I used to think that 9/11 showed that we had to fight them over there so we wouldn't have to fight them over here, but then I went back to college and saw dozens of nikabs and Salafi beards on campus, sat in classes with them and listened to them spout Agitprop while the teachers just nodded, and realized that the only way they keep getting in here is because our government keeps bringing them in and paying their way. So fighting over there while bringing them over here is like stabbing yourself in the leg with one hand while suturing the wounds up with another. Not to mention that when you look at the results of USG's activities in Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, Syracuse, etc., etc., etc., they are worse than anything AQ could dream up. I mean, imagine if Osama deployed a weapon that turned a place like Seattle into a place like Detroit. How many 9/11's worth of damage is that? What if he came up with a finance death laser that would hang a trillion dollar debt on his opponents? I mean, holy shit, what can they do to us that could compare to what our own leadership is doing?

But all that aside, jumping out of planes, playing with cool toys, training with your buddies, sneaking through dark alleys in third world slums, kicking in doors and shooting villains or flexcuffing them is super-fun and much better than, say, hanging drywall or filing TPS reports. As long as you focus on the small picture and don't think too much, it's awesome.

produced, figured Teddy Roosevelt for a nut.

One doesn't have to be a pacifist to be against boondoggles and to realize that many wars have been fought for the most idiotic of reasons, if not pure venality and self-interest. The politically motivated, amorality of a Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson, or the idiocy of a Woodrow Wilson are as good an argument against war as any high-flying language in its favor.

Goering, a student of American propaganda techniques which had been used to such success during WW1 (and please try to argue that the allies were somehow less aggressive or more moral than the "Huns" with a straight face), said famously:

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

I think Goering goes a bit far in denying popular agency; as B points out, war is in our dna, it is ubiquitous, although the degree to which aggression is genetic varies somewhat across populations. The Left's antiwar arguments are severely weakened by denying the role of heredity in aggression and war. But to admit to a natural cause of war would be to weaken their insistence on the malleability of human nature and the Rousseauian critique of civilization.

Eric argues that more people need to be involved and citizen apathy is a problem. I'd counter that more citizen involvement and knowledge of international affairs might not make them pro-interventionist, particularly if they would learn more about our "friends and allies." Classic example of this would be the Katyn massacre, the discussion of which was censored by the British and US governments.

A candid public discussion of our Soviet ally, with information made available to the US public, might have made it much harder politically to prosecute the war. Candid information about what the Nazis were up to might have swayed people nonetheless. But an informed citizenry is not conducive to mobilization.

Recent accusations by ex-senators Graham and Kerrey about Saudi involvement in 9/11 should be considered and discussed as that collectivity of vipers wants the US to go to war with Iran.

I was just reading Solzhenitsyn's 1978 speech at Harvard, which touches on related themes:

A Decline in Courage [. . .]

may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?
Well-Being

When the modern Western States were created, the following principle was proclaimed: governments are meant to serve man, and man lives to be free to pursue happiness. (See, for example, the American Declaration). Now at last during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state. Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the morally inferior sense which has come into being during those same decades. In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to obtain them imprints many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings. Active and tense competition permeates all human thoughts without opening a way to free spiritual development. The individual's independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, leading them to physical splendor, happiness, possession of material goods, money and leisure, to an almost unlimited freedom of enjoyment. So who should now renounce all this, why and for what should one risk one's precious life in defense of common values, and particularly in such nebulous cases when the security of one's nation must be defended in a distant country?

Even biology knows that habitual extreme safety and well-being are not advantageous for a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious mask.

Py, sorry man, I have not had the chance to read that book yet, I went on a spending spree and got more books than I have time to read, will try to get to that over the next month.

B, Orwell turned against a lot of the aspects of Communism that he even talks about in his books, he held onto some of the ideals but he turned against the actual human results of the "ideal economic" order of socialism. One of my favorite writers, Christopher Hitchens, is a bit like Orwell in that he too was a far left believer and then he turned around and came to the other side of the economic spectrum. While Hitchens may no longer be a "red" there are vestiges of his former self that come through in his writings.

As for the military, it is a socialist and authoritarian org not communist and has to be that way. You can't function in the military without a strict set of laws (The UCMJ), a strong authoritarian chain of command or without a certain level of socialism but it should be more merit based instead of the unfortunate quota/goal system and it should let free markets influence it a bit mor in that vein. The military cannot function outside of that type of atmosphere and be competent though, I cannot have a "vote" on what the guys want to do, I cannot take my time with discipline issues or ignore them and expect to maintain control and discipline in a unit, I cannot expect a guy to get massive injuries and then pay for them out of his pocket when I am asking him to take an objective, etc...etc... I often look at the Military and the Civilian Society it defends like the relationship of a Clown Fish (Civilians) and a Sea Anemone (Military), it is a symbiotic relationship with the Sea Anemone providing protection for the in exchange for the food that Clown Fish provides. Libertarianism

that last line got cut off! was going to stay that "libertarianism can exist but not in a military that want's to be effective, it and other forms of economics and government models should stay in the civilian side"

a group of people provides protection to the other group in exchange for goods and perks, it's called feudalism.

The founding fathers were opposed to this model, with good reason, contemporary Europe provided lots of examples of states with professional militaries. The US militias and colonial armies were pretty poor stuff compared to continental Europe; indeed, there is a reason why we have places in the US named Pulaski or Steuben. But making the US a successful military power, able to right wrongs around the globe and spread neoliberalism, wasn't the point of the Revolution. Indeed, that was the m.o. of our former insular masters.

Republican systems have historically failed or morphed into imperial systems when nations went away from the notion of citizen levies in favor of increased professionalism. Citizen service is one of those things that should not be monetized. And as long as there are no real penalties for senior level incompetence and politicians' venality, the ease of war profiteering (Mr. Cheney) complicates the claims that privatization equals savings and efficiency. This is not to say that the State is efficient or more honest, but we do live in a crony capitalist state whose people have had a tendency to support crusading, feel-good interventions that are not necessarily in our best interest. Combine that with a lack of service requirement= $$$$ for unscrupulous types. The Free Market has no solution to this particular problem, indeed, said unscrupulous types are giving the customer what they want at a price the customer is willing to pay. Buyers remorse, as in the case of Iraq, always comes too late.

A universal levy should be brought back, but let's not limit it to the kids. Raise that age to about 55 or so. Why intentionally victimize the children of the rich when you can draft the rich themselves? There are plenty of healthy middle-aged people, who are in favor of interventions. Indeed, the older an American, statistically speaking, the more bellicose they are. And if they aren't able-bodied enough to do actual fighting, there is plenty of stuff they could do in a support capacity. Anecdotally, I know of several [young] men who had health problems but were still drafted for WW2 and Vietnam. Heart murmur?, game leg, they still found something for them, even if it was guard duty in North Africa. The point is, health, and thus age, isn't necessarily a deciding factor. Be positive, maybe universal service might help combat America's problem with obesity (that and ending farm subsidies to sugar growers, but we can't do that) In years past, when the lifespan, particularly the working lifespan, was much lower, older, able-bodied men were still liable for duty.

I would not compare it to feudalism, no serfs here who are forced to work on state owned property in exchange for the "knights" and "Nobles" protection. I don't think it is like at all and while I like the professional military model we have and it has a lot to offer I think without a mandated service we will eventually fail as a nation due to indifference and not having any "skin" in the game in any sense of the word. Heck, it might help the obesity problem too as you so aptly point out.
As for the draft/levy and about making the old who have not served yet do something, are you proposing we do something along the line of the Swiss where you do initial active duty to get trained up and then stay in the reserves for life?

One of the best things I've seen on the Internet.

Comparisons to Marius's reforms are not without relevance--it wasn't a fluke they led to despotism. The parallels run the spectrum from fat, lazy citizens to the birth of latifundia and what amounts to corporate feudalism.

We don't have to have socialism to avoid that outcome.

That's one of the critiques of the US system one sees amongst Libertarian Anarchist circles.

I think the Swiss model you mentioned would be a good one to emulate. I'd only change one thing; in the Swiss Army service for women is voluntary, it should be mandatory. In fact, US women should be required to sign up for selective service. If women would be citizens, with all the perks of citizenship and then some, let them also be required to serve, even into midlife.

Women own these wars as much as men. The notion that women, particularly "mothers", are somehow less bellicose than men, I suspect, is bunkum. Think about all the mobilizing politics of fear that keep us on edge thinking about "the children." Fear and a desire to keep the kiddies safe make possible the State's clamp down on civil liberties. Increased participation of women in politics and as voters hasn't decreased our nation's interventionism- saving the foreign kiddies or saving our kiddies from foreign bad men.

This more inclusive, less elite service policy would surely cut down on our military's effectiveness, but that isn't the most important issue for this non-interventionist. Better to lose effectiveness if it leads to fewer overseas involvements, which almost always result in an expansion and centralization of government power at home.

If the multinationals, including the banks, want effective protection for their overseas operations then let them hire private protection and make their own deals with local governments. And regarding our our "friends and allies" and the benefits they derive.... I'll stay polite and say nothing about what they can do.

Good point on Marius, while we can overemphasize the parallels between our times and the late Roman Republic, we can still learn lessons from that era.

Marius' reforms insured that the Roman state would have to continue to expand territorially- all those men were promised land. But Marius did not deal with the cause of the impoverishment of the masses that so threatened the republic that the reforms were necessary: slave labor and its effect on the economy.

Cheap labor is an essential part of understanding the expansion of economic inequality and its political and cultural consequences, whether we are talking about the Italian Peninsula in the late Roman Republic, the slaves in the American South, or globalized labor today.

It's simply not possible to maintain a republican system when there is such a profound economic divide between the rulers and the ruled. Oligarchy is unavoidable, and worse, we get the sort of decadence associated with oligarchs who appeal to the mob to create political alliances based on spoils and faux-populism. Even worse, our oligarchs have 2000 more years of civilization, including a century of public relations expertise, to draw on in manipulating the masses. What tyrants of the past would have given for an Edward Bernays, public schools and televisions.