Dangers of a Professional Army
TYLER, GUS
THINKING ALOUD Dangers of a Professional Army By Gus Tyler The volunteer army, for many generations the darling of military establishments around the world, has recently won the heart of some...
...When a young man proposes that a private's pay be doubled or tripled so that "those who want to fight" may do so, he is in effect saying "I do not intend to enlist, because I have a better way of life...
...They give up the options of citizenry to accept the discipline of the uniform????and they do so with an initial measure of hostility for that "outside" world...
...These victims of our social order "prefer" the uniform because of socioeconomic compulsions????for the three square meals a day, for the relative egalitarianism of the barracks or the foxhole, for the chance to be promoted...
...All of the foregoing is not to be interpreted as a defense of the way in which our Selective Service System has been run up to the present...
...Of necessity, the soldier is isolated from the vital social struggles of his times: strikes, sit-ins, civil liberties, social legislation, poverty, urban upheaval, or????if you please????even peace movements...
...The draft is no longer rejected on principle as "involuntary servitude...
...As righteous as that cause was????our showdown with world Fascism????we could not have carried through the operation with a volunteer army...
...The discussion becomes political and pragmatic...
...would create a class army with a social elite at the top and the socially dispossessed at the bottom...
...The first great draft in the United States was imposed by President Lincoln in the Civil War...
...The battle between top civilians and top military in the Pentagon is one of the continuing, unresolved, albeit hushed-over, struggles in Washington...
...It began in Europe more than half a century ago when revolutionary Marxists, with a healthy distrust of a professional army officered by a conservative elite, demanded an end to a mercenary military and the institution of universal military service...
...In sum, the volunteer army would be an army of that "other America," especially Negroes...
...This last figure is crucial in forecasting the nature of a volunteer army...
...Income and inheritance taxes are indirect ways of making an individual work for the state rather than himself...
...At present, about 11 per cent of the men drafted are Negroes, an almost exact reflection of Negroes in the military age group of the total population...
...In the encounter between the military brass and the civilian-minded Commander-in-Chief, the professional soldiers won...
...It should be noted that most advocates of the voluntary army grant that a draft would be admissible in the event our nation is endangered directly...
...The objectors to the temporary "servitude" of the Union Army were quite prepared to let the Negro continue in permanent "servitude" to the slavocracy...
...The response would be so weak that it is doubtful whether the needed quota could be met...
...its fabulous costs and its inability, no matter the expenditure, to recruit the needed manpower in a relatively affluent economy...
...He develops a police mentality...
...From 1948 on, the U.S...
...Volunteers tend to be young men who are unemployed, denied first class citizenship, discriminated against: those who would rather be "in" with the army than "out" with the????to them????sick society...
...The already unfortunate, our brown brothers whom we allegedly are rescuing from the draft...
...The draft was necessary...
...The love affair has blossomed in the hot season of debate over Vietnam...
...namely, when is the national interest vitally involved...
...The National Defense Act of 1916 set up a blueprint for an enlarged permanent army of volunteers...
...There is more than ample evidence that some who argue for a volunteer army know that the idea must fail and conceive of it as a device for "de-escalation...
...It is badly in need of reform...
...by cutting down on military manpower turnover there would be sizable savings in training costs...
...If the country turned to a volunteer army, attracting men with higher pay, better working conditions and fringe benefits, how many and who would respond...
...The scales would be dangerously tipped toward the professionals by a volunteer army...
...There has been no attempt here to examine in depth the impracticality of a voluntary army...
...In 1956, in The Power Elite, C. Wright Mills placed the military at the apex of the ruling trinity alongside the corporations and the politicians...
...The men in uniform would be those who want to be in uniform, fighting a war in which they believe...
...Ending the draft eliminates legal compulsion to enter the military service, but it does not eliminate circumstantial compulsion to do so...
...Nor do I mean to imply that there is no room in the military service for volunteers...
...but more so, since he does not have the policeman's after-hours return to family, friends and social problems...
...Assistant President of the ILGWU, he wrote The Labor Revolution, published last month...
...But to liberate the well-to-do from "legal" compulsion while enslaving the poor with "circumstantial" compulsion is hardly in keeping with a democratic ethos...
...Who is left for the military...
...Who is equipped to teach Nigerians to read, cure the sick, or impart modern knowledge on cleaning out a malarial swamp...
...Because American social struggles, with the exception of the War Between the States, have never reached such crisis proportions that the armed forces have had to be the ultimate social arbiter, the mihtary's potential for oppression has not been tested in the last century...
...President Wilson, sensitive to the danger Gus Tyler was chairman of the recent National Conference on the Draft, sponsored by the American Veterans Committee...
...But when it comes to re-enlistment about 40 per cent of the Negroes opt to continue in the service while only 18 per cent of the whites do so...
...It is argued, in reply, that a draft does not change the professional character of the present Army, since about two-thirds of those now inducted in any one year are volunteers...
...The warlords," he wrote, "have been only uneasy, poor relations within the American elite...
...As an alternative to the draft, it is suggested that young men who serve in the Peace Corps or Teacher Corps be exempt from military service...
...Of necessity, those most readily attracted to the military career in the lower echelons are those who have not fit successfully into the civilian society...
...While "national service" in one of these socially useful projects is commendable, to grant exemption from the military is once more to discriminate against the underprivileged...
...President Eisenhower, in his Farewell Address, warned against the dangers of the military-industrial complex, the close cash nexus between the soldiery and high finance...
...The curious irony of this volte face is the fact that so many advocates of the professional army are militant opponents of The Establishment...
...Not until the Vietnam conflict necessitated drafting men on the campuses did the protests against the draft mount and the volunteer army idea reappear????coming this time from those who had been the traditional opponents of a professional army...
...Compulsory education could be so classified...
...But the American community should be warned against turning a momentary discomfort into a permanent disability...
...But if this prank is turned into a principle it may ultimately turn the trick against those who value a free society...
...In President Kennedy's Administration, Senator Fulbright exposed the Rightist infiltration of the Armed Services...
...To the extent that he is called upon now and then to make contact with these disturbing elements, he does so in an adversary role????to maintain law and order...
...lived with a "peacetime" draft...
...The truth is, however, that about half of the volunteers are men who enlist only because they feel the hot breath of the draft on their back...
...The argument that a draft is "involuntary servitude" is true only to the extent that any form of legalized social compulsion is a form of greater or lesser servitude...
...America had to choose between involuntary "servitude" under Roosevelt and "voluntary" slavery under Hitler...
...THINKING ALOUD Dangers of a Professional Army By Gus Tyler The volunteer army, for many generations the darling of military establishments around the world, has recently won the heart of some anti-militarists and liberals in the United States...
...The debate was renewed in the United States in 1916, when the military brass called for a standing army that could draw additional strength in an emergency from volunteer enlistments...
...By birth, by marriage, by social connections, by future economic prospects, brass tends strongly to turn to gold...
...And the closer the nation moves to full employment, the less attractive these offers become...
...This admission moves the entire debate on to another plane...
...Those who view the fighting in Vietnam or anywhere else as "immoral" would not be called upon to violate their conscience...
...There always has been and there always will be...
...The last time the Selective Service Act was extended, in March 1963, it was without significant protest and debate????indeed, with virtual unanimity...
...Without any blanket indictment of the top military men in the U.S., among whom have been outstanding statesmen of profound civilian commitment such as George Marshall, it is necessary to caution eternal vigilance vis-a-vis the "warlords...
...If the draft is "involuntary servitude," then some 14 million Americans under arms in World War II were tossed into this dismal dungeon...
...One out of every six sergeants in the Army is Negro...
...now they are first cousins...
...The present Selective Service System that appears to discriminate against lower income groups, especially Negroes, would be ended...
...Perhaps the rate would be higher if so many Negroes were not rejected for military service: 50 per cent are turned down, while only 25 per cent of the white potential is rejected...
...Tens of thousands of New Yorkers considered it "involuntary servitude...
...but let those who do not have a better way, go do it...
...After a tour of duty these volunteers, like most of the draftees, return to civilian life, to be replaced by other citizen soldiers...
...But if the military hierarchy is not a major pillar of that Establishment, then who is...
...Protestors took to the streets to burn down Negro orphan asylums, and hang Negroes from lamp posts...
...The most ardent words spoken for the volunteer army come from opponents of our Asian involvement who, in their eagerness to halt the draft of reluctant young men, may unintentionally institutionalize a military manpower program that would do serious damage to the objectives of American liberalism for decades to come...
...A Bureau of the Census study reveals that among young men in age bracket 16-19, only 4 per cent would rate "equal pay" with civilians as of prime importance in volunteering and only 17 per cent would consider "considerably higher pay" as a real enticement...
...But this does not mean that it never will be...
...It will be low income and, ultimately, overwhelmingly Negro...
...A brief glance at other nations of the modern world, where a natural affluence has not softened social struggles, proves repeatedly that an officer corps with an army of declasses under its command can topple governments and constitutions...
...But again this is no new argument...
...of a career army, argued for a system that would draw upon a citizenry trained and accustomed to arms...
...It is filled with inequities, inefficiencies, and plain misuse...
...Both forms of compulsion are disquieting to a free soul...
...soon they may become elder brothers...
...The debate over the volunteer army is not new...
...Another one of those confusions between self-interest and self-righteousness, between prejudice and principle...
...The riot ran for half a week and was finally quelled when the Great Liberator moved the Third Army of the Potomac to New York City to restore order...
...Only the better educated and ipso facto the better-to-do...
...Keeping a person in quarantine is broadly in the same category...
...While one must respect the motives of the young men who demand a voluntary army, it is not improper to suggest that they briefly introspect to see whether, when they call for an end to "involuntary servitude," they are not indulging in self-righteousness tainted with self-interest...
...To these moral, libertarian, and socio-political arguments are added occasional technical points: Modern weaponry calls for skilled technicians requiring long periods of training...
...In the ensuing years, the argument subsided...
...As a tactic, it may be cute...
...Committing the United States to a professional army would be a vast injustice to the country's minorities...
...and would place civilian control over the military establishment in serious jeopardy...
...The basic argument for the volunteer army is that it would end the "involuntary servitude" implicit in the draft...
Vol. 50 • April 1967 • No. 9
