The Military
George Washington was exactly right: "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." As a member of the US Army, Navy or Air Force you are the government's instrument of force. How "honest" is that?
There's nothing dishonest about defensive force. Each human being is his own master, by rights, and so is entitled (and perhaps even morally obliged) to defend his or her own person. Since honestly acquired property is obtained only by exchanging labor for it, that right extends also to property. But honesty ends when the force used becomes greater than what is needed to neutralize the aggression. There's no honest right to shoot someone dead for stealing your camera and then running away. However there is an honest right to delegate the task of defense to someone else, more able perhaps to perform it. Therefore, there is no inherent dishonesty in hiring oneself out as an armed defender, a body guard, to exercise defensive force on behalf of the person hiring.
Is that what members of a government military unit are doing? - not hardly.
They - you - are members of its Department of Defense, but that's just a word, a name. America has not been engaged in defensive war since 1814, and arguably not even then (the British aggression was against American merchant ships, whose owners could have arranged their own defense.) Governments used to call it the "War Department" or some such, and that was less deceptive, but none have ever called it a "Department of Offense." Yet that is almost always exactly what they do. War, and the threat of waging it, is an extension of diplomacy; if a government cannot persuade other governments with words, it uses the force of war. That is no more honest than an armed robber. The similarity to the Mafia is especially striking.
A quick survey of recent major US wars should settle this point that none of them were about defense. In 1861 the US Government waged war upon a group of Southern states which no longer wished to belong. Those Confederates had no desire, intent, plan or ability to attack the Northern group; Lincoln's war was therefore wholly offensive. Half a million died. In 1917, Congress resolved to wage war on Germany and Austria, which were at the time on the brink of exhaustion while fighting an alliance of surrounding government armies and navies. The notion that any aggression could have been mounted across the Atlantic against this country is ludicrous; there was no shadow of a defensive need. Yet nearly 120,000 Americans died. The same was true in 1941; the German Navy was capable of causing trouble off the US East Coast, but absent deliberate US support for Britain, it had no reason whatever to cause it - and again, the German Army couldn't possibly reach the US mainland. Japan, likewise, did all it could to maintain peace with America right up to December 7th, and then in desperation about the US oil embargo FDR had imposed, sank much of the US Pacific Fleet in the hope of breaking that embargo. There is no question; the US entered WW-II also as an unprovoked aggressor.
The same is clearly true of the wars in Korea and Vietnam (the argument that Communist "dominoes" would otherwise fall is fatuous; communism is a bankrupt political ideology that has never produced an economy strong enough to conquer anyone, unaided.) The Iraq invasion was likewise offensive; G W Bush made a case that Iraq was preparing weapons to attack the US with missiles, but has been thoroughly discredited. He lied. Iraq did attack Kuwait in 1990, but that was not a threat to America, and that's the point. The war in Afghanistan, ten years old and counting, was begun on the excuse that its government was sheltering the 9/11 aggressors; that may have been true but the invasion began before reasonable evidence had been provided as the basis for extradition. That, too, is therefore just an extension of US Government power world wide. That is the monstrous machine you are serving, and the result has been to transform America, once universally admired as a haven of freedom, into a deeply detested worldwide bully. Successive US governments have built a vast empire, and they are maintaining it by force and by employing you to wield it. That's the job you are doing. To call that "honest" would be to violate English.
Here's the net of it: you're a killer, or someone supporting killers, under hire for whatever purpose the government decides. The profession of bodyguard is honest because its duties are purely and contractually defensive; that of a mercenary soldier, like you, is not. You have agreed to kill, or to help kill, whomever the government decrees you shall kill, and that makes a mockery of personal honesty and integrity. It is no surprise at all that it often leads to mental stress such as PTSD, for you are acting in a way human beings are ill-equipped to behave. It is no surprise at all that Staff Sgt Bales, if the charges against him are proven, "lost it" and massacred 17 innocent Afghans, for all of his deployments had placed on him obligations that honest men are not equipped to bear; he was - like you, perhaps - in deep internal conflict.
"You have agreed" appears above. But suppose you didn't agree; suppose you were drafted? That hasn't happened in recent years, but very often, lacking volunteers, govenments have forced young men into its military against their wills. It could certainly happen again, perhaps to your son. What, then, of "honesty"? Notice first that the draft is a clear case of slavery; work in this job, or be killed (they seldom go to that extreme, but can and have.) The government you are now choosing to serve is an outfit that has by no means repudiated the power to compel, to enslave; registration for "selective service" is still required. I suggest it makes little difference to the honesty of the matter; killing upon command is the most immoral (dishonest) act one can imagine, so the better alternative would be to refuse the draft, refuse to register. Government makes it increasingly difficult to live normally without registering, so that's a tough choice; but notice, presently you are serving the very organization that is forcing that tough choice on other people. A good solution would be to quit immediately, in disgust.
That, then, is the environment you work in, the system you support. What does it do for your self-respect? Self-esteem is a vital part of life. We all need a purpose, a raison d'être, a way to feel pride in what we have been able to accomplish, a basis for ambition to achieve more in future.
Working for government undermines your basis for self-esteem. Make a clean break; offer your skills elsewhere. Get an honest job - even if at first you have to take a pay cut. You'll not regret it; at life's end you will look back in pride and pleasure, and be able to say, "I helped build that!"
