From: wdstarr@athena.mit.edu (William December Starr)
Subject: Re: Commander in Chief Clinton ?
Organization: Northeastern Law, Class of '93
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 00:04:23 GMT


In article <3833@eastman.UUCP>, pawlicki@kodak.com said:

> The President of the United States has to have the moral authority
> to lead the military.  He is, first and foremost, the Commander in
> Chief of the most powerful army the world has ever know.  If Gov.
> Clinton is elected, every soldier who is asked to fight and die will
> have the right to say : "HE DIDN'T GO WHEN HE WAS CALLED, WHY SHOULD
> I?"  Any notion of self-sacrifice in the name of duty will have to be
> compleatly abandoned.  While Gov. Clinton may be a fine
> administrator, a great speaker, and a good politician, he lacks the
> moral authority to be Commander in Chief.  He can still be patriotic,
> he can still love his country, he can still serve in politics; but
> the moral authority to ask someone to die is purchased with actions,
> not with talk.

Okay, I've thought about all this, and here's my answer, with a little
recent American history mixed in: during the Vietnam era, this nation
practiced a form of involuntary servitude known as conscription, also
referred to as "the draft."  Under this policy, many young men were
faced with the choice of either (a) becoming soldiers, and facing the
possibility of dying in an ongoing and extremely nasty armed conflict,
(b) trying to finesse their way into ineligibility, exemption or
deferment, or (c) becoming fugitives from justice and/or federal
prisoners.  As a result, many young men became soldiers of the United
States via the method of taking the Oath of Service under duress.
They didn't want to be soldiers.  They hadn't volunteered for the job.
They hadn't even chosen, reluctantly, to take the job as an
alternative to unemployment and to make the best of it.  They were
coerced into it by an immoral government policy.

Accordingly, they -- both those who were drafted and those who
"voluntarily" enlisted solely in the hopes of avoiding the draft and
thereby getting a better deal -- had no reason whatsoever to be loyal
to their nation or their superior officers, and every justification
for saying "This is morally wrong.  Wars should be fought only by
people who have volunteered for military duty."  And every young man
who did not want to volunteer for military duty had every right in the
world to do virtually anything to keep from being conscripted,
including dodging the draft through family connections, deferments,
legal chicanery, outright lying, and fleeing the scene.

By contrast, every soldier in the United States military today _is_ a
volunteer.  They have no moral grounds for complaining, malingering or
deserting if they are asked to uphold the oath that they took on their
own, under no duress.  The answer to "He didn't go when he was called,
why should I?" is "Because you said you would, kid.  If you'd wanted
to take a special oath that said, 'I'll obey all lawful orders of my
superior officers unless I don't like the particular officer or his
politics,' you should have said something about it then.  You didn't.
End of discussion."

> Before you fire up your flame throwers, take some time and ask
> yourself how you would really feel if Gov. Clinton told you that
> your child (or you) had to go and die for this county?

It all depends on what you mean by "had" in "had to go and die for
this country."  If you mean that Clinton was going to re-establish
conscription in this nation, I'd brand him as as much of an asshole as
every other President who's used that evil tool, and I'd oppose it and
him.  But if you mean that he'd merely send off to war men and women
who'd already volunteered for that sort of work, well, then my opinion
would depend on where the war was, who it was against, why it was
being fought, etc.  For both possible meanings of your question,
though, I think my answers would be the same regardless of whether the
current President had ever served in the military or not.

-- William December Starr <wdstarr@athena.mit.edu>
From: kingsley@hpwrce.mayfield.hp.com (Kingsley Morse)
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 23:43:22 GMT
Subject: Please Help
Organization: HP Western Response Center