Infinite Monkeys

But, of course, the logical flaw here is glaring. If there is someone coming to kill your son, would you kill to protect him?

I think the answer to that is obvious, as is the difference between self-defense (either personal or familial) and war.

OK, so what if there is an army coming to kill all the sons? Does that justify an army and a war?

"I must ask if his life would have come to meaning or nobility or any usefulness if he should sit—with his human hands and head and eyes—in the cockpit of a bomber, dealing out pain and grief and death to people unknown to him. And my answer to all these questions is one that I must attempt to live by: No. (99-100)"

Sorry, this is nothing more than silly senitmentality.

David: "... Does that justify an army and a war?"

I would not presume to answer for Mr. Berry, but the scenario seems to me to be the most empty of straw men, seeing as the United States hasn't fought a defensive war in almost 200 years. Unless you count the South's defense in the War Between the States, which was still almost 150 years ago.

As for me, I have yet to hear a single argument for a standing army that overrides Berry's "family" principle.

JamesPh.: "Sorry, this is nothing more than silly senitmentality." [sic]

Sorry, but that's nothing more than name-calling that doesn't even attempt to address the point of the excerpt.

Normally I would agree with your characterizing my comment as nothing more than name-calling. But in this instance the excerpt seems so silly and vapid that calling it such seems appropriate.

We haven't fought a defensive war in 200 years? You exclude WWII because we went on the offense after we were attacked at Pear Harbor? I'm confused.

And to clarify: It doesn't matter whether we're talking about a standing army or a loosely-structured militia. My child doesn't owe their life to anyone but God, and perhaps their family. Their country has no legitimate claim to it.

"I must ask if there is anything I possess—any right, any piece of property, any comfort, any joy—that I would ask [my son] to die to permit me to keep."

I honestly don't know where to begin with this construction. I've started three times. Nothing I've written seems to say as much as what C.S. Lewis what hinting at with his "men without chests."

The book quote is not about conscription.

I keep hearing about it, but where did this ridiculous notion come from; that parents send their kids to go fight for them? No one does that. Framing the scene as asking one's child to offer his life for the parent is a distortion, and to my mind, trickery.

Surely, some children are taught about the values of duty, honor, obligation, or tradition. Some children are taught the value of sacrifice in the service of others. But the decision to serve as martial defender in our current society is volitional.

To demean all military service as something akin to child sacrifice casts that parent as ultimately selfish. To ask one's grown child to forego laying down his life for brethren - what John Gill descibes as "the highest instance of love among men;
and in which believers, should not come short of them," for a parent's sake, strikes me as disgustingly selfish. Our children are not ours. They are first God's, and second their own.

We ought not to cripple our children's ability to do what is right in the most dire circumstances by imposing on them some wrongly overinflated duty they have to us as individual parents and our personal love for them.

If all men of fighting age were treated as "Private Ryan" out of duty to loving parents, we wouldn't be free enough to have this argument. My mother's and grandmother's losses of husband and father and friends nearly prevented me from putting myself in harm's way and serving as a Marine. But I walked the wall. I didn't just walk it for them. They wanted me not to. I did it for them anyway. And I did it for you.

Save me any guff about not asking me to, or what I "might have been ordered to do." Save me any arm chair sophistry about lawful orders. Those in service are not slaves or automatons. My service came at a time when I least trusted the government and was a card carrying, registered Libertarian. I signed up to protect and defend and did so honorably.

[responses suspended pending outcome of personal side conversation]

[responses resumed]

James, I exclude WWII for two reasons:

1. Our entry into the European theater was not defensive.
2. I would judge the attack on Pearl Harbor to be provoked.

I recognize that both points are debatable, particularly the second, but that's where I stand on those.

But, even if you count BOTH theaters of WWII to be defensive wars, that still leaves (off the top of my head):

Various Indian Wars
Mexican-American War
Civil War (North-initiated, non-defensive)
Spanish-American War
Philllipine-American War
World War I
Korea
Vietnam
Iraq I
Iraq II

None of which were defensive wars. And that leaves out all sorts of "sub-wars" like Bosnia, Grenada, Somalia, and endless U.S.-sponsored crap in Latin America throughout the 1980's, not to mention our roles in establishing and/or propping up regimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc.

All of that to bring me back to responding to David's point: regardless of the personal intentions of any of its individual leaders or soldiers, which are of course quite difficult to know, the United States government has routinely (normatively, I would argue) used its army against parties that could not fairly be described as "an army coming to kill all the sons."

That is my complaint, and that is why Berry's quote (and many of the others excerpted in the review) resonated so strongly with me.

Well, of course, Korea was no defensive war. Nope. Not defensive of our homeland. Or anyone's. [cough] And clearly a dark, dark chapter in our history, with terrible, terrible consequences. What were we THINKING?

Gee, I guess I should be ashamed that my grandfather died voluntarily defending fighting there, consciously (as later reported by eyewitnesses) giving up his life in order to allow other units to escape the human waves of Chinese communists. Since we can assume that the North Koreans and those Chinese were not coming to kill all or the majority of any population's sons [cough], our being there was bad, really bad, mm-kay?

What we those free and prosperous South Korean citizens and dignitaries, who traveled all the way to Washington D.C. to thank me, my mom, and others on the 50th anniversasy of the armistice, THINKING?

I can't speak to your grandfather's motivations for defending the South Koreans, nor would I wish to in this context. As I said in my comment, my statement was not intended to divine the "personal intentions of any of its individual leaders or soldiers" but rather to judge the normative actions of modern armies, specifically the United States military, and even more specifically David's scenario of "an army coming to kill all of the sons."

So, no, the Korean War was not a defensive war for anyone but the South Koreans, who had been involved in numerous previous altercations with the North prior to the full-scale invasion in 1950, and were as interested in pursuing a forced re-unification of Korea as the North were. To the United States government, we were fighting because of Truman's containment doctrine against the Soviet and Chinese communists.

And, keep in mind, that there was still a military draft at the time. That means the United States government was conscripting young American men to go defend another country's children. And I would say that is bad. Really bad. And that those were terrible, terrible consequences for the draftees and their families.

We can pick any one of the conflicts I listed and note individual instances of heroism and individuals who were saved due to U.S. involvement. But that does not change the fundamental issue or my argument.

So how do you define defensive? Whether Pearl Harbor was "provoked" or not is irrelevant; we were attacked. And then Hitler declared war on the U.S. (maybe not a smart decision, but then he made a lot of bad decisions). We were under clear threat of attack in both the Pacific and Atlantic.
The Cold War is an even more complex issue. While I share your libertarian disdain of military interventions such as Guatemala (and I oppose the draft), World War II taught us that sitting quietly why future enemies arm, strengthen, and rape other countries only means that we must fight a much bloodier, costly war when we finally do get involved.