In today's Washington Post, there's an opinion piece by Max Boot and Michael O'Hanlon entitled, A Military Path to Citizenship. The article argues that we should recruit 50,000 willing foreigners for three years, about 10 percent of our immigration quota, directly into the armed forces for a 4-year tour of duty that would lead to legal status and ultimately American citizenship.
Max Boot is one of the intellectual architects of the neoconservative push into the Pentagon, making the case for an American empire in an article in the Weekly Standard as early as October of 2001. When things started going sour with his vision of a domino effect of democratic, western-leaning nations across the region, he did as any intellectual would do, blame the people who had to make the real plans, as seen here. For Boot, there's never enough military involvement. Killing terrorists is always better than making friends, and wherever possible, contract out the job to mercenaries who are above (or below) the constraints laid out in such meaningless pieces of parchment as the constitution or the Geneva Conventions. If things get worse, it's because someone's messing up the tactics on his brilliant strategy, never because he was wrong. Boot's line of reasoning contains all the elements for the classic setup of tragic folly, but this is a theatre of war.
The notion of actively recruiting immigrants to fight our wars is repulsive to me, but to Boot and O'Hanlon, it is one of the keys to the growth of empire. It's no different than foreign heroes of the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, or the janissaries, gladiators and foreign conscripts of history. Maybe there is no historical difference. Maybe the morality of it can be justified; after all, these immigrant soldiers are willing to put their lives in danger for a chance at access to the richness and freedom we enjoy here at home. But look at the history. Empire expansion always leads to total, catestrophic collapse of massive territories that the empire accretes. The Romans were ultimately overrun by the people of the north, many of whom they had elevated to high levels in their own militaries, many were even citizens of Rome. The Ottoman collapse had little to do with their conscription of janisaries largely from southeastern Europe, but it could be argued that their expansion and collapse was an early precursor to the problems we now face in the Middle East.
America should not be an empire. It should be a Godfather. Imagine the influence we could weild with just 1 percent of the current defense budget if we directed it towards foreign aid, develpment, health and education programs. There's a saying in Washington, "a billion dollars here, a billion there... pretty soon you're talking about real money." Our total budget for national defense for fiscal year 2006 is $447,398,000,000. Our budget for all forms of non-military foreign aid in 2004 was roughly $27,000,000,000. That's a ratio of about 16 military dollars to every 1 dollar of money for development. And these guys want more and more. What's one percent of that 447 billion dollars add up to? Not a whole lot. What do we spend on aid as a percentage of our GDP? About 2/10ths of a percent.
Consider what a million dollars (one one thousandth of a billion dollars) could do to improve water and sanitation, bring electricity, to pay teachers. One million dollars a year could give full scholarships to Harvard for roughly 25 promising foreigners. What if we granted them citizenship? People will not be content to live under a military empire. They would love to live under a benevolent king who asks little in return except not to blow oneself up. Hamas and other Islamic militant groups already provide these services, except for the catch of sacrificing oneself for the infidel. Do we honestly think people would choose to fight our infidels over theirs? Maybe, but consider the moral dimension. We'd lose whatever high ground we've managed to retain.
Did it ever occur to Max Boot that people choose to blow themselves up when there aren't many other options? Blowing up their friends, families, neighborhoods and nations will certainly do much to further limit those options. Does he think that these individuals would (or should) choose to fight on our side? I fail to see how increasing our military presence worldwide will somehow make their lives better, somehow make those bored, angry adolescents less likely to choose Al Qaeda over Algebra. Both are local inventions after all.
Let's return to the idea of recruiting foreigners to do our bidding in our foreign conquests. How can it be a better idea to kill people than to offer them assistance? Aside from foreign conquest being an inferior product (pound for pound, dollar for dollar) than foreign aid and support, imagine the cold calculating mind of someone who thinks empire can just be bought from the lowest bidder. Is this someone with a positive vision of where the world could be in 50 years, or is this the mindset of someone who's already got the bomb shelter dug in his back yard?
Then there are the more basic, gutteral criticisms. Is it right for us to sit in our living rooms and have the sacrifices of someone else's children be displayed on TV? Can we be real judges of what is a just war if we make no sacrifices of our own, if we defer the costs of war to Chinese loans, and the maiming and murder of strangers? I think not.
If we're going to expand the military, involve ourselves further in the conquest of others, then it should be our boys and girls who serve. It should be our elected officials who muster up the courage to reinstitute the draft, scarry as that may be, and it should be their children on the front lines along with everyone else's. War is not free.
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