The Tip of the Spear
There is one imperative that drives the ethics of citizenship. Tell those who claim to speak for you and those who spend the money that you must contribute to the well being of the nation, what they need to know, even though, they don’t know they need to know it.
The tip of the spear in military jargon is the phalanx of warriors that are willing to inflict death, pain and suffering on the enemy in armed struggle. Until the Vietnam war, that spear was made of the sons of the republic chosen from among the pool of eligible eighteen year olds as an obligation of citizenship. Now, it is made of the sons and daughters of the republic who elect to join for the compensation, the educational benefit, the selfless service to community or personal glory and edification.
These warriors have taken an oath to follow the orders issued from on high, within the constraints of morality, or face serious consequences. They pledge their lives to maintain and perpetuate a political estate. All political estates, we are reminded by the military apparatus, begin and end at the tip of that spear. Political ideology of Western Culture advances the premise that there are no political estates that can exist for very long without the loyal dedication of the warrior class willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. We earned our freedom from the Crown based on our willingness to sacrifice our sons for the cause. Without their sacrifice we would be British Citizens.
British Citizens seem as free to us as we are. They seem not to have been overly diminished by their lack of enthusiasm for challenging the Crown with arms. They did Challenge the Crown, powerful despotic rulers, and managed to demand Constitutional Monarchy without armed insurrection. They did it with persuasion and influence gained from education and understanding. They did it from reason not from armaments.
The French, when confronting despotic Monarchs, stormed the Bastille. They established their First Republic with arms. This is not the universal case, and Republics established by the force of arms have by no means demonstrated greater staying power than some Absolute Monarchies established by decree. Obviously so when considering the number of successive French Republics.
I resent that those who purport to speak for me can allow no distinctions between Republics that lay claim to Sovereign Authority by force of arms and those that lay claim to that authority on Law and Reason. Our public servants it seems cannot bring themselves to establish a paradigm of action on the international stage that is non-violent before all other characteristics. All the treaties to which we are signatories were drawn and executed in the firm hope that they would foreclose the use of violence in the affairs of nations. Diplomacy was crafted to prevent heads of state from backing their interlocutors into corners, binding action that was predicated on violence. Pre-emption as a Foreign Policy is a policy that is predicated on violence.
It is entirely possible that the Papa Doc to Baby Doc transition could have provided the paradigm of Papa Saddam to Baby Udai or Qusay transition that would have eliminated the need for the collateral damage that this war has wrought.
Smart weapons in the hands of dumb leaders does not give any of us more security. It delivers less security.
There are several reasons that were advanced for the justification of this war. To make the people of Iraq free and to make us more secure when we venture forth in the world to do our business. A Global Economy is an economy where the First Estate can operate freely without paying protection money to thugs or their own government.
The future will determine how well the vision of a Global Economy can proceed and at what cost.
Bob