What is the purpose of the Armed Forces? What then, is a veteran?

by Tom Barnes, Staff Writer

That is a big question, and by extension, it can be extrapolated that the veteran has a purpose and an identity that will follow-on from how one answers that question. In the beginning of this Republic we had a very small standing army and no navy.

Whatever military situation evolved or might have evolved was expected to be handled primarily by militias that would be raised by the local population experiencing the problem. Andrew Jackson fought the Battle of New Orleans in 1814 with an army that was more or less mostly militia. He even had a few French pirates along to help him.

This more or less continued until after WWII. Even through the Civil War state militias were raised and then sent into battle with officers elected by the men and a standing federal army that was actually quite small. WWI had a more or less brigade situation where men were raised back home into units like New York’s famous Fighting 69th and men went into battle with other men from the same general locale or region.

It was not until WWII that huge numbers of men and women (over 16 million) were in an American uniform and fighting mostly alongside other Americans from other parts of the country than their own. The professional American armed forces had been born. And a subtle shift took place. 

Now America needed a large standing Armed Forces to protect the empire that had grown overseas. Defense industry appendages that today we would probably refer to as "contractors" made their living by producing arms or sending materiel or (as today) providing mercenaries to fight in wars and brush fire skirmishes to further tighten the hold that the American Defense Industry held on large portions of the globe.

You must understand, in a very real sense, the American defense industry is not an outgrowth of American government or American foreign policy. Exactly the opposite is true. American foreign policy and the American government is in some senses a very real outgrowth of the reach, desires and needs of the American defense industry.

The American in uniform does not so much serve the interests of the American government and the American people as he or she serves the interests of the American defense establishment and/or American industry in general.

Once the preceeding sentence is accepted as a true reflection of how the world works for a soldier, sailor, airman or marine, a veteran’s entire paradigm shifts. In a terribly real and uncompromising way, the American Service man and woman works as an enforcer for the merchants and the American movers and shakers in the world marketplace.

To present this in a polite manner, they are enforcers for the Big Cheese in the neighborhood. They make sure that he gets his cut on any business conducted on the block. Think of the world as 1930s Chicago and you see what servicemen and women have become. We are and have been soldiers for Capone for well over a century. We ensure that nobody will welch on the protection money that he is owed. We have been and continue to be muscle men for the mob. It really is that simple.

The following is a series of quote by a two time Congressional Medal of Honor winner, Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (Ret.):

"War is a racket. …

War, like any other racket, pays high dividends to the very few. But what does it profit the masses?…The cost of operations is always transferred to the people who do not profit. …

But there is a way to stop this racket. It cannot be smashed by disarmament conferences, by peace parleys at Geneva, by resolutions of well-meaning but impractical groups. It can be effectively smashed only by taking the profit out of war.

The only way to stop it is by conscription of capital before conscription of the nation’s manhood. …

Let the officers and directors of our armament factories, our gun builders and munitions makers and shipbuilders all be conscripted–to get $30 a month, the same wage paid to the lads in the trenches. Give capital thirty days to think it over and you will learn by that time there will be no war. That will stop the racket–that, and nothing else."

Forum Magazine, September, 1934

So I ask you, if a two time Congressional Medal of Honor winner thinks we have been used as enforcers for Big Business what actions are called for by veterans? What is the appropriate response from American veterans to ensure that this situation changes? How do we get back our self respect? How do we stop American Big Business, especially the Defense Establishment, from sacrificing poor and working class kids to their greed? How do veterans break the cycle of vicious manipulation here?

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)