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February 05, 2007

Twain Was Right

I said that we were going to see soldiers start to get demonized more as opposition to the war gets more heated, and I stand by that. Today's example: Mona, who has been posting at Unqualified Offerings of late. She has decided to jump into the Arkin fray by explaining to all us poor dumb soldiers that we really are mercenaries after all.

Now, I'll grant you that in today's Humpty Dumpty world, you can probably find a definition of mercenary somewhere that would cover American troops. But under common definitions of mercenary, or the legal definition of mercenary, soldiers don't really qualify.

But Mona, as is her wont, dips into the Argument from Authority to prove her point, [Update: see below and Mona's post for what she was attempting to do.] noting that no less an authority than William Westmoreland thought of paid soldiers as mercenaries, and that Milton Friedman agreed with him. Reading the actual quote, however, it's pretty clear that Mona doesn't quite understand what Friedman was trying to say.

“In the course of his [General Westmoreland’s] testimony, he made the statement that he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. I [Milton Friedman] stopped him and said, ‘General, would you rather command an army of slaves?’ He drew himself up and said, ‘I don’t like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves.’ I replied, ‘I don’t like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries.’ But I went on to say, ‘If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher.’ That was the last that we heard from the general about mercenaries.” - Milton and Rose Friedman, Two Lucky People Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 380.

Yes, Westmoreland did refer to volunteer soldiers as mercenary. Which only means that he didn't understand the definition any better than Mona. But to interpret that quote as claiming that Friedman agreed with Westmoreland is, to be charitable, an interesting reading. It seems pretty clear to this observer that Friedman was demonstrating to Westmoreland that calling the soldiers mercenary simply because they were to be paid for their service was to debase the term and make it meaningless, since by that definition, every profession is made up of mercenaries.

That's not the important thing for these people, though. Accuracy always places a distant second place in politics, and that's what this is about. Soldiers, by and large, still support the war to a much greater degree than the average American. Add to that their volunteer status, and you have a group of people in need of demonization by the antiwar types in order to strengthen their case. Mark my words: the longer this war goes on, the nastier the antiwar side is going to get towards soldiers.

Update: Mona objects to my characterization of her post, noting that she was attempting to point out that the use of the term mercenary is not limited to the far-left. Fair enough, although somebody a bit more recent than Westmoreland might have been a better example of the right. She also objects to being painted as anti-military. She says she is not and I take her at her word. But however she uses the term mercenary, the fact remains that it is a pejorative term, and its advancement will be used to demonize the troops regardless of Mona's personal desires. This, I should note, does not mean that Mona shouldn't say what she thinks. My intent in highlighting her post was simply to note the spread of this issue. As I said before, this will get worse before it gets better.