“James, I appreciate your writings—especially on masculinity—but in a recent piece you stated that all soldiers are slaves. I have served proudly and am currently an Army reservist, and have never felt like a slave. Aren’t you cheapening the term?”
-Gary
From a wage slave to a military slave, greetings Sir. We live in a society where the term slave has been co-opted for specific racially divisive purposes. Also, the term servant—universally held to indicate a slave from Roman times until about 1865—has been woven into the terminology of our supposedly free society as a form of ideological indoctrination.
Gary, unlike most antiwar types, I really do appreciate your service. But it was service—and still is as you are in the reserves. Your life is a disposable tool, that can be pointed at a machine gun nest by an officer, and expended like a bullet, or more accurately, like livestock—of the dangerous variety.
The Native American warriors pitied soldiers as they were not led by chiefs, but rather driven into combat as one drives dogs or horses or Bison by masters who stayed behind. Of course, the warrior way of doing things has its drawbacks. All of the best Native American generals were killed in the front lines. The civilized slave army has generally done poorly against primitives until the primitive leadership is eroded by this force. The Confederacy suffered a similar fate against the Union with its leadership too often out front. In the Falklands war a big stink arose over a British Colonel dying leading a charge.
Hence situations like that described by Mark Owen, in No Hero, where an armchair Ranger colonel sent a platoon strength unit of SEALs and rangers to certain death simply to say he killed Taliban, when everyone involved knew they were just attacking a 500 pound bomb rigged as an IED. In a free warrior society that Colonel would be either vetoed and voted out for stupidity, or taken down in disgrace after the trap was confirmed by the real leadership at ground level and barely avoided.
However, when you are dealing with industrial scale warfare, the easy chair colonel lives to learn of his mistakes where the war chief does not, and the clunky slave army gets better and better even as the efficient warrior army erodes, losing its best leaders first.
A Brief Survey of Warrior Slaves
In Islam there is no stigma to the word slave, as all men are slaves to God and often have this indicated by the prefix in their name, such as Abd-. In a sense every warrior can be said to be a slave to an ideal, just as the woman is the slave of her body. Warrior rites typically begin for the youth at the same age that the girl first bleeds, and serve as a way to bind him to his people just as her body binds her to the tribe through pregnancy.
The best warriors of the Persian army, the 10,000, were all slaves.
The Roman gladiator was a warrior-slave.
The Romans fought three ‘servile wars’ against slave uprisings. A servant was servile and a slave.
Later the term slave came into more prominent use than servant based on the fact that the most popular sex slaves were Slavic girls. We’ll get into that in The Vagina That Launched A Thousand Ships.
Working class soldiers in the Middle Ages were regarded as less valuable than horses, and were slaughtered instead of captured. None even bothered to count how many were killed! Indeed the French knights at Grecy trampled their own Genoese crossbow men on purpose!
The Malmukes were Turkish war-slaves actually sold as units, who were both slaves to Allah, and to the Sultan of Misr. Eventually they put his ass out to pasture and were slaves to God alone, ruling over men.
The early modern age saw the men that had once been knights officering armies of convicts who were dressed up, marched around, and shot like so many toy soldiers. From this point on the weapon of the officer was not for war fighting but for disciplining and killing the soldier. The pistol is militarily ineffective then and now and has killed more slacking soldiers than enemies. The Roman centurian was likewise armed with a stick to beat his men. John Keegan covers this in The Face of Battle; that the men had to be terrified of the officer in order to take such suicidal commands as necessitated by black powder warfare. The abusive drill instructor is a legacy of that.
The whipping of slaves in colonial plantations, their breaking on the wheel, blowing away, and drawing and quartering—all cruel and fatal punishments—came directly from the military services, where sailors were mostly kidnapped or press ganged and soldiers were condemned criminals.
The Ethic of the War-Slave
Gary, the modern soldier is a slave to the warrior ethic—which is sacred to you and me—and is also slave to a vast military machine, that serves the same tax-farming machine I am enslaved to as a civilian clerk. The more a soldier is a slave to his warrior ethos, or the jihadist is to his belligerent God, the more effective he is, and the less he feels the chains of his earthly servitude.
Slavery and servitude—now called service—has always carried a stigma, so the brand name of the soldier has been upgraded and improved, but his reality remains the same. His ass belongs to Uncle Sam, not himself. To us this does not seem at all the case. I only recognize it because—as a writer—it is my task to look at things from varying perspectives as if they are my own. Looking at your pride in your military service seems like patriotism to us.
If you went back in time and told a British general that you were proud of your service he would say, “A good boy it is that knows his place. Get him a red jacket so those heathens know we do not fear their arrows.”
If you went back in time and told a medieval knight the same thing, he would have you feed his horse and carry his armor.
If you went back in time and told a Roman centurian you were proud to have served, he’d either brand you and send you to die in the mines for desertion, or sell you as a gladiator. And, if you survived your three years and five duels to the death Gary, then you would be free, freer than any man alive today, not even required to pay taxes.
Thanks for putting your ass on the line Gary. I’d rather not call it service. I’m weird like that.
Anyone who thinks he’s indispensable, ain’t! – General George S. Patton Jr.
Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him. “What is it you want?” he asked. She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.” “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?” “We can,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.” When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” - Matthew 20:20-28 (NIV)
Certainly most of the people serving in today’s military don’t like to contemplate the fact that they are “cannon fodder”. But that is indeed what we all are, from buck private to four star general. We exist to be expended, like a round of ammunition. Anybody who is too important to lose will not be allowed to join the military in the first place. At the same time, comparing them to “slaves” strikes the members of the current military as being quite preposterous. They volunteered for service after all, and in their minds there is no way they are treated as harshly as the chattel slaves of old. The modern military is much more egalitarian than the militaries of the past and much more risk adverse when it comes to suffering casualties. There are many more legal protections for service members, and the pay, benefits and living conditions are much better as well. Even better than it is for most of the wage slaves in todays’ economy. For example, if a soldier showed up late for work, not wearing the proper duty uniform and talked back to his supervisor when he was chastised, he might face punishment (fines, extra duty, confinement to post and/or demotion), but in no way would he be faced with immediate dismissal and the loss of his only source of income. As he would be if he was working for the “ghetto grocer”, right? Consider that a hundred years ago someone like Bradley “Chelsea” Manning would have been executed forthwith upon conviction of treason. Today though the U.S. Government is even paying for his “gender reassignment” treatments. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning. In fact the military legal system today is so easy to game, that anyone in the service who wanted to get out of fighting could do so, especially if he or she were willing to endure a modicum of social opprobrium. For example, merely getting arrested for misdemeanor domestic violence (not even a conviction is necessary) will get you excused from having to bear arms, under the federal “Lautenberg Act”. Even if it is part of your “job” to bear arms you will be prohibited from doing so, and further, your superiors will be prohibited by law from making you bear arms.
At same time, nobody wants to be “objectified”, thought of as just a thing, a servant, a tool, a commodity, a sex object, a bank account or a sugar daddy. We want to be our own person, independent and appreciated by others for who we are as a “person”. Even though we seldom hesitate to use other people for our own selfish pleasures. So keep in mind that, as a purely practical matter, if you cannot be used, you are USELESS. You will be discarded, you will not be protected or preserved. Consider that none of the species of animals that human beings eat are in danger of extinction.
This is great Jeremy. I'm posting it, and will send you a copy of the book when it comes out.
Thank you.
James