“We can sing the praises of the ennobling and embiggening effects of time in the military or time in the peace corps, but this loses its luster when the ennobling and embiggening are done at the point of a gun. "Service" extracted at the point of a gun is not honorable. It is tragic.”
“Some may argue that this is an exercise in incendiary rhetoric, but it is also correct: compulsory service is slavery by definition. Call a spade a spade. Milton Friedman did when he referred to the conscripted army that was fighting in Vietnam as an army of slaves. They were: they went to Vietnam as a result of threats against life and limb. Some who took a principled stand against the war and in line with their convictions, like Muhammad Ali, were stripped of some of the most productive years of their lives.”
As opposed to conscription in American history, I will instead focus on the current nature of military service and the government sanctioned “contracts” that bind members of the Armed Forces to their employer. Specifically, I wish to address the nature of my own "contractual" relationship with the Navy.
First, I wish to unequivocally establish as fact that I, being of sound mind, did enlist into the Navy by my own choice and not as the result of the coercion of any person or group. An equally true statement is that I no longer wish to remain employed by the Navy, yet I’m unable to quit my job without the potential penalty of imprisonment.
I admit and accept that my desire to no longer fulfill the terms to which I agreed may rightly call into question the trustworthiness of my word. I have weighed this potential cost to my reputation, and I’ve found it definitively lacking in comparison with the price required to support an organization and a cause that I believe is unjustified in its termination of countless human lives.
In my own mind, I’ve considered the question of which mistake I would rather confess to any children I may one day have. Would I rather tell them how I failed to live up to the specified number of years that I had promised to labor for a given employer, or that I continued to work for an organization even after I came to believe that it existed for an immoral purpose?
To me the choice is easy, and so I acknowledge that I personally, and no one else, am to blame for my decision to have enlisted in the Navy. I also recognize that I individually bear the responsibility for the fact that I wish to break my word and end my employment. That I have no intent to deny accountability for my desire does not mean that I think the government is justified in holding me to my promise under the threat of imprisonment.
In summary, although I haven’t broken my word, I have definitively expressed that I do not wish to live up to my promised tenure. This expression has been in the form of a request to be released from the terms to which I originally agreed.
Although I no longer desire to do so, each morning I report for duty as ordered, and I complete my assignments without protest. This, however, doesn’t equate to truly being there by choice. A person choosing between prison and work cannot be said to have freely chosen to work. I was not conscripted, but since I now remain employed against my will, is there really any difference?
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