The Finance people argue that a huge chunk of the military budget is spent on pensions. In order to keep the army young and fresh, officers are pensioned off at the ripe old age of 42 -- and for the rest of their lives receive very generous pensions. This applies not only to combat officers, who spend much time in the field and neglect their families, but also to paper shifters, wallahs and technical personnel, whose job is essentially civilian. Timid suggestions to pay less from now on are angrily rejected.
When a general goes home, the army considers it its comradely duty to provide him with a suitable civilian job. The country is swimming with ex-generals and ex-colonels who hold central positions in politics, public administration, government-owned corporations and services, etc. Tycoons employ them for huge salaries because of their influential connections. Many of them have founded "security-related" companies and are engaged in the world-wide import and export of arms and military equipment.
Almost every day, these ex's appear on TV and write in newspapers as experts on political and military affairs, thus exercising enormous influence on public opinion.
Few of them are "leftists" and propagate pro-peace views. The vast majority propound opinions which range from "center-right" to the fascist right.
Why?
THE SAME cynic may put forward a very simple explanation. War is the army's element. The essence of the military profession is making war and preparing for war. Its entire existence is based on war-making.
It is natural for every professional person to long for an opportunity to show his or her professional proficiency. Peace rarely provides such an opportunity for military officers. War is a huge opportunity. War brings attention, promotion, life-long advancement. In war, a military officer can show his mettle and excel in ways unsuspected in peace.
(Senior officers like to declare that they hate war more than anyone else "because they have seen its ravages." That is pure nonsense.)
Occupation is also, of course, a kind of war. It is, to quote Clausewitz, a continuation of politics by other means.
I AM not a cynic, and do not tend towards the cynical view, which is necessarily simple and superficial.
I am ready to accept that the great majority of present and past career military people are, at least in their own view, true idealists. When their comrades finish their compulsory army duty and embark on well-paying civilian careers, the officers remain in the army out of a sense of duty and patriotism. If they believed in peace, they would have sacrificed everything for peace.
Trouble is, they don't.
The army creates an outlook, a worldview that is inherent in its very nature. It tells the soldier from the very first day that there is an "enemy", against whom he must be ready to fight and, if necessary, sacrifice his life. The world is full of potential enemies, evil and cruel, who endanger the fatherland. One does not need to be a Jew and remember the Holocaust to know this (though it certainly helps).
Could Hitler, once in power, have been overthrown except by war? Was there another way to save the world?
Clearly not. Despised as he may be in peaceful times, in times of need it is the general to whom everybody looks and who is expected to save the nation.
This conviction, repeated every day for years and years, shapes the military mind. It will continue to do so until mankind succeeds at long last in setting up a world-wide governance structure to make war a thing of the past.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
