Enlist in the International Guard and Serve Globalism?

In the cold war era, serving in the National Guard presented a simpler opportunity to believe one was serving national rather than global corporate interests.Today the belief is harder to attain. When one asks 'what would Ronald Reagan do(?)' on a particular national defense policy, one seeks the understanding of America's best pragmatic post-Eisenhower/Nixon President on defense issues. Reagan had a penchant for successfully defending the real interests of the nation. Ronald Reagan was no multi-trillion dollar big spender on foreign overseas missions; as are Iraq and Afghanistan Bush II-Obama policies

Ronald Reagan's defense budget built up a large military for potential rather than actual use. The military was capable of good military action, yet was not largely employed in war as economic and social self-interests tended to prevail. Following 9-11 I believe Ronald Reagan would have taken a far different course than the Bush II policy of protracted foreign engagement with a vast deficit and harm to the U.S. national economy.

Corporate influence over Government has diminished democratic, national self-interest. Half-baked political economics has made of corporatism a kind of crack-pot anointed fail-safe philosophy. The financial sector has swollen in size, too many jobs outsourced without adequate replacement, and nationalism has been attacked in the corporate broadcast media. The financial industry was allowed to become 'too big to fail' and too big to let nationalism and self-interest, low unemployment rate and no public debt be prioritized.

What was needed in Afghanistan following the Taliban's unwillingness to give up Al Qa'eda-which they might not have been capable of anyway, was saturation bombing of select targets. The United States contains Iran and North Korea reasonably well,and could have tolerated the existence of Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban occasionally smoked by B-52 sortees when their terrorist actions against the United States became unbearable.

The same containment of Iraq might have been pursued with a total degradation of Iraq's military capability such that domestic subversion and revolutionary attacks could have increased, or to the extent that Iran might have attacked enabling a U.S. response to the Iranian aggression in Iraq again by air. The Bush II choices to pursue the most expensive possible reconstruction of government of ungoverned people seems more of a choice for internationalism and global corporate profits, military adventurism and increased output for the military industrial complex than a rational Reagan-like military policy of walking softly and carrying a big stick striking only when really needed to eliminate foreign capacity to continue assault missions upon direct U.S. interests.

With the very high cost of sending even private E-1's to Afghanistan or Iraq for extended tours of duty the present U.S.military policy is very un-Reaganesque. It is a policy of globalism and international defense of Chinese copper mines in Afghanistan, and for and increased military size. This is why, in a jobless recovery, with an Obama plan to increase public debt a trillion dollars a year the next decade, the corporatist broadcasts soliciting people to enlist in 'the national guard' ring so false. It seems like 'enlist in the international guard' would be more honest.

Military officers in the revolutionary era were not without genuine political opinion. Perhaps it was easier to avoid the draft in 1775 than today. It was not so simple to avoid the British colonial government though, so those that sought political liberation from the onerous British policy toward the United States had few remedies besides personal military service3 if they wanted things to change.

Today the globalist corporate ubiquitous presence requires silence from its employees at the executive level on many kinds of non-sycophantic political expression. I would think the military leaders of today also must be yes men, sort of remote control corporate yes men, if they wish to serve. If the Gates leadership brings the service to gay integration with heterosexuals in units, it is difficult to imagine that many straight soldiers will resign. Money and career overcomes political opinion far more than it did in the revolutionary era perhaps.

Well, not to pick on gays, it is a clear and present issue that brings the nature of loyalty to hierarchical leadership up, and why the National Guard to evolve into being more of an international guard of global corporatism than a force to defend Pittsburgh, or Fairbanks or Miami. It is plain that the military response to 9-11 was exceedingly incompetent in financial nature regarding the challenge, and did more financial harm to the U.S. economy that the foreign terrorist did. There has been no continuing harvest of large numbers of illegal combatants to fill Gitmo's cells with, and the actual terrorist efforts have been fairly pathetic since then. (9-11 has been used as a license to unlimited deficit spending and disregard of U.S. national economic interests. It is difficult to believe that anything more than a tripling of the size of the C.I.A. and F.B.I., building a salt-water moat along the Mexican border with berms and pipelines, increasing U,.S. Customs and increasing the numbers of stealth fighter-bombers was needed. Such could have cost less than a tenth of what was bought by the Bush II and Obama Administrations with such harm to U.S. national financial interests.