Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven
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| Sunny Days in Heaven Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven |
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Thursday, December 04, 2003 Mercenaries Being a soldier in the Roman Empire was one of the best situations a free man could be in. He was rarely in battle (more regularly garrisoned), he had a good salary, free medical care (the best in the world at the time), he lived in barracks or with his family, ate regularly and was looked after. In retirement, he was often granted land to settle a new town (and act as an army auxiliary in the province to keep the peace). The Roman soldier was one of the healhiest, and longer living of people in the world then. Most soldiers in the later empire were not Roman citizens, but men from Spain, Gaul, Syria, Britain, and so forth. Today, I'm wondering if we will ever see a draft army again in America. We have many foreign men serving in our armed forces who are assured of citizenship when completing their terms of enlistment; and we keep ratcheting up the benefits to our own people to induce them to serve or re-enlist. Now, our soldiers aren't overpaid, but there will come a time when we will have to remedy that as the men of the armed forces see their value -- that they aren't that easy to replace. At what point do men become mercenary and not patriots? We are far from that point, but it looms on a distant horizon, I fear. How many of us actually know a soldier presently stationed in Iraq or elsewhere? I have a friend of a friend who have a son in Iraq, but I don't know any soldiers personally. That's true for a great many Americans, I think. Our people of the armed forces have become a rather small sub-culture. That was always true when we were between wars until after WW2, when we began to maintain a large defense capability. But for a decade we've been downsizing the military since we can do more now with fewer people. Well, the processes of life and societies keeps carrying us along, and times will change everything; yet it is remarkable how similarly those processes re-occur. I'd always hoped it wouldn't happen to the US. posted by Mark Butterworth | 1:04 AM | |
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