When I was growing up, the army was where you went if you had no idea what you wanted to do with your life. If you were not smart enough for college, you just wanted to get away from home while you figured out what you wanted to do with your life, or you wanted to get away from the high school girlfriend who expected you to marry her, the army was sort of a catch-all. Then came the Vietnam War.
That war had been around for a while, but it was under the radar of most Americans. Our military commitment there had been relatively small. As it grew and grew, and started chewing up and spitting out in pieces more and more of our young men, attitudes toward the army changed. Eventually the draft was eliminated, and the all volunteer, the 'professional' army emerged.
In Egypt, the military decided that it was not there job to attack civilians to prop up a corrupt regime. In Libya, many in the military defected to the opposition, and actively supported the overthrow of that regime. What would happen here?
One need only look at the behavior of the police to get a picture of how the military would respond in this country. They show up at the Occupy Wall street demonstrations in riot gear, even though the demonstrations have been almost universally peaceful. Of course there have been isolated incidents of trouble, but nothing more than any police officer on a regular patrol might encounter. And they do not wear riot gear on patrol.
The police are essentially a closed culture. Protecting each other is the highest law, far more important than protecting you and I or the law. Why do you think police Internal Affairs units are looked down on by other officers? It is because they are perceived (an not always correctly) as placing the law above that 'highest law'.
With the advent of the 'professional' army, the same exists there. Yes, unemployment has helped the military swell it's ranks, but for the most part you have a military that is completely separated from society as a whole. They will follow orders, even if it means killing unarmed civilians.
In the military, unit cohesion is a matter of life and death. A military unit that does not work together is ineffective. Each individual needs to be able to trust that the person beside him will do his job. But that is not what I am talking about here. Especially in the wars that we have fought most recently, it has never been about protecting America, defending freedom, or any of that nonsense. It has been about getting a job done and getting out alive.
Because if soldiers were encouraged to think too much about what the job actually is, then they might find themselves hesitating at just the wrong time. They might even refuse to follow some orders, or report to someone on some of the things they have seen.
Just following orders, as the Germans said at Nuremberg, is alive and well in the US military. This is by design, as more and more they are being asked to do things that have nothing to do with safeguarding our country. So if a movement like Occupy Wall Street starts to really threaten the 1%, and the military gets involved, do not expect any sympathy from them. It has been drilled out of them.
