{"id":1857,"date":"2014-05-03T06:10:01","date_gmt":"2014-05-03T10:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/?p=1857"},"modified":"2014-05-02T13:23:53","modified_gmt":"2014-05-02T17:23:53","slug":"military-conscription-shows-the-evil-of-ukraines-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/?p=1857","title":{"rendered":"Military Conscription Shows the Evil of Ukraine\u2019s Government"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author: Gennady Stolyarov II<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I have, in the past, expressed ambivalence regarding the government of Oleksandr Turchynov and Arseniy Yatseniuk in Ukraine, but that government\u2019s decision on May 1, 2014, to impose military conscription<\/a> for men aged 18 to 25 clearly reveals it to be evil and unworthy of even verbal support, not to mention the material assistance and economic bailouts currently lavished on it by Western governments and the International Monetary Fund.<\/p>\n

As I wrote in 2008 in \u201cWhy Freedom is Free and Rights Are Right: The Case Against Conscription, Compulsion, and Confiscation<\/a>\u201d, conscription is murder by lottery: \u201cBy fielding an army of conscripts, a government necessarily guarantees that some <\/em>of those conscripts will be killed \u2013 although nobody knows in advance who <\/em>will die. In effect, this is no different from selecting a large number of fit young men, assigning numbers to each of them, and picking a few of the numbers out of a hat \u2013 whereafter those whose numbers have been picked will be shot. Conscription is just such a murder by lottery \u2013 except that the picking of numbers is performed by the vicissitudes of the battlefield rather than the luck of a draw. The responsibility for the deaths of millions of young men from conscripted armies throughout world history lies solely on the shoulders of the governments who conscripted them. The enemy soldiers who killed them were mere instruments of murder; they were likely only following orders \u2013 and were likely themselves under compulsion to do so. The government officials who drafted the men, however, did so of their own free will and even with enthusiasm.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would be a complete contradiction of the principles of liberty and peace to support any government that conscripts its young men to become cannon fodder \u2013 disposable pawns in the power struggles of older, powerful leaders who will not themselves bear the physical costs of their desires to dominate over one group of people or another. Vladimir Putin\u2019s regime is evil, too, and so are many of the militants aligned with it, as I have acknowledged previously<\/a>. But supporting one evil just because it is arrayed against another is neither moral nor effective. American foreign policy engages in this support for the \u201cenemy of the enemy\u201d at almost every available opportunity, and this always comes back to hurt Americans in both the long and the not-so-long term.<\/p>\n

Ironically, it was the overthrown Viktor Yanukovych who had abolished <\/em>conscription in 2013 \u2013 perhaps the only good and liberty-friendly decision he made. Yanukovych deserved to be overthrown for instigating the killings of his own people, but this new government of thugs is no better. Indeed, it has managed to undo the one good legacy of Yanukovych\u2019s reign! And yes, it is a government of thugs. This March 5 article<\/a> from Channel 4 News in the United Kingdom \u2013 no Putin mouthpiece! \u2013 explains how many of the top posts in the Ukrainian government are occupied by leaders of Svoboda and Right Sector, two ultra-nationalist groups that grew out of explicitly fascist movements that use explicit Nazi symbols such as the Wolfsangel<\/a>. Here are two images<\/a>: at the top, Svoboda\u2019s Oleh Tyahnybok delivers a Nazi salute; at the bottom, he poses with arch-interventionist and neoconservative warmonger John McCain. Right Sector\u2019s leader Dmytro Yarosh is Ukraine\u2019s Deputy Secretary of National Security \u2013 security, that is, for those who meet Yarosh\u2019s standards of ethnic and linguistic \u201cpurity\u201d.<\/p>\n

Neither side in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine is just or right, or anything but destructive to the interests of the only innocent parties in the mix \u2013 civilians who seek to live and work in peace. No principle, no signal, no feverish nationalistic pride, no set of lines drawn on a map is worth the life of a single human being. As Voltaire poignantly and perceptively expressed it in his Philosophical Dictionary, \u201cIt needs twenty years to lead man from the plant state in which he is within his mother\u2019s womb, and the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of the reason begins to appear. It has needed thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.\u201d No worthless, ephemeral power struggles and posturing can ever justify sacrificing the existence of the rich individual universe \u2013 the incomparably intricate and sophisticated mind and body \u2013 of any actual human being.<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian government is forcing young men to kill their fellow Ukrainian and Russian young men, against whom they have no individual grievances. This is vile and reprehensible, and the Ukrainian government deserves to fall. It would be easy for it to fall and would not require active external intervention; the West would just need to withdraw its support and let the situation unfold as it would with only the involvement of local actors. If the West continues to prop it up with aid, this would only prolong the spree of destruction engaged in by people who should never have had a chance at high office in any civilized society, who should have been marginalized much like the Ku Klux Klan and various neo-Nazi parties are treated in the United States today. No government that uses its own people as cannon fodder against their will deserves to exist; no country whose \u201cterritorial integrity\u201d must be maintained by a conscript army deserves for its territory to remain intact.<\/p>\n

As to the young Ukrainian men about to suffer under the yoke of military conscription, my advice to them can be found in my poem \u201cThe Draft Dodger<\/a>\u201d, written in 2004 but still just as relevant ten years later. As one who proudly escaped Alexander Lukashenko\u2019s Belrusian military conscription myself (I have subsequently become a US citizen \u2013 so I am thankfully safe from that particular tyranny), I wish these innocent young men all the best in finding peaceful, prosperous lives outside the heinous havoc which they did not create.<\/p>\n

The Draft Dodger (2004)
\n<\/strong>G. Stolyarov II<\/p>\n

I have been sentenced to a war.
\nAnd my offense? Naught but my age.
\nI\u2019ll suffer pestilence and gore,
\nAnd die upon a foreign stage.
\nThe verdict has been passed by those
\nWho wish to equal me to rags,
\nPlug sand into a breathing nose,
\nBorrow my life, return dog-tags.<\/p>\n

They tell me, \u201cFreedom is not free,\u201d
\nAnd thus they seek mine to deprive.
\nBut no! I\u2019ll courage have to flee,
\nTo choose to prosper and survive!
\nThe right that mine was from the womb,
\nThat I had bought with Reason\u2019s gold,
\nI shall not lay before a tomb,
\nBut will Self\u2019s Shrine from robbers hold.<\/p>\n

I claim no more than what is mine;
\nTo rise each morning when I will,
\nTo build, compose, create, refine,
\nAnd heed no Congressman\u2019s dread bill,
\nWhose parasitic voting bloc
\nMy soul as spoils of war would claim,
\nNo noble war of awe and shock,
\nBut rabble-rousers\u2019 power game.<\/p>\n

When nations seek me for their slave,
\nTheir cause, their plight shall pass in vain.
\nLet no man give but what he gave,
\nOf his own will, for his own gain.
\nFreedom can\u2019t stand on sacrifice;
\nWith blood and bones I shan\u2019t it craft.
\nI shall not offer prey to vice,
\nAnd, proudly, I shall dodge this draft!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author: Gennady Stolyarov II I have, in the past, expressed ambivalence regarding the government of Oleksandr Turchynov and Arseniy Yatseniuk in Ukraine, but that government\u2019s decision on May 1, 2014, to impose military conscription for men aged 18 to 25 clearly reveals it to be evil and unworthy of even verbal support, not to mention the material assistance and economic bailouts currently lavished on it by Western governments and the International Monetary Fund. As I wrote in 2008 in \u201cWhy Freedom is Free and Rights Are Right: The Case Against Conscription, Compulsion, and Confiscation\u201d, conscription is murder by lottery: \u201cBy fielding an army of conscripts, a government necessarily guarantees that some of those conscripts will be killed \u2013 although nobody knows in advance who will die. In effect, this is no different from selecting a large number of fit young men, assigning numbers to each of them, and picking a few of the numbers out of a hat \u2013 whereafter those whose numbers have been picked will be shot. Conscription is just such a murder by lottery \u2013 except that the picking of numbers is performed by the vicissitudes of the battlefield rather than the luck of a draw. The responsibility for the deaths of millions of young men from conscripted armies throughout world history lies solely on the shoulders of the governments who conscripted them. The enemy soldiers who killed them were mere instruments of murder; they were likely only following orders \u2013 and were likely themselves under compulsion to do so. The government officials who drafted the men, however, did so of their own free will and even with enthusiasm.\u201d It would be a complete contradiction of the principles of liberty and peace to support any government that conscripts its young men to become cannon fodder \u2013 disposable pawns in the power struggles of older, powerful leaders who will not themselves bear the physical costs of their desires to dominate over one group of people or another. Vladimir Putin\u2019s regime is evil, too, and so are many of the militants aligned with it, as I have acknowledged previously. But supporting one evil just because it is arrayed against another is neither moral nor effective. American foreign policy engages in this support for the \u201cenemy of the enemy\u201d at almost every available opportunity, and this always comes back to hurt Americans in both the long and the not-so-long term. Ironically, it was the overthrown Viktor Yanukovych who had abolished conscription in 2013 \u2013 perhaps the only good and liberty-friendly decision he made. Yanukovych deserved to be overthrown for instigating the killings of his own people, but this new government of thugs is no better. Indeed, it has managed to undo the one good legacy of Yanukovych\u2019s reign! And yes, it is a government of thugs. This March 5 article from Channel 4 News in the United Kingdom \u2013 no Putin mouthpiece! \u2013 explains how many of the top posts in the Ukrainian government are occupied by leaders of Svoboda and Right Sector, two ultra-nationalist groups that grew out of explicitly fascist movements that use explicit Nazi symbols such as the Wolfsangel. Here are two images: at the top, Svoboda\u2019s Oleh Tyahnybok delivers a Nazi salute; at the bottom, he poses with arch-interventionist and neoconservative warmonger John McCain. Right Sector\u2019s leader Dmytro Yarosh is Ukraine\u2019s Deputy Secretary of National Security \u2013 security, that is, for those who meet Yarosh\u2019s standards of ethnic and linguistic \u201cpurity\u201d. Neither side in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine is just or right, or anything but destructive to the interests of the only innocent parties in the mix \u2013 civilians who seek to live and work in peace. No principle, no signal, no feverish nationalistic pride, no set of lines drawn on a map is worth the life of a single human being. As Voltaire poignantly and perceptively expressed it in his Philosophical Dictionary, \u201cIt needs twenty years to lead man from the plant state in which he is within his mother\u2019s womb, and the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of the reason begins to appear. It has needed thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.\u201d No worthless, ephemeral power struggles and posturing can ever justify sacrificing the existence of the rich individual universe \u2013 the incomparably intricate and sophisticated mind and body \u2013 of any actual human being. The Ukrainian government is forcing young men to kill their fellow Ukrainian and Russian young men, against whom they have no individual grievances. This is vile and reprehensible, and the Ukrainian government deserves to fall. It would be easy for it to fall and would not require active external intervention; the West would just need to withdraw its support and let the situation unfold as it would with only the involvement of local actors. If the West continues to prop it up with aid, this would only prolong the spree of destruction engaged in by people who should never have had a chance at high office in any civilized society, who should have been marginalized much like the Ku Klux Klan and various neo-Nazi parties are treated in the United States today. No government that uses its own people as cannon fodder against their will deserves to exist; no country whose \u201cterritorial integrity\u201d must be maintained by a conscript army deserves for its territory to remain intact. As to the young Ukrainian men about to suffer under the yoke of military conscription, my advice to them can be found in my poem \u201cThe Draft Dodger\u201d, written in 2004 but still just as relevant ten years later. As one who proudly escaped Alexander Lukashenko\u2019s Belrusian military conscription myself (I have subsequently become a US citizen \u2013 so I am thankfully safe from that particular tyranny), I wish these innocent young men all the best in finding peaceful, prosperous lives outside the heinous havoc which they did not create. The Draft Dodger (2004) G. Stolyarov II I have been sentenced to a war. And my offense? Naught but my age. I\u2019ll suffer pestilence and gore, And die upon a foreign stage. The verdict has been passed by those Who wish to equal me to rags, Plug sand into a breathing nose, Borrow my life, return dog-tags. They tell me, \u201cFreedom is not free,\u201d And thus they seek mine to deprive. But no! I\u2019ll courage have to flee, To choose to prosper and survive! The right that mine was from the womb, That I had bought with Reason\u2019s gold, I shall not lay before a tomb, But will Self\u2019s Shrine from robbers hold. I claim no more than what is mine; To rise each morning when I will, To build, compose, create, refine, And heed no Congressman\u2019s dread bill, Whose parasitic voting bloc My soul as spoils of war would claim, No noble war of awe and shock, But rabble-rousers\u2019 power game. When nations seek me for their slave, Their cause, their plight shall pass in vain. Let no man give but what he gave, Of his own will, for his own gain. Freedom can\u2019t stand on sacrifice; With blood and bones I shan\u2019t it craft. I shall not offer prey to vice, And, proudly, I shall dodge this draft!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[289,330,331,332,333,84,96,51,52,41,334,335,336,337,339,774,141,223,306,338,307],"class_list":["post-1857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pol","tag-arseniy-yatseniuk","tag-bailout","tag-belarus","tag-conscription","tag-draft","tag-feature","tag-foreign-policy","tag-g-stolyarov-ii","tag-gennady-stolyarov-ii","tag-history","tag-international-monetary-fund","tag-liberty","tag-military","tag-oleksandr-turchyvon","tag-poem","tag-pol","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-voltaire","tag-war"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1857"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1861,"href":"https:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857\/revisions\/1861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wavechronicle.com\/wave\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}