Military Thoughts

Numbers 1:2-3 “Take a census of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, every male individually, from twenty years old and above—all who are able to go to war in Israel. You and Aaron shall number them by their armies.”

The “general equity” of the law of Israel is something we should seek after to understand and apply today, even though the civil state of Israel has “expired.” Here we see an age and a gender of fitness to go to war: men and age 20. The expectation here was very likely not a military draft. Examples of draft-like events occur in the Old Testament and are presented both as exceptions and as things which go awry. The “buy-in” to war requires consent.

Further, the organization here showed clan influence. What about a military which prides itself on dismantling young men, and then reassembling them into what the ruler wants? A part of the process of disconnecting men from their roots is to mix them completely with strangers from everywhere. War accounts and war movies from the 20th century stated or implied that this melting pot approach was in some way a great strength of the American military. Aside from the benefits of avoiding a Bedford, VA, type of event* on D-Day, I doubt that it is a strength. Moreover, as our nation has become polyglot and imperial, I question the kind of cooperation you would get from such a soldiery. Would the prison guards at Abu Ghraib have indulged in such torment if they were representative of a small geographic area and kinship group, and would someday return to have to look each other in the eye and know what they had done?

* Men from Bedford, Virginia serving in the 29th Infantry were among the first to storm Omaha Beach on D-Day and therefore suffered significant losses.