Hi JW,
Actually, I was thinking of Byzantium post-Manzikert, but ...
I think the anti-war rhetoric certainly played a part in the current situation, but I don't think it is causal - more of a symptom that a source as it were. I think the problem is tied more closely into a shift in the military-economic system. Basically, if we look at the development of industrialization, we can actually track most of the social organization as coming out of the military revolution of Maurice of Nassau; i.e. standardization, assembly line production, time-motion efficiency, etc. This gets adopted (co-opted?) during the early industrial revolution as the basis for the factory production system and then worked back into the military post-F.W. Taylor.
Meanwhile, as Stan would say , "Sierra happens" and the military undergoes major shifts. Up to the present, and we have a system designed by engineers that is increasingly divergent from the society. Don't like your job? Leave and get another one. Don't like your family? The same. Increasingly, "community" is being divorced from physical location and identity is being divorced from citizenship (one of the effects of globalization amongst many) and I think that this is where a lot of the intelligentsia are playing a part. As I note, I really don't want to get started on that rant .
Yup.
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