“I’m sorry, my hearing is bad because of the war. Did you say the Navy is going to make seeing a hooker a court-martial offense?” said a Vietnam Navy veteran, Phillip Adams, standing outside the Veterans Health Administration hospital in Manhattan. “Because that would be absurd.”

Absurd if you say so, Mr. Adams, but true nonetheless. On Tuesday, the Pentagon proposed an amendment to the rules of conduct that would make patronizing prostitutes a court-martial offense for overseas soldiers.

The proposal has many hoops to jump through before it could go into effect. The Department of Defense doesn’t believe it could take effect any earlier than next May.

The military is trying to address what it perceives as an epidemic of human trafficking in prostitutes.

In some countries, young women are reportedly kidnapped and brought to serve American soldiers who have dollars in their pockets and itch to spend them. The problem is particularly acute in Southeast Asia, where bordellos practically surround American military bases in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines.

Critics say the proposed rule flies in the face of nearly all recorded history. America is hardly the first country to grapple with the problem.

“If there is anyone who holds the opinion that young men should be interdicted from intrigues with the women of the town, he is indeed austere!” wrote the ancient Roman orator Cicero in the first century B.C.E. “He is at loggerheads not only with the license of the present age, but even with the habits of our ancestors and what they permitted themselves. For when was this not done?”

American history is no cleaner than Roman. The word “hooker,” according to historian Bruce Catton, was popularized during the Civil War when General Joseph Hooker commanded the Army of the Potomac in 1863.

His headquarters near Washington, D.C., was likened by a descendant of President Adams to “a combination bar and brothel.”

The red light district was so often populated with his soldiers that it became known as “Hooker’s Division” and the term “hookers,” though used as early as 1845, gained currency for its value as a pun.

For decades, American fighting vessels have docked at foreign ports and disgorged men with money and a lot of pent up energy.

“When you’ve been at sea so long,” said another Navy veteran, Philip Alando, “there’s some things that need to happen.”

“That’s one of the fringe benefits of being in the military,” said a Korean war Army veteran, Heywood Parker. “You got to blow off some steam.”

During his service aboard an aircraft carrier in the 1970s, Mr. Adams had a prime position to watch a thousand years of naval tradition take place on the beach.

“I saw the captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise with a hooker in the Philippines – and he was married,” Mr. Adams said.

The military made condoms available during the Vietnam War, but servicemen were loathe to use them.

Mr. Adams and Mr. Alando, who did not serve together, remember that while there was no penalty for patronizing a prostitute, there was a $500 fine for contracting a venereal disease.

A Columbia University professor of American history, Eric Foner, joined with veterans in his belief that even if the rule goes into effect, enforcement will be tough. “If this rule goes into effect, they had better put on a few more court-martial judges,” Mr. Foner said.

Active soldiers were unwilling to be interviewed about prostitution overseas. An Air Force recruiter, upon hearing of the proposal, raised an eyebrow and choked down a laugh before regaining his composure.