I suppose there is an argument for compulsory national service for young adults if you broaden the term to mean 'national service' to include service in a whole range of community service areas, not just the military. You know the kind of thing perhaps a year doing emergency services work, national park remediation, aged and health care. etc. Trouble is it would still be expensive to set up. As for a national draft into the military? The world has moved on -at least in most Western Nations. 90 % of the jobs in the military these days require (often complex) technical skills. Armies want people with trade qualifications, University Degrees and above etc not hordes of unskilled labor. The popular image of a 'unskilled' soldier is the perhaps the 'grunt' , at a stretch add in artillery and armor i.e the front line troops. But even if this image was true these fighting arms make up what ??? 20% of the US armed forces - figures anyone? And again the days when you sent regiments of infantry 'over the top' to attack enemy positions only exists in the movies now. Coordinated small unit actions with everyone wired into complex CCC and sensor nets are the norm. So yes an uneducated civilian could be trained as a infantry man - but not a stupid one. You need the same kind of people who would make good employees in any career, not idiots.
That's BS. Nothing you listed rises to the level of combat service which is what draftees face. You are free to do all the community service you like but what is being discussed is the draft and that only has one purpose. Your alternatives sound much like the way Congress claims "Public Service" careers and they all get rich at it.
I didn't say the other activities I mentioned equated to military service. I said they were options for a national service scheme i.e. the country gets some benefit out every new intake of draftees and they get the chance to select an area of service where they think they could make a contribution. It could be military service, it might be something else. And who says they all have to be paid the same anyway - take more risks get better pay. Lastly where is it written down anyway that the 'draft' if implemented can only be for military service? Anyway the US military as structured now it couldn't; A) absorb the sheer number of new bodies it would have to train every year; & B) Couldn't afford the fixed costs of housing, feeding and training them etc for their period of service. Not without giving up on big ticket capital investments in military systems. As I pointed out, a national draft would be expensive however you structured it - so whose going to pay for it?
I don't think you understand how the draft worked. If you got drafted, conscripted, you were going to learn who, when and how to salute, march, peel potatoes and even shoot a rifle. If you were a true blue objector you could be a medic and treat those boys with rifles when they got shot. You even risked getting shot yourself. Service
Yes I get that but to the extent the notion of a 'national draft' has merit in modern times I would argue that merit lies in teaching young adults the value of service to your country or if you prefer 'giving something back' to the country that has raised you. I'm not suggesting that the merit of any other 'service' options a country might come up with would equate in value to that of military service (some might, e.g. like fire fighting) the vast majority wouldn't. But at least then it would still force persons who objected to military service (or even the idea of the military) into giving something back (and perhaps seeing the merit of service in some form or other) regardless of whether or not wanted to serve in the first place. And lets face it, if anything the armed forces are going to 'want' reluctant draftees like those people even less than those draftees will want 'in' to the military. From the military's perspective who needs them? So if there is a draft, make them serve their country somewhere else, some way else - even if they get paid less and have to serve longer. But as I said before any kind of compulsory national service these days is largely fiction - it simply costs to much.
Service my rosy red, it's slavery, pure and simple I have always found it a little telling that those who prattle on about "FFREEDDOMMM" the most are always the first to go on about how we 'owe' so much to the nation that, conversely, they are always quick to point out owes nothing whatsoever to the old and the sick in return. Then again, just a little examination shows that their idea of freedom is the sacred liberty of most of us to do exactly as we are told, while they do everything we are forbidden. People that fight to keep us free should be paid very well, equipped lavishly and their lives given every consideration. They should also be volunteers, defending a free nation with slaves is beyond reason of any kind
The discussion was whether or not to reinstate the draft and if so, alternative service. My point was the draft was military in nature, the method used to fill the ranks and to insure the dangers of war are shared. The system we have today produces better trained personnel. As to the slavery comment, it was more like indentured service. The term service implies a degree of sacrifice and it is sacrifice that differentiates military service from most other activities so labeled. I'm going to go out on a limb and put you on the no side of the ledger on the question of reinstatement?
Very. Only wrote so much because I never really understood the whole idea. I turn 18 and get sent off somewhere to die? W.T.F.?
I could just see today's snowflakes storming the beaches of Normandy. They'd be stopping every 20 feet to take selfies and complain that their MREs aren't vegan.
If they want to stay consistent then they would since they have every time we go to war somewhere. "Love or hate him, Trump has used military force less than any other president since Jimmy Carter." -- today's Times. (which is why when he uses force, critics need to latch onto it and hysterically amplify it - because it's rare).
Very few young men that were drafted were eager to serve, it was seen as everyone's national sacrifice. Everybody was subject to it and unless you had an exemption, married with children, college or medical you were likely to serve. I never had any doubt when I was growing up, I'm a WW2 era baby and it was a national obligation we all shared. Nobody I knew really liked it but we all accepted it and recent history helped us to understand it. I chose to join the Navy. I don't want to see the draft hanging over everyone again but I have little respect for some of the arguments and solutions. So you know, they aren't new.
How did recent history help you to understand it? To my way of thinking it gave a bunch of warmongering old men a nearly endless pool of cannon fodder to die in a war that they knew they couldn't win from the beginning and that rapidly became nothing more than a way for them to make themselves richer supplying it.
History was why we accepted it, we had just finished WW2 and that generation knew what they were fighting for. However there were men during that war that saw it much as you do. Thank God there weren't all that many of them.
During WWII I would have agreed with them, but Vietnam was actually done for the reasons I outlined above. It was nothing more than a foreign military adventure done because we had the money to burn and the young men to kill.
And therein lies part of the problem. World War 2 'good', Vietnam 'bad'. In other words if your fighting Hitler, military force is justified. If your fighting the spread of Communism its not. There are no doubt a handful of (sadly deluded) Neo-Nazi's who would argue that the US should not have entered into WWI and that the World would be a better place if Hitler had won. And some ardent Communists (equally deluded) who still cherish the dream of a global 'people's' revolution. Point is with the draft you don get to pick which War is 'just' and which isn't. The State decides for you so in the end the draft itself is neither right or wrong - you don't get to enforce it selectively depending on whether you think a particular war should be fought - you abrogate that decision to your National Government. And history gets to be the judge as to whether the choice that government made was right or wrong.
A good argument but the problem there is that you should defend your country if you WANT to do so, not because you're being made to. I would want to do so in WWII like my father did, but neither I nor really anyone else wanted to go to war in Vietnam. It was a silly and stupid waste of probably trillions of today's dollars and far more importantly, nearly 60,000 American lives and the government did it because it could, with no other real reason. The Draft enabled that war as surely as a tolerant wife enables her husband's alcoholism. Anything that makes it easy for a nation to go to war shouldn't exist.
I take you point. But not everyone who went to Vietnam (even if drafted) went unwillingly. If your were a US citizen in late 60's early 70's and in your mid to late teens you knew the draft was coming. What you did after that was at least in part up to you (Trump for instance, gutless wonder that he is took the 'buy your way out ' route.) Others fled to Canada while most gritted their teeth and went anyway, which IMO is courageous in itself. Had the war ended with a US victory i.e. North Vietnam contained and South Vietnam (now) a prosperous democratic 'tiger' economy history more than likely would have judged the US intervention there a success. So from one perspective the draft is only bad if you lose the war in question. Win it and everyone is a 'hero' i.e. history gets written by the victors. P.S. I'm not a supporter/advocate of the military draft (or at least an exclusively military draft). IMO it is consigned to the dustbin of history (or should be as far as most of the Western World is concerned).
I think you would have been the same during WW2. There were draft dodgers then as well. It has never been popular to be forced into the military and putting your life on hold for an extended time. That young men did it then and would now is testimony to the love Americans have for this country and the people who live here. Vietnam was Cold War politics at it's worst, neither in or out, war strategically waged by politicians. They are never very good at it.
