Do you think military service should be mandatory?

[+Dave 2,322]

You're joking right? No human is more precious than the human standing next to them, whether in a grocery line, or the line of fire. It will be a cold day in hell before I ever chose my own life over seeing the the freedoms that my fellow citizens enjoyed stripped from them because I was selfish ... even as a parent of a child I would... just to make sure my kid can see the sunshine and smell the flowers from the safety of a free nation.

 

I still say mandatory. As has alreadt been stated... the military isn't all about wars. There are some very positive training opportunities, College tuition opportunities, and growth possibilities for some that may never have that chance otherwise. I'd rather see my tax dollars spent on a person that could possibliy become a success of the community, rather than a product of it.

 

OvS

 

 

Not to mention for example all the assitance we gave during Katrina. I was knee deep in that. How about the fact I was delivering food for the meals on wheels program with other members in my unit? I am sorry Uhu but you have a very incorrect vision of the military. But as my one of my friends who used to be in Germany Army (Armor) a few years ago said "The German public and the German military ignore each other." I didn't understand that until I read what you posted Uhu. Now I see it plain as day. Its the "not in my backyard" mentality. A couple years of military service wouldn't hurt anyone. However I do not see it as a requirement to be able to vote. Hell we can't get enough people to get out and vote now. That's another issue altogether.

[+Julhelm 266]

Your nation would be better served with having a decent school system which doesn't require one to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition just to get a decent education, than any kind of mandatory service. Now, the only way I could personally accept some kind of mandatory scheme is if it entitles you to free healthcare, free education and a practical set of skills. Any mandatory scheme which requires you serve but doesn't give anything back is a waste of time.

 

I spent my stint in the service, and when I got discharged I was basically sent to the gutter with a $1000 check as civilian life doesn't care about serving you country - only your degree counts.

Edited August 18, 2009 by Julhelm

[eraser_tr 29]

I just think you'd find yourself in a far more advantageous position if you enticed people to the services with improved rewards schemes or used national service models similar to what Sweden and Finland use

 

Damn Swedes always getting everything right!

 

"The point of war isn't to die for your country, it's to make the other bastard die for theirs"

 

"Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never killing for their country"

[+Julhelm 266]

I'm a swede, and I did my service back in 2001 when they had yet to reorganize the whole benefits scheme for a post-manufacturing economy. The guys who were discharged a week after me got $5000 because new rules started to apply then.

 

We basically have a semi-volunteer scheme now in that you still get drafted as per Cold War-era conscription, but as only the best 10% actually get to serve, they've finally started to offer more in the ways of careers even at the non-officer level, which simply wasn't the case when I was in.

[Caesar 305]

no one can convince me that communism or any other ideologies are true threats to that must be imperatively be fought in the way to avoid the doom of mankind, thus making a military service truly mandatory.

 

If I may be so bold, not even 6 million+ murdered Jews, Gypsies, Handicapped and Homosexuals, thanks to the ideologies of one man about 70 years ago?

[+Dave 2,322]

Well hell Julhelm that is a whole other topic in itself. You serve, you should be taken care of after you are done. Shouldnt even be a question but I think world wide that system needs an overhaul.

[Giorgio262 1]

Your nation would be better served with having a decent school system which doesn't require one to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition just to get a decent education, than any kind of mandatory service. Now, the only way I could personally accept some kind of mandatory scheme is if it entitles you to free healthcare, free education and a practical set of skills. Any mandatory scheme which requires you serve but doesn't give anything back is a waste of time.

 

I spent my stint in the service, and when I got discharged I was basically sent to the gutter with a $1000 check as civilian life doesn't care about serving you country - only your degree counts.

 

Perfect post, in my opinion. Also it would be ideal if families were given assistance in the upbringing of their children. Any fertile couple of idi**s can make a child, being a good parent, a good guide for a child, is a completely different story and an infinitely harder job.

 

Freedom is preserved when everyone respects and understands the others, not when they refrein from hurting others because they're afraid of the punishment they would get if caught. 

 

One may be seduced by the idea that mandatory military service could do miracles because he's thinking in terms of healing bad apples. What if we could help prevent apples to turn bad with good education and support? Wouldn't that be better?

Edited August 18, 2009 by Giorgio262

[JediMaster 451]

Communism and fascism aren't the same kind of idealogies as eugenics or racism. An economic ideology is most certainly not a threat. The idea that the US was going to become communist in the 1950s was absurd because it couldn't unless the gov't allowed/forced it. Some small group of citizens cannot change the entire country's economic basis.

An ideology that says group X is superior to group Y in some way, based on race, nation, religion, IS a threat.

 

That's how these Muslim fundamentalist extremists justify everything they do. "We don't attack innocents" they say. Of course, when you define every American citizen, including children, as "not innocent" because of a complicated chain of reasoning then you're redefining your terms to suit your own ideals. THAT is when the ideology becomes a threat.

[{TNT}11bravo10 0]

I agree with ya

Communism and fascism aren't the same kind of idealogies as eugenics or racism. An economic ideology is most certainly not a threat. The idea that the US was going to become communist in the 1950s was absurd because it couldn't unless the gov't allowed/forced it. Some small group of citizens cannot change the entire country's economic basis.

An ideology that says group X is superior to group Y in some way, based on race, nation, religion, IS a threat.

 

That's how these Muslim fundamentalist extremists justify everything they do. "We don't attack innocents" they say. Of course, when you define every American citizen, including children, as "not innocent" because of a complicated chain of reasoning then you're redefining your terms to suit your own ideals. THAT is when the ideology becomes a threat.

Edited August 18, 2009 by {TNT}11bravo10

[+Dave 2,322]

Right on JM, right on!

[Uhu 2]

my life is much too precious to be risked in military service

 

Ah so we military are just monkey's that like to see things get blown up?

 

So as long as someone else does it, then you don't have to. Why does the word....hmm what word am I thinking of? Oh yeah that's it.

Somehow I knew that this kind of polarizing sentence made it sure that the rest of my post was a little bit shielded. I'll try to explain myself somewhat further.

 

First of all, I've clearly said in the third paragraph that I respect military people ("I'm respecting people who choose to support a (democratic) state by their enlisting in its armed forces,"), but for myself, this is simply not an option. I'm not so selfish at it may have appeared on the first look, I was happy to be a member of the THW (until I saw that some fellow members seemed to be true alcoholics: during a weekend training excursion on a deserted airfield [which is funnily even represented on the GermanyCE-map of WOE: the Pütnitz field], nearly all THW members present drunk every evening

approx. 5 to 10 0.5-liter-bottles of beer and several goblets of schnaps. On saturday morning, the crew of our motorboat nearly sunk a pontoon that they were trailing [maybed due to a misjudgement of the waves guring a estimated wind strenght of 5 to 6 Beaufort]. As these persons had drunk until 2 a.m. that night, I expect that the blood alcohol level was above the 0.05 per cent of BAC allowed for driving. The evening of the day saw the driver of the crane taking some comrades on the load bed of the vehicle and played rally driver on the airstrip. On the aftermath, one of the "passengers" said that at a good 80km/h, they nearly fell off the vehicle due to concussions occured while driving over the concrete plates of the strip... I hope that it was understandable that I left), and in other circumstances, I still may be...

 

I am happy with the idea of a (non military) service for your state benefitting your society and rewarding yorself, like the german Zivildienst or other examples stated above (firefighting etc.)

 

I'm not denying the usefulness of some level of violence to solve problems, I'll go even further to say that I may kill somebody threatening the life of my family or disable an attacker practising the bulls**t of the so-called "happy slapping", but I'm denying the need of laws pressing people in a military service to fight or to be ready to fight for a cause that they may not support (one of the best examples I think is the Vietnam proxy war due to somewhat archaic power games between persons with not enough self-confidence - I'll explain this further later), in case that a person is supporting a cause, the government may as well make some advertising to get this person as as volunteer. It's true that I'm focusing / reducing the military to an element of war in this posting, but a military used e.g. to clear up the debris of a flooding or to help victims of a natural disaster of any kind may as well called "institution for civil protection" or something comparable. To stress it again, I can be friend with the idea of such a civil protection service, but as military always has a connotation of war, I'll keep this focus in my post.

 

Little mental leap.

 

no one can convince me that communism or any other ideologies are true threats to that must be imperatively be fought in the way to avoid the doom of mankind, thus making a military service truly mandatory.

If I may be so bold, not even 6 million+ murdered Jews, Gypsies, Handicapped and Homosexuals, thanks to the ideologies of one man about 70 years ago?

A heretical answer: no. Back in the 1940's, I think that the overall population of the planet laid between 2.3 and 2.8 billion individuals, so that a "bleeding" of 6 or 60 million is everything else than a doom for mankind, nothing compared to a climate change putting the whole population of Homo sapiens sapiens to an estimated amount of less than 10 000 individuals, some 70 000-75 000 years ago, a true population bottleneck (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory ).

Of course, such a threat is to surely to be fought, but I think that there are always enough volunteers for direct actions, volunteers being supported by the rest of the society (in such a constelation, I think that I would be really happy developing e.g. more performant weapons to directly eliminating the cause of the commotion - in Caesar's example, the assholes Hitler + associates - or supporting the fall of the opposing force by codebreaking). There is only one example of a (fictional) ideology being somehow a threat to mankind that I can think of: the trilogy "Secret of the Swordfish" by Edgar P. Jacobs (Wikipedia link), but such a story will never become real - I trust on the "self-healing" abilities of the human mind.

On the other hand, there is a nice idea put in Tom Clancy's "Debt of Honour", where Jack Ryan (and another character of which I do not remember the name) in opposition to the traditional view of several diplomats is for the immediate use of limited violence where the diplomats are for waiting while trying to use diplomatic procedures before, if needed, finally escalating the conflict to a much larger sized war than Ryan is planning to do. Such limited violence in conflicts does not call for a mandatory military service.

 

As it may already have filtered through, I've got several unorthodox points of view. This could come from that I'm fascinated by the scientific exploration of behaviour and thinking that our species, as a fairly highly developed one, must have a lot of older inborn behaviours that can be used to our advantage if not ignored. That's why I'm thinking that you may find some useful hints to reflect, to analyse or to understand your own behaviour when your reading papers or books fron Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Konrad Lorenz and Harry Harlow among others. There are lots of scientist directly working on humans, take someone like Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, finding that you can really see a lot of behaviours that are clearly related to similar ones in the animal world (especially threat display, submission and dominance, reciprocal altruism, the pecking order and other power games). This leads me to the point mentioned above about the Vietnam war.

 

I take that no one likes to loose his face in conflicts, and no one likes to loose power given at one time. I take also that the man has an innate fear about new and other things colliding and being in competition with the also innate curiosity. There are also elements of the game theory that are coming into an account.

As far as I'm aware, the communist / socialist power block made much more propaganda against the western block than it happened the other way round (North Korea is a great example nowadays...). I think that this come from a instinctive fear that the communist ideology is much more opposing to inborn, "natural" behaviour that the capitalist is.

In Vietnam, it clearly appeared that the feared western ideology was everything else than failsafe, in addition to weaknesses due to corruption and decolonization. So I think that the "red" rulers took the occasion to add some protective distance to their area of influence. The escalation of the conflict was then, in my way of thinking, due to the displeasure of loosing the face in a already somewhat humiliating decolonization process (look what is the battle of Diên Biên Phu for France and the surely not satisfying result of the korean war), leading to a thinking like "only a little bit more bombs, technology and soldiers shall be able to win the war, it's not possible to loose". Here comes the game theory into account, too. If you imagine a competition like a modified auction, where the winner gets the price but the looser is condemned to pay his highest bid too, you will end up whith a in-game-situation where you pay say 20 $ to get a 1$ coin or where you send an additional reinforcement of 5000 soldiers albeit the war is rationally viewed lost. You do not want to loose your substantial effort for nothing, especially when you fear a loss of face that can't be compensated by a good self confidence.

 

In a war with modern over a large distance effective weapons, you've also got the problem that the normally innate mechanisms and behaviours used to control violence via submissive gestures (take the weaker wolf presenting its throat and soft belly to the winner, making it impossible to bite and kill his opponent for him - or some ritual combat actions in hunter-gatherer societies in Afrika, Papua - New Guinea or South America [Yanomamis], where it is rare that a great number of fighters is killed in combat. This is nicely descripted in Eibl-Eibesfeldt books) won't work due to the missing of immediate sensorial feedback. Without this immediate feedback of the effect of the weaponry and the distance between the action and the place of ruling, it is likely that a loss of situation awareness occurs where the rulers have to go back to really processed and fragmented input in order to make decisions, making it likely that these persons take the war as a personal offense and acting accordingly, forgetting or being unable to consider the amount or people involved. Especially in older days, a war was often a thing like "my cock is longer than yours" or the childish "this is mine, give it back to me!" between the rulers at a command of so seen drones... Fortunately, we've got nowadays some (basic) psychological instruments to control and guide such feelings, at least in the "western" world, albeit they're anything than failsafe.

 

I will rely on inborn behaviours and instincts that I'm aware of because it worked great until now in handling conflicts and I'm sure that it will do it in the future too.

 

Greets, Uhu

[dsawan 624]

I think it should for 2 years. At least it gives you skill sets when you are young and exposure to different areas of the military usch as computer science,engineering etc which could give you a career patch to follow when its time to return to civilian life. i think if i was 18, it would have benefited me as my parents wanted me to go to college but i had no idea what to major in. it's that exposure to different fields which would allow you to make the decision easier and possibly quicker than waiting later in life. i think the only problem would be physical fitness as I have always been out of shape and physical endurance low.

Edited August 18, 2009 by dsawan

[JRP1973 5]

Nope then NCO's like myself in combat line units would have too deal with soldiers who don't want to be there causing unneeded stresses and strife in a cohesive unit. Should be voluntary leave it to individuals who are willing to sacrifice some things in life and have pride in their country and not too some winey civilian in uniform my opinion anyway CAVALRY LEADS THE WAY!

Edited August 18, 2009 by porterjr

[Viggen 644]

As a member of the generation that has been the target of this topic, I will agree, that my generation is what you say it is.

 

 

There are organizations which have and do teach us youths, to a degree, what "Freedom isn't Free" means. Those being Civil Air Patrol, JROTC, Young Marines, etc.* Last year, my Civil Air Patrol squadron took a trip down to Washington D.C. We went to Arlington National Cemetery in our Blues. We went to the CAP Memorial, The Tomb of the Unknowns, and several others. As we left, I could see in the eyes of my fellow Cadets that each and everyone of them carried out a different opinion on what "Freedom" meant. I know that if we went in civilian clothes they would not have felt the same. I could continue on with other similar cases too, at encampment (CAP's equivilent to boot camp) and most recently at my course down at Columbus AFB.

 

So, in a way, I do agree with some of you that military or civil service should be required. But, my service in Civil Air Patrol, training to provide Search and Rescue missing people and aircraft in the US, shouldn't count.

 

*Notice I didn't say Boyscouts? Before I joined CAP, I was in Boyscouts. The average scout understands what "Freedom isn't Free" as much as a typical member of my generation: not much at all. No offense to any current or former members, it's just what I saw.

 

 

Just the $0.02 from a member of the careless, lazy generation.

[{TNT}11bravo10 0]

well here is the way I see it I served I had the misfortune of seeing my version of Hell. I think it would be good for everyone to join be it mandatory or not. and I don't know what my generation is considered being born in 1979. But if my nation ever called me back to serve again I would do it. Yes I know what that would mean I may die this time. But I have seen death and that SOB was only about 100 Ft. away. do me a favor and all vets a favor thank us all but thank the Fallen more to be able to have this discussion without fear of persecution and not just US Forces all forces with about the same views. I hope you all understand what I have typed and again sorry for my way of typing :). Love spellchecker :)

[outfctrl 0]

I turned 18 in 1969 and during that time period, everyone had to sign up for the draft. Before I was called, I joined the Navy. I had always wanted to join the Navy since I was a kid. I signed a 6 year contract, all active. The biggest mistake I made in my life is not staying in and retiring. What I did get was all my college paid for, 100%.

 

I think military service should be required during any type of on going war. Minimum of two years.