No, because in all times the elites don’t have to fight, while the plebs must die for [insert abstract concept].
The entire idea of fighting “for your country” is ridiculous to me. It’s not my country.
Almost the entire human race has no influence on the events that occur at all.
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Exactly, we get randomly born in a spot on Earth and then we are supposed to feel love for our country? Why?
Is there anything to be proud of for each country? All I see is politicians trying to gain popularity by lying, wars being started and finished with lies and propaganda, and citizens being generally unhappy and ignored.
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I think I feel anger about it, but I have also given up on them. The future will only be worse. I think we were much better off in the 70s and 80s.
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For me my country is things like the institution of the local pub, liberal use of gallows humour, and deeply despising the idea that cities and fields ought to be organised on regular grids rather than things like Parliament or the monarchy. I love my country in the sense of the former, I think I’ll live out my days frustrated and pessimistic about the latter.
It’s not my country.
Yep… it’s always “our country” this and “our country” that when they need you to play cannon fodder - and when it’s all over, it just goes straight back to being their country. No different than rich people telling us how we’re “all in this together” during COVID.
It’s cute how they tell everyone we can just go vote to have a lot of influence on things too. :)
As if any of us has any influence on what’s going on whatsoever.
Do you think you deserve to live in a country if others fight to save your life but you won’t do the same for them?
I mean, it’s slavery.
That’s why human rights treaties “need” exceptions to allow conscription (see the Article 4 of the ECHR for example).
100% against.
People don’t belong to the government, and shouldn’t be forced into doing any sort of job, especially one where they could be killed or traumatized for life.
If the people think their country is worth fighting for and a threat is legitimate, they should choose to defend it if the system is working properly.
Alternative point:
Conscription is not about fighting for your country. It’s about ensuring that the children of the wealthy and powerful would die alongside the children of the poor in any conflict. War has always been fought by the poor and powerless to benefit the wealthy and powerful.
You then have a trained, but effectively civilian, group selected from the entire cross section of your country that shares the diversity of all your people and which you can use for all kinds of positive change, like building projects and disaster preparedness and relief.
This is a very different group than career soldiers.
This needs to be thought of as another two years of high school with different curricula rather than raising some kind of militia.
I feel as though that doesn’t always necessarily work out well in practice though. If you look at the history of US presidents who were eligible for the draft for example, you have Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Trump and Joe Biden who were all from affluent and/or well connected families and who all dodged it. I’m sure there are plenty of other examples of well-off people who dodged it too, but those were just the easiest to look up lol
Elon Musk - the whole reason he skipped South Africa right before his 18th birthday was to avoid being conscripted into the SADF. That’s the actual reason - him and his family had no problem profiting off Apartheid until it was his turn to actually doing the dirty work of maintaining it. It’s what a lot of rich white kids in SA did.
It’s about ensuring that the children of the wealthy and powerful would die alongside the children of the poor in any conflict.
Bullcrap. The children of the wealthy and powerful always get to have have convenient loopholes to get out of conscription - just look at Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
like building projects and disaster preparedness and relief.
Or, you know… have groups of trained civilians around to repress anything that threatens the precious status quo.
That’s a really interesting perspective I didn’t think I’ve seen before. Thanks for posting.
Absolutely not. It’s slavery, and forcing humans to kill other humans for the cause of some sociopaths that hold power is abhorrent.
My great grandad was conscripted in WW2, he escaped twice just so he could hold his baby daughter. Good for him. I might not have got to meet him if he hadn’t done that. Seeing his friends get blown to bits for nothing changed him forever.
Here in Finland I am currently doing The military service and yea it kinda sucks but I do feel its necessary for a country like Finland. Its “only” 165-347 -days long and a very big Part of Finnish culture, so I don’t feel that Bad about it. It also really makes you grow as a person, having to tolerate all the bullshit that we have to do and we learn a lot of useful skills for Day to Day Life.
I’m conflicted on it.
In a case where a country is under constant threat of attack and there is a very real chance of that country being conquered by a hostile military power, I do see the argument for conscription. This argument works much better in freer countries, where the people enjoy a stable way of life. It becomes similar to taxes, everyone who lives under such a system is required to “chip in” for the good of the country. Take a country like Finland as an example. They have been invaded, multiple times, by The Russian Empire/Soviet Union. Having much of their population trained to fight a modern military conflict makes the cost of invasion much higher for the attacker. And I suspect the vast majority of Finns see their current government as preferable to domination by Russia.The other side of that coin, is that a country might use those conscripts to engage in foreign military adventures, which have nothing to do with defending the country. The obvious example of this being the US involvement in Vietnam. US politicians got away with forcing many young men to go die, in a foreign country for really stupid reasons. And I would find it hard to ever agree with the US Government being allowed to draft soldiers again.
I could see a sort of “middle ground” option being useful. A “limited conscription”. This would require some period of training and public service as a form of taxation. Individuals are required to complete infantry training, so they have a basic understanding of modern infantry tactics, in the event a country is invaded. At the end of training, they then move into a public sector job for the rest of their term, with the option (entirely their choice) to serve in a military role. Such a system provides the country with a much larger pool of individuals with some training, in the event of invasion, and also provides a large, low level, work force to perform public works. I’m thinking of it as something like the Public Works Administration, except you first spend 6 months learning how to shoot a rifle and dig a trench. And then you spend the next 18 months building roads, improving levees, or handling the mountain of paperwork which feeds a bureaucracy.
I doubt such a system is what you’re asking about. But, at least in the US, I don’t think the people will trust the Federal Government to wield the power of a real military draft again for a long time. Vietnam is still well remembered and the debacle in the War in Iraq 2: Daddy Didn’t Go Far Enough, has people skeptical of the Government’s use of war powers. Though, technically, “The Draft” never really went away. US Males are required to sign up for “Selective Service” and the laws states that they can be called up to serve. But, unless the US is under direct threat of invasion, I expect that trying to do so would result in riots. At least, I hope any politician pushing that idea would get dragged out of his office and lynched in the streets.
I live in a country with mandatory conscription.
If the time served is reasonable and the army is organized enough to actually train you and take advantage of your skills, yes i’m all for it.
If not, it just an excuse for permanent stuff to boss around people and make them do meaningless work to look busy.
Indeed. Grew up in a country that phased it out just as I was coming of age. The whole problem was that it was way corrupt, useless, and worst case scenario - men in mid-30s with job, kids, mortgage got called in because the system was so broken.
That is what did the system in. Everyone saw it would be useful to keep it. But we simply could not afford to find it properly or care enough to make more than a useless wasted year.
I knew where you were from before looking at your username :P
I’d say it depends on the country, I could understand if the country’s military is a self defense force like Japan’s military for example. In my particular context, I live in US and I hope to see that conscription never happens again, we have an insatiable military industrial complex and war machine. We have 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad, we even have one in Syria near the oil fields and we were never invited there. Plus we have a long history of interventions that have gone awry, including the more recent ones like Libya back in 2011, we made the situation even worse. All conscription would do is just serve our imperialism.
I think it’s utterly necessary in situations like what Ukraine is facing. Could a government misuse it? Sure, but most government powers can be misused.
I’ll speak from the perspective of Greece, which has mandatory military service for all males >= 18yo that lasts a full year.
It makes sense that the country needs conscripts and a population that knows how to fight, since we have a neighbor that doesn’t play so nice with their surrounding countries.
However the way it’s implemented is pure bullshit:
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The actual training happens in the first few months, after that it’s just free manual labour.
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You get to deal with so much BS from the permanent staff, they have a huge superiority complex that you have to accept and play by in order to not have penalties or military prison.
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You can’t go home, can’t see your loved ones, your life is basically shit except the days that you’re given leave, which is around a month or so in total.
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You get no sleep and work all day, it’s a common phenomenon to sleep 3 hours every day.
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It’s unpaid. (it’s actually 8.5 euro a month which is arguably worse than unpaid, it’s like getting spat on the face)
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You pay for lots of things, travelling to/from the base, buying food outside etc.
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It’s corrupt as fuck. There are so many people that know someone in the military or meet someone inside, and get very special treatment while the rest have to work twice as hard to cover up for them.
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It is extremely hard to avoid it completely, there are parents with little kids that are missing from home for months because of it, there are poor people that can’t afford not to be working but still have to go, there are mentally ill people that aren’t given a full exclusion.
And it used to be much worse than this, we’re the ones that “have it good”…
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Against.
If I get conscripted you’ll never find me.
I’ll fight for the country on home soil but never overseas.
Against.
If I ever feel compelled to take up arms for any cause, I’d want my squad to be as committed to that cause as I am.
No one should ever be forced to fight or die for something they don’t believe in.
If in service of national infrastructure projects or search and rescue yeah maybe.
If to die in a far off jungle/desert I’d as soon shoot my CO
