Thousands of youngsters have joined the army since October 7 — and it is illegal to refuse. Sofia Orr is likely to become the first woman since then to be jailed for refusing military service, but believes it is ‘wrong to take children and make them into soldiers’
There’s some gray - but most of it is predicated (I think) on some version of “there’s no other way” to defend the nation. I’m just less convinced now that I’m older that this is a true statement - but I don’t claim to have the answers. Any alternative approach would likely require a serious paradigm shift, and I don’t personally see that as likely without something catastrophic preceding such a shift.
My position is primarily that I’m unwilling to ever say that it’s a good idea to take an 18 year old, force them to join the military, and expect them to kill. We’ve got laws that make it clear we don’t trust them with alcohol so it seems cruel and unfair to take someone who likely has next to zero life experience past high school, and then force them into your military.
I agree. It just depends on if you can have a “good” standing military or not. If that is possible—to have a peaceful standing military dedicated to self defense that spends the rest of its time idk helping people or providing labor or something—I’d be cool with it. But sending teenagers across the world to shoot poor brown people is obviously loathsome .