No, because in all times the elites don’t have to fight, while the plebs must die for [insert abstract concept].
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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.
Everyone I know thinks I’m a weirdo because I’m not patriotic to my country. The way I see it, I was born here by chance and so I don’t particularly love my country more than any other, except that it’s more familiar I guess.
I’ll happily
throughthrow as much shade at my own country as I will any other.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.
It’s the same for religion too, it’s incredibly fortunate that most people are born in the right place for their religion of choice.
I do think every country can be proud of some things they do, but they should also be equally ashamed of other things they do.
Politicians are only really interested in the length of their term(s), they’re not invested to do anything outside of that.
Hardly anybody cares and I don’t know if I envy, resent, or pity them for it.
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.
I was born in the 80’s so don’t recall a lot, but what I do know is that my dad worked in a warehouse, my mum didn’t work and we had pretty much whatever we wanted, went from the UK to Orlando on holiday every year. And I had two siblings too.
You couldn’t even support yourself now working as a professional let alone a warehouse worker.
Nobody seems to acknowledge it though they’d always be like yeah but we got paid less.
I’ll happily through throw as much shade at my own country as I will any other.
I’m more likely to throw shade at my own country because I am more informed about the goings on of my own country. If I were to talk shit about France, I would just be talking out my ass. I have no idea what’s going on there.
If I criticize the US, it’s because I demand better from the nation that I live in and support. If I criticize France, it’s just for funsies.
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.
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.
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This is how they keep humanity not moving forward. By making us focus on our differences instead of our similarities. An eternal conflict that never ends, preventing our species from focusing on other things than war with itself.
Tribalism is probably innate, but we should fight it, not embrace it.
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I like not having literal Nazis running France, don’t you?
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.
There are two main reasons to conscript citizens. The first, to fight wars, has largely faded into irrelevance (barring exceptions for those waging war, like Russia, or those defending their country, like Ukraine). For the most part wars are better fought by paid professionals.
It’s the second type of conscription that I will discuss. Many governments promote a system of national service for reasons of social cohesion, (the so-called Scandinavian model). It has much to recommend it. It creates a shared experience in otherwise fragmented societies, breaking down barriers of class, race and gender. It can be used to instil the values of a country in its population. It builds respect for the armed forces, teaching civilians that their freedom ultimately depends on others’ willingness to kill and be killed. And it subjects a pampered population to a bracing dose of spartan clean living, away from iPads and alcopops.
The problem is in the implementation. Social service should not be confined to the young. One of the biggest divides in society is generational, and national service only for the young would not change that. Moreover it would do many older folks a lot of good to learn the value of inclusion and diversity.
The day countries conscript both young and old, men and women and everyone in between equally, and guve everyone equal rights and responsibilities according to their capabilities, is when I’ll deem conscription as somewhat worth it. Being conscripted takes away years of your life, and for what?
For the most part wars are better fought by paid professionals.
That only goes for dirty wars that you have no good reason to fight.
It has much to recommend it. It creates a shared experience in otherwise fragmented societies, breaking down barriers of class, race and gender.
The US would like to disagree.
It can be used to instil the values of a country in its population.
In other words… nationalist brainwashing.
And it subjects a pampered population
Only a boomer could think this.
To you first point… are you really saying that professional troops are less effective than untrained conscripts who really don’t want to be there?
Cuz that much at least is true.
Ukraine might be justified- and it might be necessary and even right- to have conscription… but a professional army would have been much more effective, at least at the start of the war.
are you really saying that professional troops are less effective than untrained conscripts who really don’t want to be there?
Firstly… there is absolutely no rule that says conscripts have to be untrained, just like there’s no rule that says a conscript wouldn’t necessarily want to be there - but that’s irrelevant to the question at hand.
More importantly, yes - a citizen army can be more effective than a professionalized one. Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies proved that to the world to such a degree that military theorists of the time literally thought the professional military obsolete. Of course, the problem with a citizen army is that you have to animate the citizenry with a cause that can actually be justified - kind of a difficult thing to do if you’re waging colonialist wars that only benefit the wealthy half-way around the world. Which is what a professional military is good for - that’s why the US didn’t experience the same level of revolt in the ranks during the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan as they did during the war on Vietnam.
but a professional army would have been much more effective
Ukraine did have a professional army at the start of the war - almost all countries do. Not even NATO would be able to defeat Russia with a purely professionalized force - that’s pure fantasy.
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’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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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.
No one should ever be forced to fight or die for something they don’t believe in.
Maybe, under specific conditions, and only if certain requirements are met.
Firstly, I’m only (reluctantly) in favor of conscription for defensive wars. Never mind the propaganda - if a conscript is ever stationed outside their nation’s borders, that’s not “defense” (by conscription standards, anyway). None of that “preemptive strike” bullshit. They also must be adequately trained. Throwing people into the meat grinder is not okay.
Secondly, conscripts get free, high-quality healthcare for life (I know, some of you already do, but I’m American). No exceptions or exclusions of any kind, and no red tape. Individuals must be well compensated for any injuries, and family must be well compensated in case of death.
Thirdly, conscripts must be well paid, and guaranteed a return to their peacetime job regardless of company size, length of absence, etc.
I’m sure there are many points I haven’t addressed, so feel free to add them!
Only as an absolute last resort to an existential threat and even then there should be options for people to contribute without having to actively kill another person if it’s at all possible.
Even then I’m not sure it’s justified.
Conscription is a crime against humanity and an androcide. I hope I live to see the day where the participators of operating this inhuman system are punished.
IMO, it’s always wrong.
At heart, I believe that the claimed authority by which governments draft people is illegitimate - that all nominal justifications for it are necessarily insufficient, self-contradictory or self-defeating.
But that’s a more fundamental point, and one about governance as a whole.
Even if I pretend that such authority is legitimate, I still oppose conscription.
A volunteer army serves as a check on militaristic excess. If a war is both legitimate and necessary, then people will willingly fight it. If people will not willingly fight it, then it’s almost certainly the case that it’s not necessary or justified.
And if it is indeed the case that a war is necessary and justified and there’s still insufficient support to provide for a volunteer army, then frankly, the nation is too sick to be worth saving anyway.
On the contrary, a volunteer army allows the ruling class to prosecute wars without risk to their own families. Volunteer armies are primarily recruited from poorer and disadvantaged families, and the “volunteers” are serving because they see no other option to support themselves.
If a war arrives that is necessary, justified, and also has broad support among the population there will still be those who avoid fighting because they know that others will do so for them. They will unjustly reap the benefits of victory without making any sacrifices.
You can make a similar argument about taxation. By your logic payment should be optional, since a society that genuinely wants to be just and fair should also voluntarily want to give money to achieve that.
On the contrary, a volunteer army allows the ruling class to prosecute wars without risk to their own families.
As does conscription, since there are always exceptions made for that explicit purpose.
So that works out the same either way.
If a war arrives that is necessary, justified, and also has broad support among the population there will still be those who avoid fighting because they know that others will do so for them.
Yes - there will always be such people. The issue is how many of them there would be.
I would say that a nation that’s unhealthy enough to have so many such people that they would make the difference between winning and losing deserves to lose.
You can make a similar argument about taxation. By your logic payment should be optional, since a society that genuinely wants to be just and fair should also voluntarily want to give money to achieve that.
Yes, and I in fact would. And with the same proviso - any society that would fail as a result deserves to fail.
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.
Conscription is not good or needed, the modern military is equipped with a wide array of technology and the best training available, it takes year(s) to fully train a soldier. There was a time when you could hand a consript a gun and point him in a the right direction and you had an army, in a modern conflict that lack of training is lethal.
Also in an all volunteer force it’s hard enough to manage groups who volunteered to be in the military, I can’t imagine controlling people who were forced to be there.
Constipation is not good or needed, the modern military is equipped with a wide array of technology and the best training available, it takes year(s)
They just need some fiber I think really
Auto correct has made me a clown, fixed.
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
