well the thing ive heard that some are advocating for are what some of Europe Asia and I think Israel does is at some point between 18 and 25 you do a mandatory 2-4 years in the army (or armed forces in our case )in between hs and college
I know s.korea its two because that’s why the K-pop boy band BTS is on hiatus because one member is doing his time
The only place you’ll come to that understanding from is from Russian state propaganda.
I’m going along with the hypothetical OP.
And a wealthy father with political connections. Bone spurs by themselves are just an excuse to put yon on permanent PT duty.
Stranger
Anyone who has served in the military has served with some small number of people who didn’t actually want to be there. Either they were misfits from the beginning, or they’d had bad experiences and were now So Over It. But unlike in civilian life, simply resigning and seeking work elsewhere was not an option, nor were they desperate enough to commit the major crime of desertion. So there they sat, being a turd in your unit’s punchbowl.
I cannot begin to fathom the thought process that says replacing the few percent of unwilling shirkers DoD has now with about 75% unwilling shirkers in a draft is a good idea.
I guess my question is what manpower shortages would we be solving through conscription? Is it some sort of officer shortage? That’s what conscripting college graduates would imply.
Also, I would think that if we were to resort to a peacetime draft, maybe the right way to do it is something along the Swiss or Israeli framework, where everyone is trained, but the actual training obligations are relatively low, even compared to the National Guard. Sort of a third tier reserve structure if you will, and that way if something were to go dramatically sideways, we’d have a huge pool of trained personnel to draw from, without necessarily the full cost and trouble of maintaining a peacetime conscription system a-la the 1950s and 1960s.
Of course, for people who dig the military life, have an easy path from the compulsory service to full time active duty service.
Still, I think that the carrot is better than the stick; I feel like maybe some combination of better pay/benefits and maybe help meeting fitness standards would go a long way without conscription being necessary. If they really want people, they ought to set things up such that for a young non-college educated person, the military is the premier career they can aspire to in terms of pay/benefits. Same thing for college grads as junior officers. It’ll cost money, but that’s all dependent on how serious Congress is about it.
Conscription? Just what we need - more nutballs with military training and an even bigger hatred for America.
Conscription is Evil.
I know if I had been drafted for any 20th/21st century war other than WW2 (the only unambiguously justified US war in a hundred years) I would have immediately sided with the side that hadn’t just forced me into slavery, ripped me out of my life, and dropped me into a meatgrinder.
I always used to hear stuff like “a draft will be good for them [“them” being the conscripts]”. As a retired naval officer in an all-volunteer military I had to deal with enough people with attitude issues. I think a draft would create so many leadership challenges that there would be a performance drag that would negate any performance enhancements.
I was drafted during the Vietnam War, but didn’t pass the physical (too skinny).
I was very happy to miss out.
What if they gave a war and nobody came?
If the US was invaded they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d volunteer. I’m not leaving my family to protect the overseas assets of oligarchs who wave a flag in my face tho.
I know about the Crusades, this shit ain’t new.
Aside from those who end up dead, of course.
It’s a positively Homeric attitude.
It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear iron shrapnel delivered by high explosives. In his death all things appear fair.
+1 to the idea that given today’s technology professionals are vastly superior to conscripts. One comment I keep encountering in discussions about the Ukrainian War is that modern munitions are DEVASTATINGLY lethal to concentrations of infantry, to the point where troops have to be kept dispersed to a degree that makes coordinating operations difficult. More grunts aren’t that helpful.
Also, the astonishingly poor physical condition of your average American.
Beyond those considerations though is a broader issue. The lesson of the Vietnam era was that Americans would accept a draft for a true threat such as in WW2, and might even grudgingly accept a peacetime draft. But they would NOT accept being drafted to fight and die to bolster the USA’s quasi-imperial geostrategic position. Which is almost entirely what the government wants troops for today. Broadly, the whole point of a republic is that it’s supposed to mind its own business, stay at home and live in peace; only going to war when overtly threatened. But the reality today is out of step with that.
I’m reminded of Roman history when after the Punic Wars Rome had less need to protect its homeland and more need to expand and garrison the frontiers of an empire. And as a result moved away from citizen-soldiers to long-term professionals.
Best quote of that game is still, “Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”
So let the Poles, Koreans and Taiwanese fend for themselves?
Perhaps there is a middle ground that does not require conscription?
Of course not. Support them with training and weapons systems and our regular military.
We’ve provided many reasons why the addled brained idea of the wholesale drafting of college graduates won’t work. You haven’t responded to any of them.
Were you any good at it?
Hmm. If I was Ukrainian I would want weapons, it’s good that’s what we are sending them. They have no use for overweight ‘Murica lovin’ conscripts.
Are there Taiwanese dying I should be aware of.
Are you ok, Paul?
I don’t see any signs of any major power making a power grab for neither the North nor South Pole.