Please keep in mind that the military is ran by an elected civilian and most actions require congressional approval.
Your point is…?
Yes, the military is a tool, aimed by the government. There’s nothing inherently honorable about serving as part of a tool; honor comes from serving for a worthy purpose.
Modding: The honor part of this thread is off-topic. Please start a new thread if you wish to continue it.
While we’re at it, I’d also like a pony.
My original thought was that military service can be a positive force in ones life.
But I didn’t read the room right and walked into a bee’s nest.
It’s funny how quickly and how often peoples’ motivations for joining are retconned into a hyper-patriotic fantasy.
Soldiers on a 2-year enlistment who joined only for college money are shipped off to war, and upon their death, without fail, it’s all about “sacrifice this” and “honor that” and “USA!”. Consider the piss-poor soldiers who absolutely hated the military service, complained about it non-stop, were constantly in trouble, performing below standards, always late, perpetually sloppy in work and appearance, who probably joined because they had absolutely no other option. They likely chose a “safe” job, with no chance of injury or death–or so they thought. Or perhaps they chose infantry because it offered a decent bonus and an immediate ship date. Or maybe they just had a really good recruiter. Regardless, the minute they die, it’s all about their great sacrifice, dedication, self-less service, duty, honor and country.
In reality, comparatively few combat deaths are about true sacrifice, honor or dedication to either duty or country. It’s nice to pretend, though. And it feeds society’s need for hero worship.
You should. They are.
Looking this over, the debate appears to be pretty well done. There is an interesting conversation to be had here. I’ll reopen and allow it.
I don’t think anyone disputes this. This isn’t about whether someone should join. This is about whether someone should be forced to join.
No, your original post made the following claims:
The point I am making is that things like “duty, honor, and country” are not good things in and of themselves. If your duty is to the slave state of Virginia, it your honor dictates that you must execute your promiscuous daughter, if your country is Nazi Germany - well, the more you value “duty, honor, and country” in those scenarios, the viler of a person you become.
When the US Army fought the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese, it was a force for great good. When it trashed Iraq over non-existent WMDs to further the interests of special interests… not so much.
Perhaps he’s looking to duplicate the glorious success of the Cultural Revolution? I mean it worked so well for Mao; I don’t see why we shouldn’t look into replicating it.
My dad served for 4 years and what he got out of it was some embarrassing tattoos and lymphoma.
Many things in life are positive influences, many jobs support society and involve risk to life and limb. Only a few are perpetually thrust into our faces as heroic.
Yes, obviously I am just brainstorming. It has not been my experience that dumb soldiers do very well. I suppose this is less true now than when I retired. Besides, if we draft the children of the rich we would probably be less willing to start a war.
Do you honestly think people are poor because they are stupid? Do you think rich people are smarter than the rest of us?
The idea of ensuring the US fighting force includes the youth of the powerful and the powerless equally is admirable.
The draft is not the way to get there.
I suppose it is one way to get there. The present means of recruiting is not meeting this admirable goal. Got any ideas?
We are getting there, which is why the military does enjoy a high level of prestige in my book. Take 1/6/2021 as the biggest example. I’m of the belief that if General Milley and the other top brass were corrupt the way the top civilian leadership was at the time, Donald Trump would be Dictator In Chief today. Since they placed their duty to country above loyalty to the elite, we thankfully avoided that scenario.
Reintroducing a draft would, IMHO, reverse that progress. We’d end up with more people like Jack Texeira, Reality Winner, Edward Snowden, and Michael Flynn. Which would be a terrible result.
ETA. Obviously none of those people were drafted. But the all volunteer force means we’re a lot less likely to end up with those sorts of people in the ranks than if we had a draft.
ETA 2. As for the whole “it would be good for the draftees” idea, that misses the point. It’s shouldn’t be about what’s good for those joining up (and drafting a fuck up probably won’t fix them anyway), it should be about what’s good for the United States as a whole.
The problem is, in the case of conscription, it can often be a positive to the individual but a negative to the service, eg Ordinary Seaman Jones gets a few years of standing watches and scrubbing decks for reasonably good pay and benefits, while Petty Officer Smith and Lieutenant Johnson have an administrative burden on hand to waste a bunch of their time.
Ultimately, the issue will be that, whatever means you choose to use (a compulsory draft, stronger incentives to enlist, etc.), the young adults of wealthy families will very likely find ways to avoid it, as has been noted by others in this thread.
Historically, wealthy kids were much more able to avoid being drafted, and/or avoid dangerous duty, because their families had the means and influence to pull strings. No matter what system were set up for a new draft, that isn’t going to change – even if you tried to close the traditional loopholes, new loopholes would be found.
The kinds of incentives which would generally improve recruiting for a volunteer force (e.g., better college tuition coverage, better career placement once you leave the service, etc.) aren’t going to be appealing to the children of the wealthy and powerful, because they and their families aren’t lacking in the ability to cover those things themselves.
The OP mentioned three issues:
- Lack of sufficient immediately available trained manpower to fight a non-notice WW-III with e.g. China.
- Lack of sufficient durable equipment and expendable materiel, especially munitions to sustain that fight for anywhere near as long as it will take to win.
- Lack of readiness, which is milspeak for “what we own is in crappy condition and who we are is ill-trained, ill-led, or ill-motivated. And therefore ineffective in fact even if impressive-looking on paper”
The first two are IMO fully accurate depictions of current US reality. The third is true in the narrower sense that a lot of warfighters & equipment are just about worn out from overuse in the last 20+ years. And that the US has alread delivered a very large and possibly dangerous fraction of its total supply of munitions to Ukraine already with more on the way. While production ramp-up to replace those munitions is the work of multiple years, and nearly a decade in some cases. But in other ways at least some parts of DoD are at the highest state of combat experience and proficiency we’ve ever been.
I fail to see how a draft helps with affording 2, fixes 3, or really works for achieving 1, since a standing army that size being replaced every 2 or 3 years is simply unaffordable at any realistic US defense budget even if the conscripts worked for free. The size of the professional force required to lead and train the conscripts would itself be 3 or 4x the size of the current DoD.