The military takes its orders from the government, and the government is supposed to be doing what the majority want it to do. If the military can’t fill its recruitment goals month after month, maybe the goverment should get the message that it isn’t supported in this endeavour.
Yeah, I know. There is a process for conscientious objection when registering. When I worked in a Mennonite organization, they would have teen boys come by for instruction on how to file what they needed to for CO status.
Lemur 866
First, there will be no draft. THERE WILL BE NO DRAFT.
And even if there were a draft
Wow - that was a quick about face !!!
The draft will return. As I’ve said before, it is impossible to foresee what events might precipitate it. (Who could have predicted the events of Pearl Harbor?) I think something equally tragic will cause its reinstatement.
Mr Moto
I would agree that basic training has no political agenda connected with it. I think you’ll agree that it is done to indoctrinate recruits into the military mentality. You do not want a military that goes around questioning, ignoring and disobeying orders.
“Full speed ahead sailor !!!”
“Why Captain? Wouldn’t 3/4 speed suffice? Have there been any studies done on the detriments of running a naval vessel at full speed? Perhaps it is not cost-effective. Shouldn’t we set up a panel to discuss the pros and cons of full speed Naval travel?”
Obviously I am exaggerating but I imagine basic training is done to get those ideas out of your head or at least to keep them to yourself and just carry out the order. Nothing political. Just get the job done.
No.
No it isn’t.
There will be no draft. And if there were a draft, it wouldn’t be used by Bush to murder people who threw spitballs in second grade. How is that an about face?
As far as the military indoctrinating draftees, why exactly would the do that? You’re worried about Republicans reinstating the draft, then secretly ordering the military to use basic training to indoctrinate draftees so those draftees will vote Republican in the future? How does that follow?
Lemur 866
Maybe my choice of “indoctrination” was not the best word to use. I believe there is NO political ideology used in basic training. I just meant that basic training is used to instill the idea in recruits that you damned well better follow orders.
That example I gave about a helmsman questioning his Captain illustrates how screwed up the military would be if everyone questioned orders or delayed carrying them out.
[QUOTE=gigi]
Yeah, I know. There is a process for conscientious objection when registering.
[QUOTE]
The link you’ve given says there’s not.
You can, like they suggest, write “conscientious objector” on the form when you fill it out, but that doesn’t have any legal standing. If there is a draft, any conscientious objector claims will be sorted out then.
Everyone has to register for selective service, whether you are a potential conscientious objector or not, whether you would pass a physical or not. Since there is no draft (and there will be no…), there is no reason to evaluate conscientious objector claims. No one is being drafted and sent to fight in a war even though they are a pacifist because–get this–there is no draft. Anyway, in previous drafts conscientious objectors had to serve just the same as everyone else, just in a non-combat capacity, as a medic for example. So conscientious objectors still have to register for the selective service but selective service board won’t be interested in your claim to conscientious objector status unless the draft is reinstated (which it won’t be).
When I graduated from high school in 1994 I got mailings from ALL the services extolling their virtues. I’m not sure how different this is. It’s not like I’d contacted them, what with my being woefully unqualified for service. And if they get the address of the girls as well…well, I’m a woman. And they still bugged me.
It sounds like this is an official way to annoy graduates instead of the somewhat less-official way they annoyed me.
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
[QUOTE=gigi]
Yeah, I know. There is a process for conscientious objection when registering.
All that is true.
I can tell you though, as a Selective Service board member, that personally I would consider a marked card as evidence that a registrant had had leanings toward conscientious objection at that point in time. That, plus an examination of the registrant’s current moral precepts and his lifestyle, could help me to justify reclassifying the registrant as a conscientious objector.
Generally speaking, a conscientious objector must have a broad based moral opposition to war in general. This opposition must be based on moral, ethical or philosophical considerations closely held by the individual, and not merely political leanings. They needn’t be religiously based, although they certainly can be. They can’t be based on political opposition to a particular war.
Also, the individual must have a lifestyle generally in keeping with those beliefs. And while a recent conversion to conscientious objection is certainly possible, it is easier to demonstrate, through testimony or other evidence, proof of conscientious objection if this is a belief held for a longer stretch of time.
I’ve always wondered about the purpose of this game. Given how many times a typical player is killed in the damn thing, why would they think they’d have any better luck on a real battlefield? I think it would be more of an anti-recruiting aid than anything else.
I’m not sure I understand what you wrote. The Infantry holds ground, not pilots, MP’s, nor especially, lawyers and accountants. If it was possible to put a hundred thousand trained Infantrymen on the ground in Iraq it would help immensely. About the only reason you have any of the other services like the navy and airforce and other critters like accountants (base wogs as they were affectionately know to us infantry types) is to clear and pave the way for the infantry to get onto the ground to hold it.
How nice for you–you got out alive. And it appears that you used the military for what alot of young kids want to use it for today–a leg up to a better life–not to die in 114 degree heat in Iraq. Of course, those same kids have been villified and scorned–you signed up, you know what you signed on for etc. But you lucked out-good on you.
Hint: Military life is not a positive one for everyone and it doesn’t work the way it did for you for everyone. Why would you think it would?
Well, sure. But this two-way street goes on everywhere in life, to some degree, doesn’t it?
A soldier joins the military for different motives than the military hires a soldier. The soldier wants pay and benefits, a military lifestyle, training, et cetera. The military wants warm bodies in billets, so they can do some damage if the shooting starts.
No problem, as long as everybody is aware of what each side requires from the arrangement, does a good job meeting these goals, and the relationship is entered into freely.
The same is true for any job, really.
Now, frankly, I’m a bit insulted by the implications of some of the rest of your post. When I got to my first duty station in the Navy, in Sogonella, Italy, I was twenty-four years old. In short order I qualified as both a petty officer and as an operations control watch supervisor.
As a watch supervisor, I had to prepare aircrew briefs and debrief aircrews who were enforcing sanctions imposed against the formaer Yugoslavia. This meant that I had to interact with aircrews, officers and enlisted alike, of nine NATO countries, including the U.S.
While the planes were in the air, I maintained communications with them through several secure voice circuits, a data link circuit, and a photographic link that we were testing. Above me was a watch officer, below me was a watch stander who would soon qualify as a supervisor as well. I would also act as a liason with the communications personnel, the intel folks, the data processors, the squadrons, and the NATO chain of command above.
When I wasn’t on watch, I had to mind my collateral duties as the custodian of secret publications and the assistant command public relations officer.
Since there was a war on, we were pretty busy. I worked seventy hour weeks for the most part. When I finished work, I went back to the apartment I rented in town in my own car.
Now, this isn’t to brag or boast. There were lots of people next to me doing the same thing, many younger than me. It was what the job demanded at that time. The military recruits young people, demands tough things from them, and generally gets them.
Given the responsibilities I had at the time, and the competence I demonstrated executing these responsibilities, I would have felt insulted being described as a “kid”.
The people who aren’t coming back alive from Iraq aren’t kids, they’re brave men and women. It might seem a small point, but the implications of it are large to me.
Well, no shit. If it was all positive, wouldn’t I still be in? I got out after only five years.
As a whole, it was a positive evperience, but I was ready to move on. And I met an awful lot of people who would have been better off had they never enlisted in the first place.
I don’t have rose colored glasses here, but I’m not rabidly anti-military either. I’m a realist when it comes to military service. And a realistic view, too me, means accepting that:
- We need a military.
- We need people to serve in it.
- There are people who are suited to this, and some who aren’t.
- People who are suited to this should be recruited, those who aren’t shouldn’t be.
- Once recruited, those in the military should be compensated well, and appropriately honored.
- Appropriate honors do not disparage those who do not volunteer to serve.
- In a general emergency, people may be induced to serve who might not otherwise be recruited. This is an obligation of citizenship, and should be fulfilled or honorably avoided through legal means.
I doubt you were insulted, really. I doubt you heed what I said at all. There is something so officious in your tone of your posts–I am not surprised one bit that you did well in the Navy.
Your first post was not nearly as comprehensive as this one. I was supposed to guess at your experiences? (or was I supposed to have paid that much attention to your pearls of wisdom here and have picked up this info over time?).
Pssst: they are kids when they JOIN, like I posted. Some of them come back men and women, some(I would say most) come back incredibly damaged, and some don’t come back at all. You know this-so why the poster boy attitude of the prior post?
YOU were lucky, and the military served you well. My only point is that it doesn’t work that way for all, and not all should have to do it. Since you seem to agree with that, I am somewhat puzzled by the condescension present in your last post. Thank you so much for breaking it down for me. We stupid, ungrateful civilians need all the help we can get.
However, regarding that “be all that you can be!” recruiting…Recruiters don’t concentrate on my upper middle class, mostly white suburb–they concentrate on the nearby poorer communities. This is a well known phenomenon.
I don’t think the military gives a flying fuck about your talents when you are recruited --I think they find a place for you once you’re in. Having spoken to any number of people who have been in and since gotten out (alot of nurses have done military time)–that seems to be their story (barring ROTC). Hey, you know more about it then I ever will, but I don’t buy your happy dovetailing of skills/talents and openings. Plus, there is the whole “pride, patriotism, sacrifice, glory” marketing that young KIDS fall for, every day.
Hey-we need a military. I just don’t see the need to go all starry eyed and googly about it. It’s a neccessary evil, IMO. We could also do a hell of lot better job(starting with the DoD and the Pentagon, and Congress, too) of treating our soldiers and also our vets with some common decency and good mental health care. That’s part of your wonderful military, too. That’s part of your “overall positive experience” as well. Let’s hope it keeps working for ya.
I see a lot of condescension in your posts too, eleanorigby. Calling the military a necessary evil seems condescending to me. The Navy wasn’t a perfect organization when I belonged to it, but I didn’t regard it as evil. My good Army friends seem to feel similarly about that branch.
The military is necessary. Period.
And, given that nearly all the veterans I know are reasonably successful people, and that statistics demonstrate that they tend to do better in life than non veterans in terms of life expectancy, average income, incarceration rates, mental illness, and substance dependency, I absolutely know that, on average, your claim that most veterans are damaged by their experiences is just plain false.
The average age of the people working on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, fueling, arming, launching, recovering and maintaining multimillion dollar aircraft is right about twenty years old. Their working environment has been described as the most dangerous on earth.
They are not doing a childish thing. Why do you persist in calling them children?
You accuse me of seeing only the good aspects of the military, which I do not, and never have. An examination of my posting history here should show a balanced view. You, on the other hand, seem to have an irrational prejudice against the military, regretting that they even need to exist.
So, at it’s most elementary, you WANT tools of destruction to exist? You LIKE having deadly weapons available at all times? It’s a better, safer world because we have WMD? Philosophically, I don’t agree–but I recognize the need, hence the “neccessary evil” part. Tanks, and bombs and land mines may be inaminate objects, but they are put to evil use. You don’t see this, as a military person?
Have you visited a VA hospital? Have you visited the psych ward of a VA hospital?
Have you read about the cuts in health care to the vets?
My Dad was in the Navy, and both neighbors on either side served in Vietnam-one Army, one Marines. For my Dad, it was no big deal (he is a doctor). For my neighbors, one is “fine” and the other is downright odd. I had friends in nursing school who had served in Vietnam–and K. had issues, major issues with the war and his service in it. So did the vets we saw in our clinical rotations thru psych. Could I bring up Tailhook or the AFA? Yep-nothing but good from the military, there. Yep, those are “men” in there harassing “women”. Sure.
I have no idea why you are still arguing about this-you have said that you don’t see the military as all good–and that has been my entire point.
I have respect for those who went and fought. I do not buy the military’s marketing. 18 or 21-they are kids in my book. Lord knows they don’t come back as naive as they went in. Nowhere did I ever say that they were incapable or unintelligent–what is your opinion of kids?
Alot of them don’t come back whole-either physically or mentally. Or am I dreaming of the huge rise in amputee injuries /PTSD seen on the news and in the paper? Sorry, no cite-but as a military person, you probably already know about that.
I don’t care for the military culture–the whole “civilians don’t understand” hogwash that I sense in your posts. Some of us see it pretty clearly. Hey, for some it’s a way out of poverty and way to go to college–that’s great. But it’s not that for everyone. That is my point. Maybe that whole mindset is another necessary evil-something to think about for me.
We shall have to agree to disagree on this.
Yep, sure.
Given that we can’t lay our arms down tomorrow, lions not being ready to lay down with the lamb and all, I don’t think we need to engage in handwringing over the need to have a military.
Agsin, it is a necessity, not a necessary evil.
And seeing how you’ve answered your prior misconceptions with some more misconceptions, you’re obviously not convincable on this point. Perhaps we shall have to agree to disagree.