If you want lumber to exist you should be willing to go chop down a tree. Doesn’t seem that complicated to me. This is just a thought experiment, of course – in the real world there’s no reason for average citizens to position themselves in a manner to be able to chop down trees should the moment arise. There’s plenty of people willing to be lumberjacks, and there are other jobs that must be done, and we all have personal preferences about where we live and what kind of work we enjoy. But that doesn’t preclude someone from being willing to chop down a hypothetical tree if the country needed it.
But that’s where I agree with Andy that war is unique. It’s not just producing lumber, and if people want war then I think they *should *be positioning themselves to take part in it.
Uhm… after a childhood and specially teen years whose main theme was “taking care of Mom” (including medically), I want to be a nurse like I want to jump off a cliff. If the cliff is tall enough that I’m guaranteed to die, I find the jump less repulsive, it would hurt less.
But I’m perfectly happy that there are nurses, doctors, hospital techs, EMTs… I expect most of them would have zero interest (and, for some of them and some of these tasks, not much trainability) in being IT people, doing process improvement or writing corporate manuals, yet they’re very happy to call the IT people, have processes which aren’t stupid or manuals which provide decent information. Your example is a pretty bad one.
That doesn’t seem unreasonable, except why a draft? A draft will sweep up people who didn’t advocate for the war, while only presenting a small chance that you (an advocate) would have to serve.
What about a draft that only picked from people who voted in favor of the war? If such a hypothetical could exist.
Maybe it’s a matter of Spanish verbs vs English verbs. I will nurse someone for a very, very short period of time.
More than two hours on someone who’s not my direct relative, KILL ME. Multiple people, fuck no. Every working day nursing, I can’t even imagine it without seeing red. Nurse someone for a very short period, yes; be a nurse, no.
I think people are getting stuck on “want” versus “willing” to do a job. Nobody wants to go to war, except maybe naive young kids trying to prove themselves and sociopaths. But many are willing to go to war.
I don’t want to be a bus driver. I’m willing to be a bus driver, because I think bus drivers need to exist.
That’s the thing, I’m not willing to be a nurse. If my only options in life had been nursing school or nursing school, I understand that 10-floor falls are enough to kill you (we lived in a 10th floor and my room had a very climbable balcony).
In what relevant way is war unique? Just like lumberjacks, there’s plenty of people willing to be soldiers. Why is there any more reason for average citizens to position themselves to take part in war than lumber harvesting? Why is a vague “if no one else were willing to do it, I guess I would” sufficient in the case of lumber harvesting but not prosecuting a war?
I sort of want to get behind such a selective draft - you would have to put in exceptions for eg: people with dependents - but I just can’t. The state cannot single out people for their political opinions. It would be unconstitutional and imparts the same chilling effect (to a lesser degree) on public debate as Mr. iiandyiiii’s proposed public shaming.
People should have the right to lean in on public debate without being punished for doing so, and it is especially cruel to only punish the most physically fit citizens for exercising an inalienable right simply because they are fit for military service.
Because lumberjacks don’t fall under the UCMJ. Soldiers can’t back out of a war. They may be asked to do things that are uniquely dangerous, or psychologically damaging. War is hell.
If lumberjacking were like that, I wouldn’t be willing to lumberjack without a damn good reason, and I therefore couldn’t expect anyone else to lumberjack either.
That so many folks really aren’t understanding that war is a fundamentally different enterprise than logging, mining, nursing, or a million other professions is a huge part of why we get into so many stupid wars. It’s so clearly different that I have trouble conceiving that anyone could see them as similar. All these other professions are taking care of the necessities of society. Wars of choice are powerful authorities deciding to purposefully kill, and put at risk, many human beings, for some supposed benefit or advantage. War is very, very rarely necessary for human society (and it’s only necessary when another human society has failed in some way). Gathering resources and taking care of people is always necessary, for every human society.
Agreed, war is different than lumber harvesting. In addition, an express consequence of war is the loss of human life, while the loss of human life during lumber harvesting is accidental. War always inflicts harm. The comparison is naïve.
Other citizens having the option to be critical isn’t “being punished” in any way at all – that’s just part of normal human interaction. Further, I would be critical of anyone advocating for a dumb war, not just fit people – I just would use different sorts of criticism (and possibly personal attacks) against different warmongers, depending on the circumstances.
The principle is one may not support government action that puts others at risk unless one is willing to put oneself at risk. The CA Assembly is willing to support government action that puts police at risk. Therefore, unless they are willing to put themselves at risk, they should be called gutless cowards. QED.
Unless you have a reason why the principle doesn’t apply generally, it’s more or less special pleading, not to say hand-waving.
I’ve got it. If the government actually needed more soldiers, and put out a public notice saying so much, in that case I would have no problem calling a hawk a coward for refusing to enlist.
That’s certainly not the principle that motivates my position. My principle is about war, and unnecessary wars in particular. Not some notion of “risk”. War is much, much more than just some notion of “risk”.
But how do you feel about my position? Do you think it’s cowardly, or not cowardly, to advocate for a war that one is capable of but unwilling to participate in?