Compulsory Military Service?

that's a philosophy that's changing in most modern amries. In an aesymetrical battle feild, it's often the REMF's that take the brunt of ambushes as the enemy is aware they are more vulnerable as targets.
 
While I agree with compulsery SERVICE (not necesarrily military), I think it is a very delicate situation. I think, at least in the US, when you graduate highschool, or if you are a droppout when you turn 18, you should have many choices of mandatory service. I think the military should have more benefits than the others but its not the only choice. Maybe some choices like: Military, Community services like Firemen, police, construction workter, and a wide variety of others that are all beneficial to the nation. I believe that whatever country you happen to call home you should have enough pride to do something to better it and if you dont, then you should leave. Maybe even that everyone gets basic training. Everyone could use a little discipline.
 
Knightraptor said:
While I agree with compulsery SERVICE (not necesarrily military), I think it is a very delicate situation. I think, at least in the US, when you graduate highschool, or if you are a droppout when you turn 18, you should have many choices of mandatory service. I think the military should have more benefits than the others but its not the only choice. Maybe some choices like: Military, Community services like Firemen, police, construction workter, and a wide variety of others that are all beneficial to the nation. I believe that whatever country you happen to call home you should have enough pride to do something to better it and if you dont, then you should leave. Maybe even that everyone gets basic training. Everyone could use a little discipline.
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Problem: Cost.

Do you realize how much it would cost the nation to have... what, 4 million more people in the military? You really want to pay for that? Not to mention the fact that America's armed forces would turn into a human-wave army since they wouldn't have money to spend on R&D and technology.

And I'm not even going to mention how annoying it would be to waste 4 years of my life in a pointless career path for people such as myself. If you're going to MIT then you don't want to go into the military and the military doesn't want to have to deal with your scrawney eggheadded self either, so why force it?

That's why I like my plan where you take the kids who are highschool dropouts and low performers and teach them what their parents didn't while freeing up better people for more demanding tasks within the armed forces. It will work a lot better for our society than welfare and will not cost too much more than what we're already paying.
 
Yup, that's the problem.
However, sending everyone through a month or two of boot camp may actually work out. Active duty? No way.
 
Whispering Death said:
Personally, instead of holding kids back with these stupid "No Child Left Behind" tests in America, I think we should have a test at the end of highschool. If you fail it, you are forced to go into the military because in the military they will make something out of you whereas in civilian life you'd end up night managing an IHOP or join the 2 million in jail.

Pay for it by knocking out pensions, medical, GI bill, and such for those put through compulurally.
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So one with disabilitys should not be helped in any way in school?
 
AlexKall said:
So one with disabilitys should not be helped in any way in school?
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No, the idea of compulsury military service is to provide discipline and worthwhile skills (i.e. machine maintanence) to those slackers who would end up leaching off of our society. I wouldn't "punnish" people with learning disabilities by forcing them into the military, I think our Country's current efforts for people with learning disabilities are adequate.
 
Personally, instead of holding kids back with these stupid "No Child Left Behind" tests in America, I think we should have a test at the end of highschool. If you fail it, you are forced to go into the military because in the military they will make something out of you whereas in civilian life you'd end up night managing an IHOP or join the 2 million in jail.

Pay for it by knocking out pensions, medical, GI bill, and such for those put through compulurally.
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It has some good sides but also very bad sides. The good sides are they'd probably get trained to be model citizens and good people but the bad side is it would split the country apart. People would be outraged at the idea of putting kids into the military against their will.

Take Canada for example during The Great War WW1. Compulsory Military Service with the Conscription crisis. It split the country in two. In the end the people that were ordered to do service never showed up.
 
Well yeah, but the Anglo-French divide's been around since Wolfe took Canada on the plains of Abraham.

I think that mandatory service could actually be beneficial, especially if it requires a heavy pt routines. This could help to solve the rising obesity rate in North America.
 
Whispering Death, you need to get a grip. I am NOT giving up my pension or my med benefits to field a huge army of misfits. No way - no how.

"If you're going to MIT then you don't want to go into the military and the military doesn't want to have to deal with your scrawney eggheadded self either"

I was Phi Beta Kappa at Syracuse University. So much for your disparaging of "eggheads".

Compulsory service? There's an old maxim: "You get what you pay for". People forced into service will never have the same professionalism of volunteers who get something more than a control over their weight problem. We got rid of it, it was the right thing to do, and nothing short of a massive national emergency (i.e. WWIII) is going to bring it back.
 
I think what lots of people are aiming for here is compulsory boot camp and the option to go into service. That way you get people's act together and you still maintain an all volunteer military.
Another thing about some limited compulsory service is that it doesn't put a divide between the people and the military like a lot of professional armies do. Often this is cased because these people who never have served have some strange idea that their military is going to take over their country and are going to make their lives completely miserable. Basically the only glimpses of the military they get is when something goes straight to hell and it makes the newspaper.
You have limited conscription? Then this tends to go away, because they know what it's like.
I know for quite sure that Belgium is pretty serious with this problem now that conscription has gone out the door. I think also wtih the younger generation, the US falls into this category of military hating as well. Places like Israel or Korea who have manditory service don't suffer from this civilian-military divide, while both maintain pretty good armies.
 
That swings both ways. I doubt people like Saddam or Stalin had folks lining up in any volunteer force either. And I don't see any great division in this country from the civilians and the military - far from it.
 
It depends.
I felt I saw quite a bit of it in DC. But I'm probably overreacting from the conspiracy theories I keep hearing there. Always seems to have the military doing no good to its own citizens in those for some reason.
Here's the thing, I hardly doubt the US would treat its conscripts the way Stalin or Saddam did.
 
DC is not emblematic of the US. It's the capital so of course you'll see alot more protesters there than in suburbia. Also the populace there is very anti-Bush as the fact that 90% of them voted against him so you won't find much good news about the military there at the moment.

Of course the US would treat conscripts better than Stalin or Saddam! That wasn't my point. My point is that the populace has no more or less to fear from a volunteer force than they do from a conscript force. You can make an arguement about "fear" for either. Our military works fine as it is - never better. When I got in the "bolo" Army was still around. Those were the draftees from the Vietnam era. It sucked BAD double stroke underline BAD!!
 
What I'm saying is, you could just pass them through boot camp, have them registered having finished basic training and just put them out into the civilian world. At the end of boot camp they could have the option of choosing their futures, one in the military, going on to further specialized training, and the other in the civilian world.

And yeah I guess you're right about DC. It's one weird place...
 
I understand where you're going, but it would never fly in this country. Nothing compulsory ever does. Hell ask 03USMC how hard it is to get people to comply with _driving_ laws.
 
Yeah that's the thing. Once you get rid of a draft... even unofficially, it's impossible to bring it back barring a disaster of epic proportions. Heck, if 9/11 couldn't bring it back, imagine what it would take to actually do so.
 
Like I said in an earlier post, I _served_ when there was a draft created force still around. It totally sucked. We are HUGELY better off without it.
 
Charge_7 said:
Whispering Death, you need to get a grip. I am NOT giving up my pension or my med benefits to field a huge army of misfits. No way - no how.
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No no no, you misunderstand me man. Volunteers would be able to keep all their bennifits, it is the conscripts that would not be elligible for those bennifits. And as for the college thing, I think you would admit that you are the exception to the rule. Most people in non-military colleges are there without any intention of enlisting, so forcing those people into the military during peacetime would be counter productive both for the people being conscripted and for the military.

Do we understand eachother?
 
I understand you more clearly, however, I still disagree with you. Like I told the 13th Redneck, I served in the "bolo" Army. I never EVER want to see that again! You don't know how lucky you are we put an end to that.
 
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