Conscription

[Brian Ellis]

Originally posted by GT98
Great idea, but would never work since liberials would say it would desrimnate against people

No politics, please.

[GT98]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
No politics, please.

Well at least in the US, a liberial isn't a policital party

[Wulfman]

Slavery implies doing a lot for nothing but the rags you wear, the meagre food you eat and the flea-ridden paliasse you sleep on and no personal possessions.

300€/month, no accomodation, in theory your employer pays for food & clothes (but that part of the deal is usually forgotten). 12 months spent (14 if working abroad).

if one has no moral problems about firing on civilians crossing our borders one can join the military. about the same salary (although increasing with time), only 9 months, food & shelter paid for by the little green men.

that's civil service for the male population in austria. wohoo!

mfg
wulfman

ps.: if I'm unlucky I'll have to disrupt my studies to join the club, fun. not.

[The PIT]

Now how would you respond to the following questions?

1) Are you worried about the danger of war??

2) Are you unhappy about growth of armaments?

3) Do you think theres a danger in giving guns to young people and teaching them how to kill??

4) Do you think it's wrong to force people to take up arms against their will??

5) Would you oppose the re-introduction of national service/conscription???

[High_Jumbllama]

Originally posted by spadnos
Use the system that Robert A. Heinlein made up for Starship Troopers: Only those who have performed their 2 years of "Federal Service" are considered full citens, and only full citizens are eligible to vote or hold office.

"Federal Service" is everything from welfare worker to military to peace corps - basically anything the government currently employs people for.

The general idea was that only people who are willing to serve their country, at low pay, have demonstrated that they're fit to make decisions for the whole country. (If you're strictly out for yourself, then you probably won't vote for the person that will do the most good, but the person that will do the most good for you, regardless of the cost to others)

- Steve

The governemnt is supposed to be for the people and not the other way around. Serving must be voluntary or it emans nothing.

[GT98]

Originally posted by High_Jumbllama
The governemnt is supposed to be for the people and not the other way around. Serving must be voluntary or it emans nothing.

But the extreme of this is a nanny state where people depend on the Goverment for everything.

Personally I think that there should be some sort of goverment safety net, not a system that you can mooch off of, which many people do, just because humans are naturally lazy

[spadnos]

Originally posted by GT98
Great idea, but would never work since liberials would say it would desrimnate against people

Hey - I resent that

True - there would be problems. There used to be tests that people had to pass to be allowed to vote, and they were used to keep black people from voting (the tests were targeted toward whites, and also required that the person be able to read - harder for the average non-white, since they didn't have equal access to schools).

Of course, any system can be perverted by the people who implement it (we don't have a perfect capitalist society, the USSR didn't have a perfect communist society, etc).

I suppose that any system that would actually require that people be educated about civics before being allowed to vote would be better than one where anyone gets the right at a certain age.

- Steve

[spadnos]

Originally posted by High_Jumbllama
The governemnt is supposed to be for the people and not the other way around. Serving must be voluntary or it emans nothing.

It still is for the people, it's just that there's a quid pro quo to becoming a "full citizen". There's no requirement that people do federal service, it's just that they get the extra benefits of full citizenship if they do.

Note that for half the people in the US, there would be no difference (only around half of eligible voters actually vote regularly - also exemplefying the fact that an apathetic public is less useful than an informed and interested one)

- Steve

[Wulfman]

Originally posted by spadnos
Use the system that Robert A. Heinlein made up for Starship Troopers: Only those who have performed their 2 years of "Federal Service" are considered full citens, and only full citizens are eligible to vote or hold office.

with heinleins ideological background in mind (or rather the uncertainness if he wrote a satire or actually liked the idea of a fascist state) I don't think that would be a good idea.

mfg
wulfman

[KvHagedorn]

Originally posted by Greebe
Now if you wish to be an officer this would be an option directly afterward if you meet the criteria or after you've graduated College/Uni... and none of this I have my bachlors in Arts caca gets you in.

Are you saying only math-oriented people (Bachelor of Science holders) are suitable to be officers, or that some sort of command ethics need to be taught in an ROTC type environment? In my experience, those who study philosophy, history, political science, business, and humanities curriculi are more suited for understanding the true role of leadership and relating to the grunts they serve as leaders than those who have studied nothing but math and science.

[UtwigMU]

I'm not a militarist and I was considering civil service, but when they said, they'll send me for a topographer in artillery, I thought, this can't be that bad, so I went.

As far as benefits from the army are concerned:
- I learned to connect to people with little or no education as I wasseparated from them since hi-school.
- I learned how it's to be yelled at and under pressure.
- I learned how to put twice as many clothes in same volume all neatly folded.
- I learned how to establish coordinates with laser or optical distance measurement and artillery busola/theodolyte.
- I learned how to shoot with real gun (not just airgun).
- I lost a bit of weight (most gained weight though).

Otherwise, in my experience people generally lost morale and enthusiasm and for instance those who smoked marihuana raised their consumption. Also during last two months lot's of alcohol was smuggled in.

This was mainly due to attitude of officers (majority went in the army because they could get paid for doing nothing), due to monotony of guarding for 5 months instead of exercising for what we were brought in (lack of soldiers due to high percentage of civil service)

I'd say overall it was not a bad experience, although things could/should have been done differently.

They have recently abolished draft in favour of professional army and voluntary reserve:
- public would object to sending conscripts to places like Afghanistan, which our entry into NATO requires
- with volunteers that problem goes away as they know that they can be sent abroad and they have made the decision to join by themselves
- for peacekeeping and modern limited strikes professionals are much more suitable

From military point of view well trained conscript army can be good for defence, but limited offensive warfare is better conducted with less professional troops of higher quality.

On the other hand war was essential part of existance of every state and civilization in history and I don't believe in end of history/we no longer need an army mentality. And the core of army has usually been long term serving professionals.

I'm not for conscription per se (depending on circumstances), but we should regard army as neccessary and beneficial part of society and respect soldiers. I hope there will be further incentive towards European army.




As for civil service - before draft was abolished, civil service has been given huge privileges over military service. This was because of great resentment to draft in Yougoslavian army.

While in Austro-Hungary there were units that were drafted on local basis and we had booklets in Slovenian in the 2nd half of 19th century and Slovenian was official language of units consisting of mostly Slovenians, Yougoslavia was geared to create some monlithic "Yougoslav" nation. People were sent to serve far from their home and units were created from people from different places. Official language in the army was "Serbo-Croat". In the 80's there was nationalist pressure against slovenians, because Slovenia had more liberal views than the rest of republics and also soldiers were being sent to Kosovo to quell Albanian uprising or guard Albanian border and few came back in coffins.

So despite our army again becoming truly ours, people had aversion to conscription and requirements for civil service were loose and they were privileged.

While soldiers got 22 Euros per month and had to be in barracks all the time (regulations guaranteeing free weekend every month, while generally every other weekend was free in our case, mostly due to excessive guarding) and wear uniforms, those in civil service got 193 Euros per month and had to work for 8h per day in nursery home or help with firefighters or take kids to vacation.

In my opinion conditions for military and civil service should have been made equal.

[DGhost]

Originally posted by KvHagedorn
Are you saying only math-oriented people (Bachelor of Science holders) are suitable to be officers, or that some sort of command ethics need to be taught in an ROTC type environment? In my experience, those who study philosophy, history, political science, business, and humanities curriculi are more suited for understanding the true role of leadership and relating to the grunts they serve as leaders than those who have studied nothing but math and science.

It's my experience that the people who study philosophy, history, poly sci, business and humanities really have no idea about true leadership unless they have acctually been in leadership positions and risen to the occasion. They have no more ability to communicate to the average grunt than they do with the average blue collar worker.

Grunts are not impressed or wowed or even give a rats ass about philosophy, history, poly sci, business, and humanities. Or leaders who decide that they are The Shit because they have an education in them.

Good officers are grunts at heart. They are people who have been there and done that, walked around with their boots in the mud and a ruck on their back. They are good leaders because they have walked the same path of the soldiers they lead and not because they have read Sun Tzu.

[UtwigMU]

I think leadership requires intelligence and also as DGhost said understanding of the "grunt".

For instance the good officers were generally with uni education or uni dropouts and they never imposed pointless tasks on us. When we were exercising or crawling, they always exercised with us.

On the other hand stupid officers required utmost respect wrt to saluting and rules and imposed mindless tasks for slightest offence or even for nothing.

One particular guy who liked to sound alarms on guard and send guys who were on 4-6h break between 2h shift to lay for hour in the woods on frozen ground, during dinner time (so that when you returned from alarm, you had to start new shift right away or those on shift had to stay longer and everyone got cold dinner) while he was entertaining woman who brought food from some nearby restaurant particulary got on our nerves.

What happened was that we got very drunk on purpose (most of the guys) and made him look bad (MP had to intervene) and many of us had thoughts about pointing gun at him and saying "That's enough" or even shooting him.

[KvHagedorn]

Originally posted by DukeP
I DO like the democracy behind drafting, tho.
If memory serves me right, it was invented during the french revolution, to assure conservation of the democratic spirit (as well as serving for some cheapass soldiers).

I think such mass conscription has really led to war. Napoleon had an army far bigger than any other in Europe because of conscription, and this emboldened him into megalomania. Before WWI, France and Germany both had rigorous conscription, which contributed greatly to the instability that actually caused the war. When the Army is huge like that, it seems actually to become an interest group, to whose representatives (the generals) politicians must pander.

Here's a good brief summary of the history of conscription..

[KvHagedorn]

Originally posted by DGhost
It's my experience that the people who study philosophy, history, poly sci, business and humanities really have no idea about true leadership unless they have acctually been in leadership positions and risen to the occasion. They have no more ability to communicate to the average grunt than they do with the average blue collar worker.

Grunts are not impressed or wowed or even give a rats ass about philosophy, history, poly sci, business, and humanities. Or leaders who decide that they are The Shit because they have an education in them.

Good officers are grunts at heart. They are people who have been there and done that, walked around with their boots in the mud and a ruck on their back. They are good leaders because they have walked the same path of the soldiers they lead and not because they have read Sun Tzu.

I agree. What I was disagreeing with was that math/science types would make better officers than those who had actually studied social sciences or humanities. The grad students who were the math teachers in my college were the saddest, most socially clueless people I knew there.. hardly had the ability even to communicate with others.

I like the idea of officer trainees having to go through super-rigorous boot camp like that portrayed in An Officer and a Gentleman. An Army in which officers and enlisted men have little respect for each other will be a pushover in any war.