OMG you had to have voted for Obama, Hillary. Then Biden.
Compulsory Military Service
- Thread starter Charlie Marlow
- Start date
Active for the past 26 years and I say no. Introduces a morale issue we just don’t need.
But I can get behind the idea of National compulsory service where 18 year olds have a range of options to serve their country including military service, infrastructure projects, rebuilding national parks etc
But I can get behind the idea of National compulsory service where 18 year olds have a range of options to serve their country including military service, infrastructure projects, rebuilding national parks etc
Other than political rot with Senior Grade Officers America's volunteer Armed Forces have served Her quite well over the past fifty years or so. No reason to change anything. Military spending and defense of Country is the single reason for taxing citizens everything else is simply forcing everyone to pay for something most of us won't utilize in our lifetimes. Harsh but uncorrected truth.
I lean heavily right and I agree. We should be spending less on the military. And on everything else. I’d say a 70% cut across the board and eliminate a bunch of departments. Like the department of Ed, Dept of interior, homeland security, and the Dept of Ag.
As for the OP’s question, no, we should not have compulsory service. Of any kind. It’s a little too close to slavery for me. The government has no business telling me what I have to do. I want the government to leave me a lone, not force me into their servitude.
Work out a public service plan then. That is not the mission of America's Armed Forces.
We have thousands lining up in vehicles for food and but yet we can't cut some of the $698 billion spent on the military? Good use of resources.
Totally agree.. most other countries have a much more unified population as well.. the US has turned into such a mix of citizens and illegals, there is little loyalty to the old system anyways... it's a shame too, as this country was once worth fighting for.. and maybe still, but I feel like we can't trust anyone or anything. A civil war is possible too.
I prefer a military that has voluntary participants. Can you imagine how big it would have to be to make room for every 18-20 year old. Heck most wouldn't last a day of boot camp
Not tracking your point. I think I understand the mission of America’s Armed Forces...since I have been serving since 1994. I’m not a fan of the OP’s question of requiring all Americans to join the military. It isn’t the right fit for a lot of them and honestly many of them are not right for us.
But I would support a public service plan and would be OK with the public service plan including the option of military service as one of many options for America’s youth to give something back to a Nation that provides them so many opportunities.
My brother in law is from Romania, they have to do it, I think one year. Or they did, this was like 25 years ago.
What if they had to stay in until they could do 30 pushups in a minute?
We had guys who couldn't.
It'd turn in to babysitting the unfit. Besides most won't qualify.
No. Especially to the 6 months thing.
It'd be cheaper to do Bernie's free college in all honesty. If every American qualified for Veteran's benefits we essentially would socialize American education and healthcare faster than Bernie ever could.
Consider that a modern recruit goes through a few weeks of basic and then is sent to a school where they learn to do a function for the military....if 6 months is the timeline the US taxpayer gets zero return on that investment. They won't actually ever perform said function, so not only do we lay out benefits for healthcare and education (along with housing and just basic rate of pay, etc) we've paid to in-house train a guy or gal in addition which isn't cheap.
Two years would be better because they'll have actually gone to a unit and maybe to get perform at a basic level, but about the time they hit their stride in whatever function they are assigned they'd be out the door.
And that's just the dollars and cents of it. That's not taking into account arguments made by others that the military doesn't want draftees and draftees have never been of stellar quality uniformly anyway.
It'd be cheaper to do Bernie's free college in all honesty. If every American qualified for Veteran's benefits we essentially would socialize American education and healthcare faster than Bernie ever could.
Consider that a modern recruit goes through a few weeks of basic and then is sent to a school where they learn to do a function for the military....if 6 months is the timeline the US taxpayer gets zero return on that investment. They won't actually ever perform said function, so not only do we lay out benefits for healthcare and education (along with housing and just basic rate of pay, etc) we've paid to in-house train a guy or gal in addition which isn't cheap.
Two years would be better because they'll have actually gone to a unit and maybe to get perform at a basic level, but about the time they hit their stride in whatever function they are assigned they'd be out the door.
And that's just the dollars and cents of it. That's not taking into account arguments made by others that the military doesn't want draftees and draftees have never been of stellar quality uniformly anyway.
Our military fighting force at this point can be pretty minimal. Its all about jets, bombs, and computers. Soldiers for the most part should just be in the reserves, where they can spend most of their time doing things other than just being soldiers. If we want to police the rest of the world we don't need a bunch of guys sitting at an airbase in Kabul or South Korea, we just need a handful sitting behind a computer on an aircraft carrier operating drones. Welcome to the 21st century
The military has changed much since Vietnam. I do agree that the military provides a unique perspective and I have waffled back and forth about compulsory service for all American youth like some of our ally countries like Korea and Israel do. Compulsory military service was thrown out to dampen the effect of the Iraq escapades by the more neo-con world view not many years ago.
However, I think this idea has morphed somewhat into a suggestion that universal military service would impart a more conservative perspective on our national domestic politics. I would suggest that it likely would not in many areas that we care about and are expensive.
An 18 year old kid has a bunch of options in front of them these days. Go to school. go to the military, go start a business, go work for someone else, etc. In a universe where every child becomes a disciple of the USG (and most likely the DoD), the expectation for every American child is that Uncle Sam becomes the new protector once you leave the parent's nest behind. It provides the first job. The first on-the-job skills training. The first paycheck. The first healthcare. The first of your retirement fund (TSP). Etc. The focus of every American would become more state focused than it is already drifting. And almost no employee thinks they are being compensated fairly...all these kids will demand more and more benefits for compulsory service over time. The military is better compensated now that it ever was, so it does move. All of that money comes out of the real economy.
Take all of the combined griping about the federal workforce from conservative (or even non-conservative) observers and blow that up to every American citizen. I would rather suspect you'd have far fewer GOP hoorah's for compulsory military service if they didn't take time to realize they basically are creating a society that looks to Uncle Sam for direction into adulthood.
No disrespect, but you have no idea what you are talking about logistics wise, and what it actually takes to run a "small, remote" war in enemy territory. Shooting the bad guy is the easy 5 minute part. And sometimes not even that is easy.
I also think time in service would benefit the poor disproportionately. Lots of kids in bad situations that need structure and role models and guidance, or just to get out of the area and establish themselves in life.
But again. All this money we are going to spend to turn every American into a vet is still more money than we have. I get there's a difference between Bernie just handing out Free Stuff and carrying a rifle for The State for a year or so to get the same Free Stuff, but it all comes out of the real economy whether we view it as flag draped heroism or not.
IF you had compulsory service you could probably cut dramatically the money you spent on recruiting. Having a couple of guys sitting in office space all over the country for days on end isn't cheap and you're probably not going to have that many more people in the service at any one time. We're also spending millions in advertising that maybe we wouldn't need to do.
The benefit of the military system is that it costs Uncle Sam no more to have a military recruiter than it does to have that same dude on the front line or hand out basketballs at the base gym. An E5 is an E5. We do spend a fair bit in recruiting, but if we view free college for the sake of free college too expensive (some hundreds of billions), its almost certainly too expensive to wrap it up with a salary and boot camp and all the other things we'd be providing as well. The millions (probably even hundreds of millions) we save in advertising and running recruitment centers probably wouldn't cover it.
Keep in mind that compulsory military service would likely extend the tentacles of the USG into your child's life before they ever showed up to boot. With the State now in charge of making your kid an effective warrior on a short timeline, they have every reason to want to meddle in public K-12 education far more than they do now particularly in areas of physical fitness and nutrition. To fight increasing American obesity when citizens are given total freedom of choice.
The military already issues warnings and statements and stuff like that when it comes to a recruiting pool, but when every American child is "theirs" they will have more leverage to force the state to intervene at younger and younger ages to increase the quality of the product. It is probably also cheaper to do in Dept of Ed than to turn the military into a glorious all benefits paid "fat camp" while Americans serve out compulsory time on weight watchers.
The military already issues warnings and statements and stuff like that when it comes to a recruiting pool, but when every American child is "theirs" they will have more leverage to force the state to intervene at younger and younger ages to increase the quality of the product. It is probably also cheaper to do in Dept of Ed than to turn the military into a glorious all benefits paid "fat camp" while Americans serve out compulsory time on weight watchers.
The thing I think you have to consider is the benefit it might be to our society to maybe take some kids out of bad situations and show them that there's another way to live. That money might be very well spent and provide cost savings in the long run to society. That said, I don't know how you make some inner city kids serve though when you can't even get them to show up for school.
No one is actually worried about Gravy Seal militia wannabesCivil war
My world view aligns mostly along conservative lines. I work hard, I earn my keep, and I keep on keeping on. I'm probably more moderate than most here though.
I'm game for a bunch of these benefits to society. In strict dollars and sense I think its a loss but it would help moderate out some stuff and help us work better together.
But I would be remiss to point out what this system really is, its basically state sponsored parenting and redistribution of income wrapped up in a military container. If that's what it takes for the hard core MAGA-set to get on board some of these programs, I'm game to see what happens.
hmmm. I guess I would rather pay for sponsored parenting in the military than jail cells and decades of welfare benefits.
We'll still have those. Military will save some, but not nearly all.
Where do we need to have troops stationed at this point, and for what purpose? That's an honest question.
It might be easier to say where we don't need troops stationed. The world is a very dangerous place and we need to have people within a few hours of some key spots across the world.
Lots of new expensive cars pictured in that tweet, maybe just maybe they should reconsider their spending habits? Just saying.
Exactly. I see a lot of that shit going on out here in Raleigh area. The people bitching are the ones buying all kinds of new shit. It's like did you really need a Mercedes when you now can't pay the bills?
this is so true.. today I read something in my feed about warlords in Africa are using drones purchased from the Middle East to shoot and bomb rival warlords.. so this idea of a human soldier, seems so 'last century'.
There will always be a role for soldiers, and we do need to have a fairly large trained force, but we don't need a whole bunch of guys stationed all over the world when we can get them wherever we need them in a matter of hours.
It wouldn't be full unless we were in a war. The Army would be both professional and drafted just as it was when I was in Vietnam. It worked fine.
This professional Army I see today is not better than the one I served in nor my father in WWII nor my grandfather in WWI. It's a liberal canard to say it's better. It's just more expensive, more isolated from society, and more beholden to politicians and the military-industrial complex.
Getting humans where we need them can happen pretty quickly but the "stuff" that goes with them is tougher. It took us weeks to get enough "stuff" to Saudi Arabia to prosecute the Gulf War. We need enough people stationed around the world to be able to mount a response within a matter of a couple of hours if need be. I think you underestimate the size of force needed overseas as a deterrent as well. Launching missiles from ships is not an effective strategy. IF you can't take the land (Pakistan border region) you can't win the war. It goes on forever.
Nay. I dont want a guy that doesnt want to be there in the fox hole next to me.
Somewhat agree. But the military is basically run like a jobs program for a lot of people. Helps lift people up socioeconomically and in war times you want as many men as you can get.
Hell no.
why should someone send their kid overseas to get shot at to serve the political interests of the political elite who are enriching themselves? Look no further than Ukraine to understand how people making $170k a year retire with 3 homes and $20mm sitting in the bank.
put a rifle in the hands of the kids of the political elite and send them to the front line in harms way if it's really that important.
