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How to break a volunteer army...
Posts
Did you mean to say "wouldn't" in your post?
you "learn to read" and "learn about your government" too
we have the draft. They just have to get in a situation shitty enough to use it. They weren't drafting people at the start of viet nam.
I guess I could reword it as "The public would not stand for a draft short of the '<insert name of American city here> has been nuked' scenario". Maybe I'm just having an 'English is my second language' day.
Well, to be fair we have registration for the draft. I agree that aside from an actual invasion (or possibly with a nuclear terrorist attack) you'll not actually see anybody drafted...no matter how bad the all-volunteer military gets.
Also, you're wrong on the pre-Vietnam draft. There was a draft that started before Korea, went through the Korean War, and continued right through Vietnam. There were less people drafted during peacetime, which is why you don't hear about it much. But guys were still having their numbers called. EDIT: In other words, the draft was used to fill the "peacetime" ranks through the bulk of the Cold War.
Let's hope we never have to experience something as bad as world war 2.
If you go to college, you'll be asked. I'm pretty sure most colleges require a student to fill out a FAFSA, and the question is on there.
Aside from that, not much. If we ever start drawing numbers, though, expect to get in big trouble if you don't rectify this.
Draftees were forced to fight in Korea and WWII, as well. And I'll reiterate...people were being drafted during peacetime throughout the Cold War, including before the start of any combat operations in Vietnam.
Vietnam was a problem not because people were being forced to fight, but because people were being forced to fight an unpopular war. Nowadays we have volunteers to fight our unpopular wars.
As for a land invasion, I doubt it will happen. America has one of the best strategic positions in the world. Two oceans on the side, and single allies to the north and south.
Really it's more realistic to just say you will never join in a war. America should concentrate on diplomatic solutions. Put the right people in power and we won't have to worry about wars or drafts.
Yeah, I don't think that's what anyone was suggesting.
An interesting article regarding the opinions of in-the-field troops. We need to start seeing more of this sort of journalism in American newspapers.
But that's their point. The only way a draft is gonna work is if we have another popular war. And with the way information spreads these days, I don't see that happening barring the US getting invaded or nuked by another country or something seriously major.
And do you really WANT drafties in Iraq? Do you really wanna shove guns into the hands of a bunch of people and send them off to patrol and secure a country they don't wanna be in? I can see that leading to a hell of alot more abuse of civilians then we're seeing now.
Ok well I went to a private college. No one ever asked me, and I also never filled out FAFSA because with my parent's incomes I wouldn't have gotten jackshit anyway and the school's scholarships were good enough.
And how "big" is this trouble we are talking about? Who's going to come after me? The police? Fuck the police.
What I'm saying is a massive Nuke isn't going to convince anyone to join the army*. It's just going to make people realize the true terror of Nuclear powers and bring the Nuclear Options out onto the table. When nukes fly, soldiers are gonna be pretty useless.
*Speaking dramatically of course. Some people will probably join, but not enough to change the wording here.
I think people would be willing to swallow a military draft if such a thing happened, in which case convincing someone to join the army wouldn't be a problem, because they wouldn't really have a choice (short of draft dodging or other options, depending on what sort of financial resources are available to you).
If a draft is called, and you've still not registered? Depending on what actions you take then, possibly "prison" big.
If you go ahead and take care of it beforehand, then probably "you should have done this earlier...oh well, have a nice day" big.
A majority of actual volunteer troops don't want to be there anymore. The difference? At least draftees would only do one tour. I'd say a draftee on his first tour is less likely to rape him an Iraqi than a volunteer on his third. I honestly don't think any of you have any real idea what 12 months straight in that place is like. Having done year there, I still can't imagine what 15 months would be like.
Personally I think a large reserve force would be better for peacekeeping, even relatively violent peacekeeping operations like Iraq, provided deployments could be kept relatively infrequent (every six or eight years).
And yeah, I'm not fond of using infantry as police officers either...but a majority of people in this country seem to think it's a grand idea, so that's the world we're working with.
Has there ever been a court case on this?
People who refused the draft in the Vietnam era (and earlier) were prosecuted. It's the law, man...you can very much be sent to prison for evading it illegally.
EDIT: Think about it...conscription wouldn't work real well if there were no consequences for saying "no." Also, I don't think any of this is particularly relevant.
Just another thing, what if your like 60 years old and they call a draft but you never signed up for SS. Prison?
If you're no longer eligible? Probably not. Seriously, it's easier (and smarter) just to go register, then move to Belize if they call your number, if you really don't want to get drafted. Because then if you don't get called you have nothing to worry about.
Just go fucking do it already.
Nah I prefer to live on the edge.
Good for you, then. Moving along........
EDIT: On a side note, I never got around to registering either...then again, I enlisted at 19 so it only mattered for like a year.
I don't know how effective they would be as peacekeepers either. The myriad players in the Iraqi conflict are not under the control of any central authority, or even any unifying ideology.
The problems would thus be twofold - firstly, the actual participants of the sectarian violence are civilians whose ultimate goal is genocide. There is no standing army or even militia to target. Secondly - it is nearly impossible to break grassroots Genocidal convictions, and they are ultimately by far the most effective. The Rwandan genocide is the most recent and grisly example. Such violence is inevitable the moment the United States retreats from the conflict. Unless, of course, the United States remains in occupation for a generation - long enough for children born during the occupation to reach adulthood.
As it stands, the American occupation of Iraq is doomed to utter failure. The occupation cannot remain with the dwindling political and public support for the operation.
It is times like this where I remember how the Romans occupied the Middle East. If a soldier was killed in a town, the Romans would invite the neighboring towns to come and watch as they randomly crucified virtually all of the town's inhabitants. For another example, during the Boer War, the British developed the first concentration camps, and did not hesitate to burn down farms that they believed were supplying the insurgency. Both cases demonstrated that, in order to win in the asymmetrical conflict, the larger side had to completely ignore the precepts of Justice that were part of its domestic traditions. Of course, neither side had to deal with CNN. Just an aside.
Because while Iraq in particular might have been ill-fated, it's generally a good idea to be able to put 150K+ boots on the ground for a few years at a time (and maybe not even all in the same place)...at least if you plan on being as powerful as we are.
In other words, I'm not talking about the troubles facing the all-volunteer military in Iraq specifically...Iraq just happened to be the first conflict that put it to the test. I agree that Iraq is a clusterfuck that we probably can't "win" by any sensible definition, and that we're wasting every single life we lose there.
EDIT: I'm probably gone for a while now...just wanted to throw out again that I don't mean for this to become a thread on whether the war in Iraq is a good idea, but rather as a general discussion of whether the all-volunteer army is capable of dealing with an operation like this and what (if anything) can be done to change that.
No, you don't depend on it for national defense. You depend on it for offense. Mountains of difference.
And as far as other operations go, the point is sort of moot since their "necessity" is questionable at best. No war -- except ones fought in defense of the homeland -- is necessary. On rare cases, exceptions might be acceptable (such as to stop genocides, like in Hitler's case), but no war that America has fought before or after WW2 fits into that category.
People who support "military adventurism" (I like the term by the way) support it because they are either misinformed by propaganda, or are simply delusional (i.e. "we're making a positive difference by helping those people!"). Considering this fact, do you still think their support places that moral obligation on them?
Except for the Kosovo War.
No!
The military is already too damned big. Cut it down, bitch-slap the hawkish populace, and pursue some pacifist foreign policy. We wouldn't need a bigger army if we didn't insist on playing hegemon, anyway, and if a legitimate emergency did arise it wouldn't be hard to find the 'political will' for a temporary expansion of the forces.
I wish I could lime this harder.
Seriously, you people bitch about shitty education and healthcare. Maybe downsize the military a little and use the money saved to improve those? And who knows, maybe if you shift spending from barbarism to civilization, the attitudes might start getting reflected in your public as well.
Absolutely. But you're not required to agree.
EDIT: To elaborate, nobody seems to care much about the "didn't know any better" defense when some poor schlep signs up for the military at 18 and ends up doing three tours in Iraq...I don't see why the "didn't know any better" defense should suddenly work for the 26-year-old (or 30-year-old, or 40-year-old) who, through support of public policy, sent him there.
I doubt it, but honestly I'd agree that were it to work this would probably be preferable.
yea, they probably can prevent mass riots and any mass genocide attempts
but they aren't going to be wiping out the insurgencies and other threats since they aren't centralized enough to have a solid target to destroy
just my amateur opinion
I would join some branch of the army if I could specifically opt out of Iraq, like going to Afghanistan.
Of course, if this option was given to our troops we would have a much larger problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlUsiKfeDfo&eurl=http://areasofmyexpertise.blogspot.com/
http://www.ugo.com/movies/babylon-ad-video-gallery/?cur=vin-diesel-dungeons-and-dragons&morepics=1
Anbar province looks good since the surge, but thats only because there are enough troops to keep Al-Qaeda out and make sure they stay out.
Of course, once we have fewer troops in Iraq Anbar is left to the wolves.
And yes, and end to de-baathification and a sharing of oil revenues would be a terrific salve to our problems, but they're politically impossible in Iraq's Shia and Kurd dominated government.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlUsiKfeDfo&eurl=http://areasofmyexpertise.blogspot.com/
http://www.ugo.com/movies/babylon-ad-video-gallery/?cur=vin-diesel-dungeons-and-dragons&morepics=1
A baby boom... of terrorists!
Civil war: Saving america from itself.
Other then that, you're about right, everything else has been a war of choice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlUsiKfeDfo&eurl=http://areasofmyexpertise.blogspot.com/
http://www.ugo.com/movies/babylon-ad-video-gallery/?cur=vin-diesel-dungeons-and-dragons&morepics=1