Conscription, yay or nay?

[Deleted]

The only way you might be able to justify this is, if the conscript gets the same high level training/equipment as profesionall soldiers.

oh wait thats impossible because then you wont have the funds anymore and you need those men as cannonfodder right?!?

[Garnier Fructis]

Ahh, cowardice and ignorance in the same package, how efficient of you! No freedoms have ever been won by running away like a chicken at the first sign of trouble. Men who stood their ground and beat back the enemy even against overwhelming odds are the reason why you have freedom of speech, democracy, and overall liberty. And you don't fight for a president who changes every few years; you fight for the country and its people.

True, freedoms are won by people who struggled and sacrificed for them. Seeing as my country of birth decided I wasn't worthy of citizenship at the time on essentially arbitrary grounds, why should I fight for their freedoms if they come under attack? The only reason I even want national status in the first place is for it to serve as a "fuck you" to the ethnonationalists; it will be my act of petty revenge.

I'd be a fucking fool to serve in their military. And that's without considering the other glaringly obvious problem: they won't win a war against China, which is the only potential aggressor in the region. Fighting a war you can't win is brave. It's courageous. It's also fucking stupid, because you'll die for nothing at all. So I'd rather stay in the U.S. as a 'coward', thank you very much.

And I'm fully aware of everything you wrote, except for the last sentence which is really just you're opinion. It's not that I don't know, it's that I don't give a shit. Wake me up when the U.S. fights something other than a stupid war halfway around the world. What freedoms and liberty would I earn by fighting in Syria?

Shit, if you're the kind of person that goes around labeling people cowards, I bet you believe in fair fights too.

[Humppaveikko]

I've done my mandatory conscription in the Finnish Defence Forces and I'm positive about our conscription. We share a long border with Russia, and a professional army to defend it would be WAY too expensive. And the amount of soldiers would be very limited, comparing to the 280,000 conscripted reserves we have now.

[Kuntantee]

Thanks to conscription, our country remained independent throughout the tumults of WW2. Kyllä sinun pitäisi tietää!

Conscription is obviously a massive boon for a country's defense. When you have a large number of men (and women) with good basic training, you just need to arm them, and they are ready to fight if shit hits the fan. Besides, national service is a major uniting factor throughout the society. And small (population wise) countries with long borderlines can't afford a professional army anyway.



Ahh, cowardice and ignorance in the same package, how efficient of you! No freedoms have ever been won by running away like a chicken at the first sign of trouble. Men who stood their ground and beat back the enemy even against overwhelming odds are the reason why you have freedom of speech, democracy, and overall liberty. And you don't fight for a president who changes every few years; you fight for the country and its people.

Shallow chauvinism. Your country haven't seen fight in modern times, that's why you spout so much non-sense in the same post. Countries who have real army, and fought real enemy learned lessons quite well. You can't spend so much time trying to educate conscripts, otherwise, you are damaging your countries economy. If you send greens to the battlefield, you'll have more corpses on your hand.

And to be frank, your dwarf country is bound to be crushed against any real threat. And the part of reason why your country "remained independent" is because Stalin purging finest Russian officers, effectively crippling Russian army.

[Freighter]

True, freedoms are won by people who struggled and sacrificed for them. Seeing as my country of birth decided I wasn't worthy of citizenship at the time on essentially arbitrary grounds, why should I fight for their freedoms if they come under attack?

Why didn't they give you citizenship?

[Garnier Fructis]

Why didn't they give you citizenship?

Mother was citizen instead of father. They changed it about a decade after I was born so that mothers could pass citizenship as well.

Neither country prohibits dual citizenship, so it was essentially just a misogyny/xenophobia thing.

[Mormolyce]

If my country conscripted me I'd see how much the enemy is paying for spies.

[Rotted]

Yep not against it to a point. I believe once you finish high school you should have 3 options:

- go on to further education
- get a job
- if you don't do one of the first two your in the army.

And this is why people like you should never be in charge. You've point blank just given 3 options without taking into consideration any other factors.

[Danner]

Conscripted forces or professionals, what do you think? Pros and cons? Is conscription an antique remnant of warfare of old?

It made logic sense in a day when wars was decided by manpower rather than technology, and world leaders measured their penis size in amount of land grabbed during their reign. Conscription was the primary defence against such people. You simply needed a big army to not be enslaved by an aggressive neighbour doing the same. You needed to be able to make an invasion costly enough that those people would lose face if they tried.

I don't like the idea of conscription on both a fundamental, practical and philosophical level.

Fundamental:
We no longer live in the world where aggressive land-grabbing is acceptable. The western world has got this message, and nobody in the middle of the west have any reason to have a military anymore.

The leaders that still try this antiquated penis schtick (Putin) are sanctioned, and for good reason. I live in Norway, it's the only neighbour to russia that russia has never invaded. Russia has in my soon 40 year lifetime invaded four of its neighbours (ukraine, georgia, chechnya, afghanistan), several of those multiple times. Russia is clearly expansionist. Who knows who will be next. NATO is the only rational answer to this situation, benefits outweighing the steep costs of USA dragging you into their utterly insane warmongering. Conscription or not, Norway will be steamrolled should russia invade, the difference is whether it will take 2 or 4 hours to do so. That is no secret to nobody. All you achieve with conscription is more deaths amongst the defenders. Conscription will not deter anything.

Practical:
Wars are no longer fought with manpower. Wars are fought with technology. You still need people to fight such wars, sure, but far less of them. When you need less than one in a thousand able bodies to wage war, conscription is meaningless. You can recruit those people amongst genuinely willing personnell, rather than forcing the ones unwilling to risk their lives to do so.

Philosophical:
Conscription is based on the idea that everyone lives by the principles of nationalism. "My tribe can never get along with your tribe", and we fundamentally need protection against foreigners. The us vs them mentality. The idea that the inhabitants of a country exists to further the country itself, and must be sacrificed on that altar. In my opinion, the nationalistic mindset is what creates wars amongst nations. It is flawed thinking, and I do not desire to play along with it.

[Humppaveikko]

Shallow chauvinism. Your country haven't seen fight in modern times, that's why you spout so much non-sense in the same post. Countries who have real army, and fought real enemy learned lessons quite well. You can't spend so much time trying to educate conscripts, otherwise, you are damaging your countries economy. If you send greens to the battlefield, you'll have more corpses on your hand.

And to be frank, your dwarf country is bound to be crushed against any real threat. And the part of reason why your country "remained independent" is because Stalin purging finest Russian officers, effectively crippling Russian army.

Of course we'd be crushed. But the whole point of Finland defensive doctrine is to make a potential invasion so costly for the attacker, that it wouldn't be worth it.

[Macaquerie]

Of course we'd be crushed. But the whole point of Finland defensive doctrine is to make a potential invasion so costly for the attacker, that it wouldn't be worth it.

The Winter War is hardly an argument in favor of conscription though. All of those Soviet soldiers were conscripts too, and I'm sure many of them did feel a genuine sense of patriotism going in, they just wet the bed for various reasons.

[LoLcano]

Its basically slavery so fuck no ( unless your country is in open war then its all hand on deck ) .

[zorkuus]

Conscripted forces or professionals, what do you think? Pros and cons? Is conscription an antique remnant of warfare of old?

As much as I hate conscription, it's a necessary evil in a small country next to Russia.

[Arlon]

The only nation worth my life would be the one i own personally. Ethnic cleansing aside, i hardly give a crap if the ruling class changes hands. Globalization and capitalism already pretty much made nationalism useless anyway, in a pragmatic sense.

[Acidz]

Yes. I think it would be a valuable experience for most people.

[Realitytrembles]

Except often you don’t choose war, war chooses YOU. When invaders are readying their forces to destroy your land, you would just roll over, hope the military takes care of it? When people loose the will to fight, all is lost.

Hope? No.

Instant Sunshine, courtesy of the US nuclear arsenal. No need for antiquated rubbish like a large ground army.

[Independent voter]

Yes. I think it would be a valuable experience for most people.

When I went into the military I met people from all over the US, black, white, Asians, immigrants from all over, got to travel and see other countries, learned how the military worked, got a steady monthly paycheck, it was a great experience for me, a person from a small town.

We're very diverse in the US but we segregate ourselves and the military isn't segregated.

[dunhildas]

Seems the liberals already agree with Drafts and Conscriptions

Would be a sudden darn shame if they turn around and oppose it after show so much support for it, after all they hate Draft dodgers like Trump, they must therefore love to be drafted themselves.






Yay from me, get training, get some skills and see the world ( Hopefully never see the world while active duty, but... there is a chance)

[Vankrys]

low pop country don't have the luxury to be voluntary i would think.

[Rexosaurus]

2 years in the prime of your life is not nothing. Coming out of school is the best time ever. If I had to go over to some bullshit war like Iraq I would have gone insane

2 years really is not long at all. In the US, most people still wouldn't even be of age to drink by the time they finished. Also there's plenty of jobs in the military, and jobs in the public service sector in general, that don't require you to be sent directly to a war.

Philosophical:
Conscription is based on the idea that everyone lives by the principles of nationalism. "My tribe can never get along with your tribe", and we fundamentally need protection against foreigners. The us vs them mentality. The idea that the inhabitants of a country exists to further the country itself, and must be sacrificed on that altar. In my opinion, the nationalistic mindset is what creates wars amongst nations. It is flawed thinking, and I do not desire to play along with it.

I agree that it shouldn't be used as a tool to increase nationalism. It does teach some valuable lessons though. Leadership, teamwork, placing needs before wants, service to something larger than yourself, etc. I think those are all important things to learn if we want to make the world a better place, instead of just banking on the fact that there will be a few selfless individuals that happen to drag the rest of us along with them on the road to progress/salvation.

To the thread in general: It sounds like some of you guys are watching way too many WWII/Vietnam Hollywood movies. The conscription that the OP posted =/= war-time draft. I don't think that anyone is suggesting that you're given a pair of boots, a rifle, and some fatigues, and then sent off to a battlefront. That's not how it works.