Is compulsory military service immoral?

So people should be enslaved for the military industrial complex, possibly killed or injured (maybe permanently) to teach them a lesson. Now there's a great idea.

 

Yes. Its harsh. Sometimes an education is painful. The lack of an education can be worse.

Whats better - letting a lot of ignorant foolish brain washed people drive the USA over a clilff and causing national suffering, or educating these people and losing a few of them? Educate them.

 

Or deadly. When they're killed or maimed for life, that's a great lesson everyone should learn.

Yeah it's better to jump off a cliff so you can learn if you're going die or not than never knowing. That would be worse.

Dead people make great students. Holy *******, where do these brain surgeons come from?

 

In a fairy tale world, there'd be no war. But there is war and forever will be. Some try to deny that realization. Yes this world would be great without war. Just ain't gonna happen

 

100% spot on though not politically correct to the deluded members of the anti-USA far right.

 

if conscription is so good as many of the far right believe, then let's see the rest of the world employ it, allow young people to grow, improve society in every corner of the world, and then let the USA be the LAST country on earth to try it

then we shall see whether it actually works

 

compulsory service in the military is unconstitutional. It violates the 1st and 13th amendments.

 

Life is deadly, everyone dies one way or another eventually. None of that has anything to do with forcing people to endanger their lives.

Says the blind man who doesn't see that forcing people to endanger their lives for the military industrial complex is slavery. The useful (and dangerous) idiots are those who defend and support tyranny. Talk about myopia.

 

I'm not sure about the 1st but definitely the 5th, 9th, 10th, 13th and 14th and a case could be made for the 8th.

 

I wouldn't care if they were draftees or not, if they are there their lives would be in the same jeopardy as mine would be so I wouldn't worry about them too much. The bast way to survive combat is to do your job to the best of your ability and they would know that as well.

 

Anyone who feels military service should be compulsory does not believe in freedom. It's that simple.

 

Define freedom.

 

I don't think it's right to force somebody against their will to sleep in communal bedrooms and wake up before dawn and have them roll around muddy obstacle courses. Is not paying taxes, abiding in traffic laws, vaccinating children and jury duty enough?

 

''communal bedrooms''

I forget who it was but many years ago a relative of mine who was conscripted complained of fellow soldiers who spent half the night farting away. Naturally, this made the environs rather unpleasant and difficult to get a good night's sleep. On top of all that the food was pukey and the shower floors were dampened with urine.

If anyone is eager and willing to go through that, fine. But to force anyone to have to live with all that for 2-4 years does not constitute "freedom" or morality.

 

It depends upon whether national survival is at stake, such as WW2, and whether an all-volunteer military is sufficient. If it is, there is no reason for a draft. In not, a draft is necessary.

 

It is right now, we don't have a draft.

 

Good points added there. Yeah I hate communal showers.

And I hope you keep it that way in your country. It's not the case in my country but I am using a loophole/grey area to avoid military service.

 

What country are you in? Ask yourself why your country has the draft? Every country needs a military to protect itself and if there are not enough volunteers to join then what is a country to do to protect itself? What is it about your country that is different then the US that makes your military so undesirable that it has trouble attracting volunteers. What can you and your countrymen do to change things within your military to attract more.

 

deleted post.

 

Before I tell you what country I'm in, let me explain our situation with regards to the military and draft. The law officially states (I'm paraphrasing here) that "All must serve". It does not say "We reserve the right to call you to serve". That needs to be changed for reasons I'll get to in a moment. However, young men are lining up to join in such large numbers because of the salary and pension, that they are able to recruit some and turn away others. This allows people like me who do not want to join to stand on the sidelines and not register. It's a grey area because while the government is not calling me to serve, technically and/or theoretically I still have to register to join and then be turned away if I am not fit to serve. That's the loophole I'm using.

Why should the wording of the law be changed? Because that technical wording could be weaponized on individuals. Say I get into a personal feud with somebody in the army for whatever reason. That soldier can then invoke the law forcefully recruiting me because he knows I hate communal showers and muddy obstacle courses.

What country am I in? Indonesia. I would never want to join this particular military because soldiers have been known to act like gangsters and go from house to house demanding protection money. Years ago when I was still in school, some soldiers showed up on our doorstep. My Dad turned them away.

 

The way I see it, compulsory military service is making young people waste several years of their life in a line of work they won't remain in. Years that could be spent training for their actual occupation, entering the work force on time, buying a house several years earlier, etc. The military service pushes back everything in exchange for skills that won't see any use.

 

National survival was not at stake during WW2 nor was the draft necessary during it.

 

the many thousands of poor and homeless veterans that we have today (and have had after every war) proves the TRUTH of your post

 

This statement is so false I don't even know where to start. The best way to survive combat is to work as a team to accomplish the mission. If a team member doesn't do that, it puts everyone at risk of death and the MISSON FAILED. You forget that combat isn't about surviving, it's about placing the MISSION first.

 

Hearing on the Draft and Draft Registration, Thursday, April 19th in Denver


https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2018/0...t-registration-thursday-april-19th-in-denver/



The “National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service” has announced that the second of its “open-mike public hearings" throughout the US on whether registration for a military draft should be ended or extended will be in Denver, Colorado, on Thursday, April 19th, from 3-5 p.m.:

Open-Mike Public Hearing
National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service
Thursday, April 19, 2018, 3-5 p.m. (doors open at 2:30)

Denver Museum of Science and Industry
Schlessman Lobby, Entrance 5 (Evening Entrance)
2001 Colorado Blvd., Denver, CO

Matt Nicodemus (phone 720-979-9967) of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center in Boulder is organizing local folks to attend the Denver hearing. Please let Matt know at if you plan to attend or can help with local activities. Some readers of this blog will remember Matt’s public refusal to register for the draft in 1980, and his work as an organizer with the National Resistance Committee and as co-editor of Resistance News.


At the Commission’s first hearing, in Harrisburg, PA, on February 23rd, each witness was allowed 2 minutes to speak. Time limits weren’t strictly enforced, but might be reduced depending on how many people show up.

If you want to say more, or you can’t make it to Denver on April 19th, you can submit written comments to the Commission through April 19th, or possibly later. (The Commission is conducting its proceedings quite informally, and late comments are likely to be accepted. But acceptable and consideration of late comments will be at the Commission’s discretion.)

The Commission has said it plans to hold more hearings including at least one in in each of the nine US Census regions, but hasn’t yet announced any of the other dates or locations. Look for announcements of future hearings here on the Commission’s Web site.

• Background on this Commission and why it is holding these hearings
• Podcast overview of what’s happening with the draft, and why
• Web form for short written submissions

Longer written submissions can be sent to national.commission.on.service.info@mail.mil, mentioning “Docket No. 05-2018-0” in the subject line of the e-mail message.

This is your chance to tell the commission what you think about the draft, draft registration, and/or compulsory national “service”.

I think the most important thing for the Commission to hear is that people subject to draft registration, and people who would be subject to a draft (including older health care workers and people with other specialized skills who might be subject to an expanded draft) would refuse to go, and that other people would support them in their registration.

Whether or not the Commission agrees with the reasons people don’t and won’t comply with registration or a draft, the Commission needs to be brought to realize that a draft is not “feasible” because so many people would not comply, and because noncompliance would render it unenforceable.

That’s the lesson of the last 38 years of failure of draft registration. We need to teach that lesson to the National Commission on Service.

The Commission needs to hear from men who didn’t register for the draft when they were supposed to do so, men who registered but have moved without telling the Selective Service System their new address, men who are registered but would refuse to go if they were drafted, parents who would tear up any induction order that came for their son or daughter (shifting the risk of prosecution from their children to themselves), and women who would refuse to sign up if draft registration is extended to women.

The Commission is also supposed to report on, “the feasibility… of modifying the military selective service process in order to obtain for military, national, and public service individuals with skills (such as medical, dental, and nursing skills, language skills, cyber skills, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills) for which the Nation has a critical need, without regard to age or sex.” So the Commission needs to hear from people in all of these occupational categories who would refuse to be drafted.

The inquiring minds of the Commission also want to know what the government could do to encourage “service”. Here are some talking points about that:

• “Compulsory service” is, by definition, slavery. If you want to encourage any positive definition of service, it must be voluntary, and completely separate from any system of conscription. You cannot have a system that serves both conscription and positive “service”.
• “Military service” is service to the cause of war. If you want to encourage any positive notion of “service”, you need to separate it completely from military recruiting or incentives for military enlistment.
• People can best “serve” by making their own choices. “Service” should not be limited to options approved by the government for nonprofit status.
• The greatest limitation on the ability to “serve” is student debt that forces people to seek higher-paying jobs. This is the new form of the “channeling” of young people’s choices by the Selective Service System. The best way to enable more people to “serve” is to free them from student and vocational-training debt by recognizing education as a human right and shifting funding for education and job training from loans to grants.

Let's have everyone on this forum right in and demand that the selective service system be ended once and for all. Anyone who is a conservative and fails to do so is a hypocrite and does not value freedom at all.