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Mandatory military service?

Would you support a mandatory service when a person turns 21 or 18?


  • Total voters
    88
It could be tied to healthcare....if you serve, you get a tax credit on your insurance premiums, the amount would be based on type of service and duration of service.
Certainly the military would garner the most credit, with actual warriors getting more credit than support staff...


I think all the benefits should be equal.
 
It would not cripple the nation. In garrison you are still working.
Also if those folks leave you are left with people that WANT to be there which is better.
.

You do realize that it cost lots of money to train,house,feed, supply,provide medical soldiers,marines,airmen, and sailor? This is not cheap. If the government said you can join the military and leave when ever you want you will have a flood of people who come in for the benefits the and training and education and leave when ever there are rumors of war starting to pop up. And even those who want to be there will leave because it doesn't a rocket scientist to figure out that if you had a company of more than a hundred men and 90% of them left you will be a serious disadvantage when it comes to fighting the enemy. The military is not a civilian occupation and therefore should not be treated like a civilian occupation.





People should not be forced into service ever. It has happened in the past and it was a mistake

If they willingly join a warfare occupation and sign a contract then they are not forced into it.
 
I think all the benefits should be equal.
The guy with a rifle out in front gets the same benefits as the clerk who never gets within 50 miles of danger gets the same benefits? If that is the case, the clerk should get less pay.
There could also be higher points earned during actual combat....
 
The guy with a rifle out in front gets the same benefits as the clerk who never gets within 50 miles of danger gets the same benefits? If that is the case, the clerk should get less pay.
There could also be higher points earned during actual combat....


Well there is combat pay and obviously emergency medical services should be allocated to where most needed but I think guy pushing the paper is just as essential as the guy with the rifle. Logistics and logistical planning are a vital component of any endeavor.
 
Well there is combat pay and obviously emergency medical services should be allocated to where most needed but I think guy pushing the paper is just as essential as the guy with the rifle. Logistics and logistical planning are a vital component of any endeavor.
Yes, but decision making kinds of jobs are not being done by clerks....officers fill those needs.
I have met some really dumb people in the military, and each branch has its place for them. Those low skilled jobs can get the same pay as high skilled jobs, based on rank alone. Granted, the militay decides how many seniors they need vs. how many
juniors, but it remains that a generous system allows too many people to sit at a desk doing next to nothing.
Admiral Rickover complained that the Navy was becoming a refuge for college educated people with no discernible job skills. We had far fewer officers per capita enlisteds during WWII than we did in the 60's and 70's.
The core of our military should be lean and mean and the rest should be reserves that can be brought on line in a few weeks or less....
 
[/B] Yes, but decision making kinds of jobs are not being done by clerks....officers fill those needs.
I have met some really dumb people in the military, and each branch has its place for them. Those low skilled jobs can get the same pay as high skilled jobs, based on rank alone. Granted, the militay decides how many seniors they need vs. how many
juniors, but it remains that a generous system allows too many people to sit at a desk doing next to nothing.
Admiral Rickover complained that the Navy was becoming a refuge for college educated people with no discernible job skills. We had far fewer officers per capita enlisteds during WWII than we did in the 60's and 70's.
The core of our military should be lean and mean and the rest should be reserves that can be brought on line in a few weeks or less....


I think we are stepping beyond compulsory service here.
 
Years ago, I was the propagation and production manager for a large nursery, where we grew millions of plants (literally). I found in running he crews that if I paid attention to the numbers produced, that there were certain people who, when added to the crew, had the effect of diminishing production rather than increasing it. While a nursery is certainly nothing in comparison to the military, I would think that the same tendencies would hold true -- sort of an inverse of the old axiom of addition by subtraction by being a subtraction by addition.

Especially considering our hardware, a smaller, but committed army has to be much better than a larger one filled with people who don't want to be there.
 
I think we are stepping beyond compulsory service here.

yes and no....I joined the Navy to avoid the draft, it was 1964 and a war was on.....
The military recruits, trains, and assigns its troops based on needs of the service and the job skills of its volunteers.
When times are good, as in no war at the moment, the military can afford to restrict enlistments to perfectly healthy volunteers.
When times are not good, they lower the requirements. IMO, there are always jobs that can be done by those who could be considered handicapped. It is just as easy to man a desk stateside from a wheelchair as from a chair. We preclude some volunteers for the dumbest of reasons.
A little nearsightedness kept a friend from volunteering, like he needed perfect vision to fix vehicles. He already was a great mechanic, but I guess they didn't need his skills at the moment. And he wasn't about to enlist to just shoot at people.

IF we don't have a draft, at least we should allow less than physically perfect people to enlist and serve in whatever capacity they can.
 
ever read Starship Troopers? :)


so much better than that embarrasment of a movie.



imo, we need to have gun operaters liscence the same as drivers liscences, with similar training programs.

Yes. I love that book. My husband owned it when I met him, so I read it. Not a big fan of all the technical clarifications in it, but the rest of it was really good.
 
Absolutely not.

I would also (if it were up to me) do away with the contracts the way they are and allow service member to quit UNLESS they are in a warzone.

If a war is for a good cause people WILL volunteer.

When we have wars we shouldn't be in like this people will be less inclined to join except for what I call the economic draft.

Plus a draft/mandatory service is unconstitutional. The 13th amendment protects us against forced servitude unless convicted of a crime.

You really don't know how the military works.

To train one nuclear power qualified person in the Navy it costs more than a million dollars. Just for one. When a Navy nuke gets out of school, they have enough knowledge and training in their background to get a pretty good job at pretty much any power plant, nuke or conventional, in the country plus other places dealing with construction, maintenance, and QA of power plants. Such an idea would absolutely cripple the Navy's fleet, since many nukes would just join for the free training, get out, and get a job with much better benefits and pay than the Navy. There would not be enough nukes left in the Navy to actually run the engine rooms of either the subs or the aircraft careers, all of which are nuclear powered.

And this is just an example from one job in one branch of service. As an overall policy throughout the military, we would not have a lot of personnel left, especially not in the highly technical and/or highly undermanned jobs. It just wouldn't work.

Besides, if someone absolutely wants out of the service now, they can do something that would get them a general or OTH discharge. Yeah, it would suck, but it's not like they wouldn't be able to live with it.
 
You really don't know how the military works.

To train one nuclear power qualified person in the Navy it costs more than a million dollars. Just for one. When a Navy nuke gets out of school, they have enough knowledge and training in their background to get a pretty good job at pretty much any power plant, nuke or conventional, in the country plus other places dealing with construction, maintenance, and QA of power plants. Such an idea would absolutely cripple the Navy's fleet, since many nukes would just join for the free training, get out, and get a job with much better benefits and pay than the Navy. There would not be enough nukes left in the Navy to actually run the engine rooms of either the subs or the aircraft careers, all of which are nuclear powered.

And this is just an example from one job in one branch of service. As an overall policy throughout the military, we would not have a lot of personnel left, especially not in the highly technical and/or highly undermanned jobs. It just wouldn't work.

Besides, if someone absolutely wants out of the service now, they can do something that would get them a general or OTH discharge. Yeah, it would suck, but it's not like they wouldn't be able to live with it.

and yet, the navy routinely kicks them out for lame reasons....
we had a kid almost out of nuke prototype school in Idaho get booted because he was fat. he was fat when the school started, but they waited almost a year to tell him to lose the weight or get kicked out. he went on a double cheeseburger diet, got kicked out, waddled down the street to the operating contractor for the site, got hired at the Test Reactor where I was working at the time. another guy, after the long version of electronics A school, took advantge of the easy out program in 69-70 by admitting to smoking weed. He was in Vietnam at the time. I don't think he actually smoked weed until the program was announced. He took a general discharge that reverted to honorable if he stayed out of trouble for 6 months or a year or something like that. Next time I saw him was at the Enlisted club at Treasure Island, where I was going to electonics B school. I asked him what he was up to, said he was going to college to become an engineer, on the GI Bill. Seems that boot camp, full year of A school, and some C schools, and a few months in Vietnam got him the 2 year minimum to qualify for the GI Bill for education. Sometimes the military is so stupid....
 
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and yet, the navy routinely kicks them out for lame reasons....
we had a kid almost out of nuke prototype school in Idaho get booted because he was fat. he was fat when the school started, but they waited almost a year to tell him to lose the weight or get kicked out. he went on a double cheeseburger diet, got kicked out, waddled down the street to the operating contractor for the site, got hired at the Test Reactor where I was working at the time. another guy, after the long version of electronics A school, took advantge of the easy out program in 69-70 by admitting to smoking weed. He was in Vietnam at the time. I don't think he actually smoked weed until the program was announced. He took a general discharge that reverted to honorable if he stayed out of trouble for 6 months or a year or something like that. Next time I saw him was at the Enlisted club at Treasure Island, where I was going to electonics B school. I asked him what he was up to, said he was going to college to become an engineer, on the GI Bill. Seems that boot camp, full year of A school, and some C schools, and a few months in Vietnam got him the 2 year minimum to qualify for the GI Bill for education. Sometimes the military is so stupid....

What "easy out" program are you referring too? I was in Vietnam in 1970 and half my company was using one drug or another... and it was common knowledge to officers and nco's. The only discharge they gave to drug users was a "212" undesirable. Please provide reference for this.
 
People should not be forced into service ever. It has happened in the past and it was a mistake.

So it's fine with you if we're attacked again like at Pearl or worse... to just leave it up to volunteers to fight even if we need more soldiers to keep from losing a war. You would be OK with [as an example] the muslim world taking over the US?? Never say ever...
 
Absolutely not. This world needs less people trying to kill each other and spend more time trying to help with more important issues like world hunger and diseases.
 
Absolutely not. This world needs less people trying to kill each other and spend more time trying to help with more important issues like world hunger and diseases.

Even if we follow this uber-pacifist approach, the absolute majority of the roles within the military still do not involve any form of combat in them.
 
What "easy out" program are you referring too? I was in Vietnam in 1970 and half my company was using one drug or another... and it was common knowledge to officers and nco's. The only discharge they gave to drug users was a "212" undesirable. Please provide reference for this.
probably just a navy thing....later on, late 70's, my younger brother got out after only 2 years of service....again, the Navy...
I was in vietnam from spring of 69 to spring of 70....brown water navy support, an OLD LST supporting PBR's. Started out just below the bridge to Ben Luc....Long An province.
 
If the flat tax were implemented with the current budget, the rate would have be at least 30%. Now add SS/Medicare, property tax, and so on.... and we're getting closer to 40%

I'd have to engage in armed rebellion, because I couldn't feed my family and pay my bills on what would be left to me.

So yeah, a flat tax would destroy society, because the lower-income 1/3rd of the country would have to rebel or starve.

no it wouldn't. and it would stop the creeping crud that is ruining this country-the massive spread of government.
 
Look at all the military spending cutters (mostly liberals) coming out of the woodwork in support of mandatory military service.
 
Look at all the military spending cutters (mostly liberals) coming out of the woodwork in support of mandatory military service.

its part of afflicting the comfortable disease they try to infect others with
 
Mandatory military service or civic service assumes that we the people belong to the state.
I do not belong to the United States of America, I do not belong to California and I do not belong to you.
Involuntary servitude is contrary with a free society.
 
I think young people not in college could use a little dose of military discipline even if for only 2 years. Does not have to be military either, peace corps would do.

My only issue with that, is that people could be made to serve in The Ready Reserve Corps, which only answers to the president.

I believe that anything, outside of the military, would quickly turn into a political re-education camp.

At the end of the day, I oppose conscription, unless during an emergency.
 
probably just a navy thing....later on, late 70's, my younger brother got out after only 2 years of service....again, the Navy...
I was in vietnam from spring of 69 to spring of 70....brown water navy support, an OLD LST supporting PBR's. Started out just below the bridge to Ben Luc....Long An province.

Ok... that would make sense as far as branches having different policy on this. I was at An Khe and Phu Tai in central highlands 7/70-3/71. Sent home early with SFW.
 
My only issue with that, is that people could be made to serve in The Ready Reserve Corps, which only answers to the president.

I believe that anything, outside of the military, would quickly turn into a political re-education camp.

At the end of the day, I oppose conscription, unless during an emergency.

/facepalm

Yep... Sure you'd be saying that if an (R) was in charge?
 
My only issue with that, is that people could be made to serve in The Ready Reserve Corps, which only answers to the president.

I believe that anything, outside of the military, would quickly turn into a political re-education camp.

At the end of the day, I oppose conscription, unless during an emergency.


Isn't re-education pretty much the goal of basic training?
 
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