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Conscription- Would you serve?

Would you Serve if you were conscripted?


  • Total voters
    51

Stewart

Cammunist
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I recently discovered that the USA maintains a roll of potential conscripts. This got me thinking.

For the purpose of this thought experiment let us assume the USA and it's allies has gotten involved in a long, messy and very bloody battle with China over Tawian's independence. This has involved fighting on mainly Chinese soil and China are clearly on the defensive.

If there was a clear mechanism to opt out of service, not necessarily conscientious objector but other excuses as well.

My Question is thus, would you serve if you are conscripted?

Explain your answer.

Note: I'm not nessecarily focusing on fighting china, more of an external threat. Also, for the purposes of this thought exercises, females are on the SSR as well.
 
I would only defend my country on home turf, pretty simple. Although it's doubtful wether I would be medically fit. I don't believe serving overseas is the best way to use conscripts.
 
Ya, I wonder why this is myself. Seems like flat-out government waste to maintain the apparatus to draft people into the military when no sane person I know thinks any nation will ever fight a war on the scale of WW II again -- or even on the scale of Vietnam.

To answer your question, I am not morally opposed to killing people in warfare, and I am not particularly afraid of being killed myself. I thought it appalling in the 1970's that this nation forced men but not women into combat, and I still do.

So, unless I had some huge issue with the military task our country was setting out to accomplish for political reasons (as I did to the Vietnam War), yes, I would most certainly serve.
 
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since I voluntarily signed up over 20 years ago...my answer would have to be "yes"
 
I would only defend my country on home turf, pretty simple. Although it's doubtful wether I would be medically fit. I don't believe serving overseas is the best way to use conscripts.

In the spirit of honesty, I must admit I doubt there'd be any combat duty I'd be fit for, either, IRL -- but once upon a time I was young and strong, and I believed then as I do now it is horribly unfair not to ask all young people to serve, if any of them are to be asked.

I'm fairly sure Israel does exactly this, or at least once did. Seems to have worked well for them.
 
In the spirit of honesty, I must admit I doubt there'd be any combat duty I'd be fit for, either, IRL -- but once upon a time I was young and strong, and I believed then as I do now it is horribly unfair not to ask all young people to serve, if any of them are to be asked.

I'm fairly sure Israel does exactly this, or at least once did. Seems to have worked well for them.

meh, my last deployment to Iraq, I was 46 years old and had two bum knees and a bum shoulder.
 
I tried to enlist but my eyesight disqualified me, so today I work for the government and face denigration as one of those "sucking off the teat of our taxpayer funding". Interesting - military personnel become heroes but being employed by the same government can make one a parasite. There is a disconnect.
 
Between my arthritis and the anxiety caused by my aspergers, I doubt the military would want me.

I cant even donate blood.
 
Between my arthritis and the anxiety caused by my aspergers, I doubt the military would want me.

I cant even donate blood.

thanks to all the vaccinations the Army has forced upon me, I can no longer donate blood at any of the "for profit" centers. it costs more to rerun the tests to clear the false positives than the blood is worth. I, apparently, have HEP-B antibodies in my blood that always gives a false positive for HEP-B. I freaked out the first time it happened when they sent me the notice because it took them a couple of days to send me the confirmation test that showed it was false positive (by which time, I had coughed up the co-pay to go to my family doc to get checked out)
 
With females in the military a return to the draft is political suicide. I am now 58 so I voted no, if we so desparate that even I am asked I will politely decline. ;-)
 
thanks to all the vaccinations the Army has forced upon me, I can no longer donate blood at any of the "for profit" centers. it costs more to rerun the tests to clear the false positives than the blood is worth. I, apparently, have HEP-B antibodies in my blood that always gives a false positive for HEP-B. I freaked out the first time it happened when they sent me the notice because it took them a couple of days to send me the confirmation test that showed it was false positive (by which time, I had coughed up the co-pay to go to my family doc to get checked out)

My body fails me in some ways

Humira, methotrexate, naproxen sodium, folic acid (this one is fine I am sure), and my anxiety pill.

Thanks genetics!!!
 
If it was on home turf and it threatened the American way of life, yes, I would serve if conscripted. I would not serve overseas and/or in a war which I don't believe in.
 
maybe it's just me...but the last time I checked...conscriptions were not voluntary. Is the question: if conscripted would you choose between serving and going to jail for not?
 
Defending Taiwan is not even close to being serious enough to justify the draft.
 
You are a hero, Oscar. Thank you.


aw shucks, I don't consider myself a hero (although I have done a few heroic things) just an average guy doing the job I volunteered to do.
 
maybe it's just me...but the last time I checked...conscriptions were not voluntary. Is the question: if conscripted would you choose between serving and going to jail for not?

They are not, but I was answering Stewart's question:

If there was a clear mechanism to opt out of service, not necessarily conscientious objector but other excuses as well.

My Question is thus, would you serve if you are conscripted?
 
Defending Taiwan is not even close to being serious enough to justify the draft.

Yeah, when Michael Bay makes one of those super patriotic collages that illustrate everything good about the American way of life that's at stake in order to justify great acts of heroism, I have a really hard time imagining going to war with China over Taiwan as something such a collage could be made for.

Ive only got one life -- I'm not throwing it away over foreign squabbles.
 
My Dad lived from 1914-1997, he served in army infantry, drafted Jan. '42, discharged May '45. Basic from Jan - May of '42, shipped to Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO) in May 42, trained some more in Fiji, moved up to Guadalcanal in the fall after fighting ended. He was in frontline combat at New Georgia, Bougainville, and landed in the Philippines and participated in the liberation of Manila (worst combat he was in, he said he'd rather fight in the jungle than house to house - too many places to hide and booby trap). Search 37th Division hill 700 bouganville and 37th division liberation of manila.

I never heard about a particular day in combat, only days in R&R, Dad preferred to remember the good times.

He offered me the following observations on war:

Should you go to war or not: It depends on the war, but its your life and you decide if its worth dying for, don't let an idiot in the white house decide if YOUR life is worth it. He said in WWII, he had a mother and 2 sisters, and after hearing about the Rape of Nanking, it was worth his life to ensure his family never had to go through that. He said there were two kinds of wars, those you had to fight (worth your life), and bull shyt political wars usually started by a pip squeak who had never been shot at and seen his buddies with their guts hanging out and screaming until they died. Dad trusted guys like Ike and JFK to call that shot a lot more than LBJ and Nixon. His verdict on Vietnam, "knowing what I know about war, if drafted for this one, I'd go to Canada".

In his late 70's and after a bad case of pneumonia, he got to have bouts of rage. He was admitted to a psych facility and prescribed medication and he was perfect after that until he neared death. The psychiatrist told my sister that in group, when they asked Dad what he was most proud of in his life, he said it was fighting for his country in WWII. He was as good a patriot as any I've seen, but he didn't think everyone in the White House was a great leader.
 
Unlikely. I'm hard-pressed to think of any plausible situation where the benefits of my participating in war would exceed the costs. Especially if it's one of the kinds of wars that the US has fought since World War II, where the justification has been dubious at best. I'd rather make the world a better place by helping with something like education or health care, rather than killing people.

In any case, it seems highly unlikely to happen. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were the end of an era...possibly the last time we'll deploy a large number of ground troops to a battlefield. If you want to see the future of warfare, look at Pakistan or Yemen, where we're waging war with robots and where most Americans aren't even aware we're at war.
 
Probably not. I doubt I'd be deemed medically fit for one. Given the constraints of the thought exercise, I don't really agree with why the war is being fought either. And I'm a trained and experienced engineer. I honestly believe I could contribute more to the war effort as an engineer working on getting new weapons/vehicles on the battlefield than I could carrying a rifle on foreign soil.
 
I said yes, but I am already in. I voluntarily enlisted many years ago and I am still in (but I will be retiring this year some time). I have already gone to several places overseas to be part of several operations over the years. I would never refuse to go. Besides, if I refused, then someone else would have to go in my place, and I don't think that is right.
 
I said yes, but I am already in. I voluntarily enlisted many years ago and I am still in (but I will be retiring this year some time). I have already gone to several places overseas to be part of several operations over the years. I would never refuse to go. Besides, if I refused, then someone else would have to go in my place, and I don't think that is right.

which is exactly why I volunteered to go to Iraq my last deployment. The only other logistics qualified officer in our BN was a young guy with a wife and small children. I could not have lived with myself if I had not volunteered and he had to go and something had happened to him.
 
I voted "yes", but I would no longer serve because I was drafted back in the 60's. I went into the U.S. Army and served 2 years one of which was in South Korea as a member of the 1st Cavalry Division. My service number is US5151xxxx and got an honorable discharge with the rank of PFC 1st class.
 
No. The government should not force me to go off to a foreign land to serve in the military. Military should strictly be voluntarily.
You should not be forced to work for anything government agency. Just think if the EPA (or choose whatever agency you hate the most here) and conscripted you?
 
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