posted on September 16, 2002 06:41:08 PM new
MSNBC on Hardball is debateing about the Draft being reinstated....they better frickin not. I know that our President is gon-ho on War but this should be a decision made BY THE PEOPLE..FOR THE PEOPLE. I'm not willing to give up my Husband or Sons. Better start letting congress here your rage on this subject before they have have done and active.
posted on September 16, 2002 08:19:34 PM new
Our president-select believes it's his manifest destiny to conquer every country in the mid-east. Only the poor will kill and be killed.
posted on September 16, 2002 09:45:22 PM new
After Vietnam I doubt if the public would go for it unless tanks are rolling across the Canadian border invading. I seriously think it would bring the government down.
I'm a disabled old guy with no kids so I have no direct interest.
I'll tell you one thing - the kids now days are so cold - I'd hate to be a fresh Lt. headed up a hill with a platoon of draftees behind me with loaded weapons. I'd be wishing for some body armor to cover my butt.
posted on September 16, 2002 10:19:18 PM new
I would LOVE it if the draft returned.
Too many kids these days don't know what they are doing or where they are going... this way for the first couple of years they wouldn't have to answer those questions.
I do mean both boys and girls. I personally think the young generation of today is pretty lazy and useless.
posted on September 17, 2002 04:41:36 AM new
Then I take it you associate maturity and self control with keeping your mouth shut and following orders? Not that anything basic has changed about the person - but he shows a face to the world you like better.
The depth of value of military discipline can be seen in the special service men who come home and kill their wives as easily as they did the enamy in the field. Society really needs more unfeeling stoic killers doesn't it?
I am sorry but looking to the military to create depth of character and integrity looks as silly to me as sending a dope sucking sports hero into the community to do public service time with youth. The Football or Basketball player basically avoids any punishment and the community absorbs his punishment by exposing their children to a egotistical boor who uses nose candy.
If sports was so great at building character we would not see the players in court and couches going psycho with rage and anger.
The lies about the value of the military for building a better and more social man are similar to sports.
Lies lies and propaganda.
My personal take was that my relatives can back from the service in shock from the violence and bullying and were expected to cope with it silently and not crack. They were addicted to
nicotine at the least if not stronger drugs, and many were alcohalic. They suffered from poor health care and poverty and literal wounds and exotic diseases. They had dropped many of their core values got used to such things as using prostitutes they would have shunned before, and learned to use violence quickly and efficiently. They came back totally screwed up.
posted on September 17, 2002 08:20:30 AM new
gravid, you are welcome to that opinion of course. However, as a sailor, I wasn't taught to kill anyone and the being in the millitary did me a world of good, just as it does for millions of other young men and women. It gets the basics into a person: work ethic, show up on time, be patient, learn how to shrug off the unfair that you can't do anything about, stay clean, stay neat, and so much more. While some young people at that age are dying their hair various colors and spiking it to learn how to grow up, others are doing a whole lotta growing up in a hurry in the millitary.
I've already stated that I think that every young person of 18 ought to be compelled to make a choice of service: whether it be the millitary, the police force, or foreign service changing bedpans in third-world countries.
posted on September 17, 2002 08:25:10 AM new
No Gravid, I don't think maturity and self-control are gainded by just keeping your mouth shut, but a draft into the military will give the youth something to build upon if they have the character.
In my experience most people that came back "screwed up" were screwed up to begin with. It just brought their true nature out.
posted on September 17, 2002 08:43:02 AM new
In many countries "service" either in the military, or some other civic service is mandatory. It should be here also. Too many kids here are spoiled brats, taught that the gimmees are a way of life.
And the military does not turn out warped drug addicted murderers any more than Kmart does.
posted on September 17, 2002 08:43:54 AM new
As a sailor, you were not taught to kill anyone...... Borillar, don't they have Boot Camp for the Navy? Didn't they teach you about arms; guns etc?
Anyway..... right now, as you all know, we have the Selective Service, all males on their 18th bday have to register, I was under the impression that it was some kind of prelude to a draft (in the case we ever did need it)
Yes I think both males and females should serve a couple years military duty. It does teach discipline.
posted on September 17, 2002 09:09:56 AM new
Does anyone know offhand what percent of draft age males were in the military during the last period in which the draft was in force? My husband is always surprised by the number of his colleagues who were not in the service. When he first got out of the AF in 1971, most of his buddies had been in the service - they were linemen for a utility company. After he went back to college and got a degree, hardly anyone in his field had been in the service except a couple bosses who had been officers in Vietnam. He thought that the reason he quickly got promoted was because of his past military experience even though it had been as an enlisted man. On the other hand, his brothers' problems with alcohol were probably exacerbated by being in the service because of the social acceptance of drinking to excess - at least during that time period.
I've seen forced military service open people's minds to the differences in cultures in positive ways and I've seen it enforce the fearful's prejudices.
[ edited by saabsister on Sep 17, 2002 09:18 AM ]
[ edited by saabsister on Sep 17, 2002 09:22 AM ]
posted on September 17, 2002 09:32:37 AM new
I have too many physical defects to have even been considered for service. However my class of 1966 from my high school had a large number drafted. It was a blue collar factory neighborhood and the kids did not have the connections or the deferments that the kids from monied families did.
My Dad's family all served in WWII and there was no resentment for serving. Most of them enlisted. They were from a rural Alabama background and one was killed outright - one was knocked over the head because he would not leave his antiarcraft gun when the order was given to abandon ship and had a closed head injury that severly altered his personality - one came back a drunk, which he might have been anyway it is true, fell in a drainage ditch by the bar parking lot and drown one night - one was raped in the barracks and became suicidal and became a homeless person and disappeared - one was infected with tropical parisites that he never completely recovered from - my dad was one of three hospitalized from a barracks fight just before his Ranger outfit was dropped with a burst spleen and other injuries after a beating with a rifle butt and it probably saved his life because they air dropped the outfit and lost it for 3 days and half of them were killed. He was released on a mental. The only one who came out halfway normal was in the navy and served on blimps in Florida.
posted on September 17, 2002 10:44:38 AM new
DeSquirrel, do you know how many of the 27 million who were of draft age enlisted in addition to those who were drafted?
Gravid, the AWOLs whom my father caught were mainly small town backwoods boys who had never been outside their county much less the state.
8,700,000 people served.
2,700,000 served in Vietnam
2/3 of Vietnam service was by volunteers and 1/3 draftees. But that doesn't mean 2/3 of the 8,700,000 were volunteers because many volunteered specifically for Vietnam so the troops there might have a higher vol/draft ratio than normal. And then there was hundreds of thousands of career military also.
So maybe 1 in 10 or 1 in 9 volunteered (a real maybe)
posted on September 17, 2002 11:32:42 AM new
Thanks for the info, DeSquirrel. My husband and I were trying to figure out why he knew so few veterans. He comes from a military family so he is probably used to the concept of service. We're 1966 high school grads. Most of our friends went right to college after graduating so most were protected by college deferments and then the lottery. A few of my classmates were killed in Vietnam, mostly poor kids with no deferments. Because my husband partied, flunked out of college the first time through, and then joined the AF, by the time he did finish college and start a professional career, he was several years older than many of his colleagues who had missed the draft or been lucky in the lottery.
posted on September 17, 2002 01:13:07 PM new
we probably have more people in the military now than we need. There will never be another huge ground war for the US. We had far more people on the ground for the Gulf war than we needed.
We buckled Afghanistan with a few hundred personel on the ground.
We just saw the start of smart weapons use in the Gulf war. WWII era weapon systems are nothing more than coffins for combatants. WWII ear technologies not only reveal where you are, but provide an easy target. Even air weapons platforms with humans in them are not in the future.
Air Force weapons, whether manned or unmanned can devastate ground armour, air defence systems, and infantry in a matter of minutes. A large army in the field is a sitting duck for modern weapon systems.
The only reason for a large ground contingent may be to pacify an entire country after it has been defeated in war. But that's not the soundest way to perform the task, if it's even possible.
Our real security challenges are not standing armies - they're only target practice. WOMDs and terrorism are the challenges of the future, and large ground forces can do little to defeat these, in fact, large ground forces are targets for WOMD and terrorists.
Anti-missle/air defences and secure borders will be more important than a standing army.
In any event, weapons can only do so much for security. We can only isolate problems for so long as demographics, international politics, poverty, despotism, religion, etc., destabilize the world.
"Pacification drugs" may be next on the horizon. Inject an entire water supply with drugs that make agressive acts impossible, but people remain productive. While it seems impossible now, the means are not that far off.
Instead of killing them, just drug them until things settle down.
posted on September 17, 2002 01:24:19 PM new
>As a sailor, you were not taught to kill anyone...... Borillar, don't they have Boot Camp for the Navy? Didn't they teach you about arms; guns etc? NearTheSea
NTS, when I entered the US Navy in the 1970s, the question came up of when, in this present day and age, that another ship is going to board our ship and the sailors required to repel boarders? If an invasion of a ship takes place, that's one reason that US Marines are stationed onboard, that is their traditional role (that, and protecting the Captain, and to prevent mutinies) Therefore, the sensible question was asked about what was served in teaching sailors how to kill?
In my time in boot camp in San Diego, we were marched onto a rifle range, handed a .22 rifle, and allowed to shoot three shots. That was the full extent of our "killer" training. The time was better spent training each of us in fire fighting onboard ships and how to handle other disasters that we might just face when at sea. I agreed with it.
DeSquirrel, you said: " n many countries "service" either in the military, or some other civic service is mandatory. It should be here also. Too many kids here are spoiled brats, taught that the gimmees are a way of life.
A good statement that one.
Then you mess it up by saying something completely ignorant: "And the military does not turn out warped drug addicted murderers any more than Kmart does."
I can't believe that even you could make such an ignorant statement. The military does not TRAIN personnel to become "warped-out drug addicted murders", but the effects of combat does and the purpose of the training is to go into combat, i.e. cause and effect.. And even just those specialty forces where killing and aggression are so important, training alone makes many unstable individuals a danger to themselves and to society. The military makes every effort to weed out those undesirables before, during, and after training, but some still slip through.
posted on September 17, 2002 01:43:16 PM new
You'd be surprised what a single man on the ground with a hand held laser can do to direct air bombardment.
One man with a laser or a GPS with a good range finder coupled with air weapons resources can destroy an entire army on the ground with pinpoint accuracy.
Although not in service yet, there are even unmanned gound weapons that can de directed from another location. Think of one man with anti personel and anti armour weapons systems stationed around an ambush area. The single person can direct the fire from this equipment to devastate a contingent many times in number from a safe distance.
We will even be able to parachute these systems into areas and direct fire from the other side of the world. We've already done this with drones in Afghanistan and operated from Florida with spectacular success.
Draft? Don't think so. The debate will be about shedding service people before they get their retirement benefits and how big a role contractors will play in the military.
edited to add- there are also suits that a man can wear that makes him invisible to the eye, I've only seen it once, and I don't know if they've been deployed yet.
[ edited by Reamond on Sep 17, 2002 01:46 PM ]
posted on September 17, 2002 01:47:33 PM new
"And even just those specialty forces where killing and aggression are so important, training alone makes many unstable individuals a danger to themselves and to society."
Statistically, the number of wackos in the general pop and veterans is the same. Veterans do not contain higher ratios of mentally ill, murderers, etc
As a matter of fact, if you examine just Viet vets, they are "more stable" than the norm, have less unemployment than the norm, higher paying jobs.
posted on September 17, 2002 02:22:29 PM new
One of the poorest, yet one of the most heavily armed and dangerous. If poverty dictated the safety of an area, then the ghetto would be the safest place to live and the safest duty for the police force.
Your correlation doesn't withstand scruntiny.
By the way, what Bush did in Afghanistan was the right thing to do and done very well. Over 1.5 million refugees have returned to Afghanistan since we removed the Taliban.
posted on September 17, 2002 02:39:30 PM new
I read that stat too. But more important, most of those refugees are things like doctors, teachers, engineers. The people that could get away and the people whose impact is much greater than their sheer numbers.
posted on September 17, 2002 02:54:24 PM new
Some people hate Bush so much that no matter what he does it is flawed or wrong. That's irrational.
I voted for Clinton, and think that the impeachment was a witch hunt as well as all the other investigations. He was a great President.
Just as with Clinton, I will support Bush when he is right. Bush is flatly wrong on the economy and tax policy. Trickle down didn't work with Reagan, it won't work now. Tax policy should favor consumer middle class taxpayers ( demand rather than supoply). Each step Bush has taken regarding the problems in the Gulf have been correct. When he is wrong, I'll be the first to point it out.
posted on September 17, 2002 03:27:40 PM new
I was being a smart-ass, but my point was that it's a sure thing the U.S. would win in a situation with any poor country. I don't know how many weapons they (Afghanistan) had but it would still be a joke in comparison.
As far a the draft, I think it's sad that Bush has put people into the situation where it might be a possibilty. I'm afraid that while he's in office, the war against the middle east will continue and if another Republican gets into office on 2004, it might be game over for everyone.
posted on September 17, 2002 05:10:12 PM new
Saabsister -
"Gravid, the AWOLs whom my father caught were mainly small town backwoods boys who had never been outside their county much less the state."
Thanks for that input. You may have a point there that they used people who were not really suitable - but the stereotypes of the time would give no reason to reject them that would be socially acceptable.
I lived in north Carolina for a time in the late 50's and meet a number of people that had never been out of their county and it was like they were from a different planet. I can see how they would not adapt to a shocking change in environment.
They honestly were still fighting the Civil War and when you did not know that the bank would be closed on Lee's birthday they had contempt for you. But when you explained that up North they didn't close the banks on Grant's birthday it was like - so what is the point? They could not get it that the Yankees didn't CARE about what was long done - just plain did not think about it outside a history class.
