351–360 of 418 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes they do - if not enough people volunteer, they will force the ones seeming most fit for the tasks at hand. Also, if I know the Swedish military, they'll chose the most fit for the task, but make absolutely sure to fill the gender quotas.
What's the required gender ratio, out of curiosity?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. In my refusal to serve in the Norwegian military, this was one of my arguments. Coupled with pointing out that I could not guarantee that I would agree with the political views of any future regime, and so I considered it immoral to be put in a position where I might be threatened into using violence in favour of a cause I might fundamentally be opposed to. I also made it clear that should that happen, I'd c…
Whether you consider killing officers moral or not, as a practical matter I think sabotage would more effectively discourage people from taking conscripts. The military is well optimized to cope with the death of personnel. Frag an officer and the chain of command does its thing and everything continues as normal. There's not even much deterrent value because the officer was fully bought into the values of the system…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a topic I've often contemplated. On deployment (US Army) I couldn't help but notice how counter-productive all the "amenities" actually were. I believe one of the driving factors behind individual military success in theater (aka war), in addition to protecting your peers and pride, is that urge to finish the fight so you can get home. Having Burger King and Subway stifles that sense of urgency, IMO. During w…
>I believe one of the driving factors behind individual military success in theater (aka war), in addition to protecting your peers and pride, is that urge to finish the fight so you can get home. Having Burger King and Subway stifles that sense of urgency, IMO. Really? Personally, having nothing to eat but Burger King and Subway trash would be a huge motivator to get home where I can get some decent food.
However, it wasn't so much actually indulging in the imported goods, fast food in this case, it's the sense of familiarity that normalized being there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's a difference between what's popular & what's ethical. I can certainly agree with that. My citation of popularity was to defend conscription from exactly the kind of reasoning you describe: "No one really cares about national sovereignty and it's just a few suicidal wackjobs whose quixotic desires shouldn't impinge on the lives of us normal people." >2. Since we're being intuitive here: Throwing a bunch of a…
> My citation of popularity was to defend conscription from exactly the kind of reasoning you describe: "No one really cares about national sovereignty and it's just a few suicidal wackjobs whose quixotic desires shouldn't impinge on the lives of us normal people." I'm not the OP. And that 'reasoning' is a gross perversion of what was said. The OP didn't say no one cares. My reading of his comment was that no one sho…
I am quite surprised by the number of people here (and even larger numbers elsewhere this is being discussed) who don't seem to have any ethical problem with conscription. Thought the idea of killer slaves was completely off limits in the West. Now all of a sudden we are debating cost effectiveness. Guess I thought wrong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A credible deterrent in 2020 is not 200k dudes with guns. It's air and naval power. Expensive and complex hi tech death machines. Of course, a 10m country will never have a really credible defense against nuclear super power Russia by itself.
> A credible deterrent in 2020 is not 200k dudes with guns. It's air and naval power. Expensive and complex hi tech death machines. I don't know — that's certainly the reason why many nations have gotten rid of conscription, but I think it may be mistaken. Sure, in the initial stages of a force-on-force, peer conflict it's going to be all about complex, hi-tech machines, but what about sustained, low-level operations…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>That's still slavery, Sure, OK. Slavery is not the worst possible state of existence, you know. My dog is not only a slave, but a captive slave: she can't leave my property, and I punish her when she tries to leave. But, looking at her dozing off in the sun right now, she seems pretty happy. Most people prefer the soft slavery of possible conscription, to the expected outcomes of foreign invasion. It helps that when…
"to defend your homeland" That's actually a very typical war propaganda. In reality you are defending the order your state imposes on you and everyone. In slave terms you are defending your master's desire to control you from other masters. And that's it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>That's still slavery, Sure, OK. Slavery is not the worst possible state of existence, you know. My dog is not only a slave, but a captive slave: she can't leave my property, and I punish her when she tries to leave. But, looking at her dozing off in the sun right now, she seems pretty happy. Most people prefer the soft slavery of possible conscription, to the expected outcomes of foreign invasion. It helps that when…
"to defend your homeland" That's actually a very typical war propaganda. In reality you are defending the order your state imposes on you and everyone. In slave terms you are defending your master's desire to control you from other masters. And that's it.
How is this post not flagged and anything negative related to Trump gets flagged and downvoted because it is "too political for HN"? Has HN started to take political sides now?
How do you motivate a conscript? When I was in the British Army, which is volunteer only, commanding a basic training troop if someone was wanted to give up we could say to them 'if this isn't for you then you can go home' (of course we did coach and mentor people to help them, I mean in cases where people just give up and stop soldiering when an exercise gets tough). They usually worked extremely hard to get into th…
I was a conscript in the Danish army. Roughly speaking, they examined all 18 year olds, sorted out those with low IQ and those with physical injuries and asked the rest if we wanted to join voluntarily. They never got enough volunteers so they drafted around 1/3 of the rest of us using what was basically a tombola drum. Then we did 6-12 months. I did 9. I think most of us thought we had been unlucky to draw a low num…