|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
|
 Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 3:55 am Post subject: |
 |
|
It's just a theory I have cooked up this minute - but conscription might even be a good antiwar device for this reason (at least in a democracy where governments are worried about poll ratings):
The bigger percentage of voters who have their offspring conscripted into the national forces, the more likely the opposition to some stupid military adventure.
Maybe. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
daskalos
Joined: 19 May 2006
Location: The Road to Ithaca
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 4:06 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Big_Bird wrote: |
It's just a theory I have cooked up this minute - but conscription might even be a good antiwar device for this reason (at least in a democracy where governments are worried about poll ratings):
The bigger percentage of voters who have their offspring conscripted into the national forces, the more likely the opposition to some stupid military adventure.
Maybe. |
EXACTLY RIGHT. Everyone and his mother has a stake, and governments are more accountable, as the US found in Vietnam, to its surprise.
Interestingly, the US govt then took the wrong lesson from that period. Instead of reeling in adventurism, it opted for the all-volunteer force, which limits electoral damage in the face of unpopular, stupid wars.
As I see it, the ROK has a good model for this. There are two career tracks here - Officers and NCO's. The conscripts fill the lower ranks and along the way are trained in the rudiments of combat, ensuring a life-long force of trained fighters, should the big ugly day arrive that the Norks completely lose their minds and attack. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 4:10 am Post subject: |
|
|
| daskalos wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
It's just a theory I have cooked up this minute - but conscription might even be a good antiwar device for this reason (at least in a democracy where governments are worried about poll ratings):
The bigger percentage of voters who have their offspring conscripted into the national forces, the more likely the opposition to some stupid military adventure.
Maybe. |
EXACTLY RIGHT. Everyone and his mother has a stake, and governments are more accountable, as the US found in Vietnam, to its surprise.
Interestingly, the US govt then took the wrong lesson from that period. Instead of reeling in adventurism, it opted for the all-volunteer force, which limits electoral damage in the face of unpopular, stupid wars.
As I see it, the ROK has a good model for this. There are two career tracks here - Officers and NCO's. The conscripts fill the lower ranks and along the way are trained in the rudiments of combat, ensuring a life-long force of trained fighters, should the big ugly day arrive that the Norks completely lose their minds and attack. |
Let's hope those Norks don't shame themselves too badly in Group G, or they might be in the mood for a war!  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
NovaKart
Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Location: Iraq
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 5:17 am Post subject: |
|
|
Conscription will continue as long as people are bullied into believing that it's their duty to fight in whatever stupid war their country chooses to engage in. How often are wars about national defense? Usually it's about a sphere of influence or a country wanting to dominate another one. I'm glad my parents generation fought against the Vietnam War and conscription so my generation isn't forced to fight for "Iraqi freedom."
As long as we pay our taxes and follow the law why should our male citizens be burdened with conscription?
Conscription also is a slippery slope to serious human rights abuses such as occur in Russia, Korea and many Middle Eastern countries. How do you think gay men would fare in a conscript army? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
daskalos
Joined: 19 May 2006
Location: The Road to Ithaca
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 6:01 am Post subject: |
|
|
| NovaKart wrote: |
Conscription will continue as long as people are bullied into believing that it's their duty to fight in whatever stupid war their country chooses to engage in. How often are wars about national defense? Usually it's about a sphere of influence or a country wanting to dominate another one. I'm glad my parents generation fought against the Vietnam War and conscription so my generation isn't forced to fight for "Iraqi freedom."
As long as we pay our taxes and follow the law why should our male citizens be burdened with conscription?
Conscription also is a slippery slope to serious human rights abuses such as occur in Russia, Korea and many Middle Eastern countries. How do you think gay men would fare in a conscript army? |
Well, by all reports, they do pretty well in Israel.
My point is, if the US govt hadn't chosen the path they took in response to your parents' protests, if it'd kept conscription and acknowledged the political restraints that put on its ability to wage whatever imperialistic bullshit wars it wanted to, we wouldn't now be emroiled in Iraq.
Your idea that merely paying one's taxes is enough to buy you all the benefits of citizenship smacks to me too much of the deferments that Cheney and company were able to get.
A question for you: in a theoretical time of intense domestic conflict, do you really want your country's military to be composed only of people right wing enough to be interested in having and knowing how to use guns? During the many years I served, voluntarily, in the US military, it was disconcerting to me to realize that the all-volunteer force had become, essentially, the military wing of the GOP. Not exclusively, but largely, yes. Are you comfortable with that? Is your sense of your privilege so precious to you that you can't see the danger inherent in such a state of affairs? Rome went from being a republic (admittedly, an oligarchic one) to being a dictatorship because it went from universal conscription to being a volunteer force - that is, the military's loyalty was transferred from the state to the state's generals.
I posit that you are taking the short, personally comfortavble view, rather than the long view of historical precedent. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 6:20 am Post subject: |
|
|
| NovaKart wrote: |
Conscription will continue as long as people are bullied into believing that it's their duty to fight in whatever stupid war their country chooses to engage in. How often are wars about national defense? Usually it's about a sphere of influence or a country wanting to dominate another one. I'm glad my parents generation fought against the Vietnam War and conscription so my generation isn't forced to fight for "Iraqi freedom."
|
But I don't think that's the case with Korea's conscription force.
Conscription here is now just a bureaucratic thing, too difficult to kill off quickly. I also think its not a bad idea at the moment.
I also disagree that it constitutes a human rights violation. Those who do not support it can leave Korea and never come back. If you do not want the protection that society offers, fine.
| Quote: |
| that free men from a technologically superior society win wars |
As clearly demonstrated by Stalin's forces in World War II.
Or the French at DienBienPhu.
Or, ahem, the Korean conflict. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
NovaKart
Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Location: Iraq
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 12:01 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| daskalos wrote: |
| NovaKart wrote: |
Conscription will continue as long as people are bullied into believing that it's their duty to fight in whatever stupid war their country chooses to engage in. How often are wars about national defense? Usually it's about a sphere of influence or a country wanting to dominate another one. I'm glad my parents generation fought against the Vietnam War and conscription so my generation isn't forced to fight for "Iraqi freedom."
As long as we pay our taxes and follow the law why should our male citizens be burdened with conscription?
Conscription also is a slippery slope to serious human rights abuses such as occur in Russia, Korea and many Middle Eastern countries. How do you think gay men would fare in a conscript army? |
Well, by all reports, they do pretty well in Israel.
My point is, if the US govt hadn't chosen the path they took in response to your parents' protests, if it'd kept conscription and acknowledged the political restraints that put on its ability to wage whatever imperialistic bullshit wars it wanted to, we wouldn't now be emroiled in Iraq.
Your idea that merely paying one's taxes is enough to buy you all the benefits of citizenship smacks to me too much of the deferments that Cheney and company were able to get.
A question for you: in a theoretical time of intense domestic conflict, do you really want your country's military to be composed only of people right wing enough to be interested in having and knowing how to use guns? During the many years I served, voluntarily, in the US military, it was disconcerting to me to realize that the all-volunteer force had become, essentially, the military wing of the GOP. Not exclusively, but largely, yes. Are you comfortable with that? Is your sense of your privilege so precious to you that you can't see the danger inherent in such a state of affairs? Rome went from being a republic (admittedly, an oligarchic one) to being a dictatorship because it went from universal conscription to being a volunteer force - that is, the military's loyalty was transferred from the state to the state's generals.
I posit that you are taking the short, personally comfortavble view, rather than the long view of historical precedent. |
That's a rosy way to look at it. What makes you think the US would withdraw from Iraq so quickly if there was a conscript force? It sure took us a long time to get out of Vietnam.
Turkey's military is very right-wing despite being a conscript force. Those in charge make the decisions, not the conscript soldiers who must follow orders. What would the conscripts do if they didn't agree with the actions of the generals? Would they desert? What if the military wanted to stage a coup? Would they refuse to follow orders? That's happened in Turkey and plenty of other countries with a conscript force. The conscripts didn't stop and say, oh wait a minute, we don't agree with this.
The situation in America is very different from ancient Rome which employed mercenaries, not ordinary citizens. In countries with a mandatory military service men are forced to serve for 1 or 2 years or less without becoming part of the military establishment. It's a way for the government to get cheap labor from its male citizens. Young men are cowed by people like you into feeling they owe this to the government and made to feel unpatriotic and weak if they disagree.
Most young people work hard to get where they are and don't have a sense of "privilege." People who disagree with conscription are so often given the response of "You have a sense of entitlement, you think you're privileged" without knowing anything about that person's life or what they have fought for. India and Bangladesh dont' have conscription, are people there privileged? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
daskalos
Joined: 19 May 2006
Location: The Road to Ithaca
|
| Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2010 3:51 am Post subject: |
|
|
| NovaKart wrote: |
| daskalos wrote: |
| NovaKart wrote: |
Conscription will continue as long as people are bullied into believing that it's their duty to fight in whatever stupid war their country chooses to engage in. How often are wars about national defense? Usually it's about a sphere of influence or a country wanting to dominate another one. I'm glad my parents generation fought against the Vietnam War and conscription so my generation isn't forced to fight for "Iraqi freedom."
As long as we pay our taxes and follow the law why should our male citizens be burdened with conscription?
Conscription also is a slippery slope to serious human rights abuses such as occur in Russia, Korea and many Middle Eastern countries. How do you think gay men would fare in a conscript army? |
Well, by all reports, they do pretty well in Israel.
My point is, if the US govt hadn't chosen the path they took in response to your parents' protests, if it'd kept conscription and acknowledged the political restraints that put on its ability to wage whatever imperialistic bullshit wars it wanted to, we wouldn't now be emroiled in Iraq.
Your idea that merely paying one's taxes is enough to buy you all the benefits of citizenship smacks to me too much of the deferments that Cheney and company were able to get.
A question for you: in a theoretical time of intense domestic conflict, do you really want your country's military to be composed only of people right wing enough to be interested in having and knowing how to use guns? During the many years I served, voluntarily, in the US military, it was disconcerting to me to realize that the all-volunteer force had become, essentially, the military wing of the GOP. Not exclusively, but largely, yes. Are you comfortable with that? Is your sense of your privilege so precious to you that you can't see the danger inherent in such a state of affairs? Rome went from being a republic (admittedly, an oligarchic one) to being a dictatorship because it went from universal conscription to being a volunteer force - that is, the military's loyalty was transferred from the state to the state's generals.
I posit that you are taking the short, personally comfortavble view, rather than the long view of historical precedent. |
That's a rosy way to look at it. What makes you think the US would withdraw from Iraq so quickly if there was a conscript force? It sure took us a long time to get out of Vietnam.
Turkey's military is very right-wing despite being a conscript force. Those in charge make the decisions, not the conscript soldiers who must follow orders. What would the conscripts do if they didn't agree with the actions of the generals? Would they desert? What if the military wanted to stage a coup? Would they refuse to follow orders? That's happened in Turkey and plenty of other countries with a conscript force. The conscripts didn't stop and say, oh wait a minute, we don't agree with this.
The situation in America is very different from ancient Rome which employed mercenaries, not ordinary citizens. In countries with a mandatory military service men are forced to serve for 1 or 2 years or less without becoming part of the military establishment. It's a way for the government to get cheap labor from its male citizens. Young men are cowed by people like you into feeling they owe this to the government and made to feel unpatriotic and weak if they disagree.
Most young people work hard to get where they are and don't have a sense of "privilege." People who disagree with conscription are so often given the response of "You have a sense of entitlement, you think you're privileged" without knowing anything about that person's life or what they have fought for. India and Bangladesh dont' have conscription, are people there privileged? |
You missed my point, which was that if the US hadn't changed its policy, if we had kept the draft, it would have been far more difficult, politically, to get into the Iraq war to begin with. As it was, only the voters with family members in the military had to be taken into account. And since gung-ho, do or die, conservative families are over-represented in that voting block, the political cost was less than it would have been had the pool of soldiers been more evenly distributed across the political spectrum.
To take your comparison with Vietnam, if we'd reinstituted the draft after we got into Iraq (as we did after we got into Vietnam), there would be more pressure to quit Iraq than there is now.
Rome did employ mercenaries (auxilaries) but they also used citizens. Prior to Gauis Marius, the Roman armies were composed of citizens who could afford to equip themselves. The armies Rome fielded before Marius were from the upper classes. The head count, the proletariat were not eligible. Marius, around 100 BC, changed that. He started paying the lower classes to serve, and he equipped them, whereas before, soldiers equipped themselves.
The loyalty of pre-Marian legions was to Rome. No, they weren't drafted, but the moral imperative of the age didn't require a draft. Until Rome got its empire, in the century before Marius, and started getting its ass handed to it. Marius' solution was to allow the lower classes to serve, and to pay them well.
And that IS analogous to the modern US military. By the time I finished my service in the US military, as an enlisted man, I was making nearly $70 a year. That's not enough to get rich, but it's more than most high school graduates could hope to make, after 20 years.
What made you think I meant that conscripts set policy? My point was that the fact of conscription can constrain the choices of policy makers in a democracy. In any case, Turkey is not the best example of a stable democracy. They've been a republic for less than a hundred years, and befiore that they were about the most autocratic nation on the planet, at that time, and their history of military coups illustrates that rather neatly.
It's not loyalty to government I'm talking about. It's loyalty to country, and without shared sacrifice, loyalty to country falls by the wayside. I don't even insist that compulsory national service be military in nature.
But yeah, people like you, who take umbrage at the accusation that your generation feels itself privileged, are oh-so prickly about all that. The "sacrifices" you've made, if any, are all about you. The struggles you've endured are largelyl personal. I know little about the struggles of Indians or Bangladeshis, but I've witnessed the mewlings of Americans raised and coddled by a generation of parents who thought it unseemly to apply the pressure of expectations to their spawn. Children who were never spanked and who figured out that "time out" just meant a free pass, who never learned that actions have consequences, who were raised on the idea that, after all, everyone is a winner!
Isn't there something wrong with a generation, or certain majorities within that generaion, that expects mere non-violation of the law is all that should ever be expected of them, that this is their only duty as a citizen? That merely not being evil is enough?
In any case, I'm done with this topic. There's no talking to you people. When the history of how America failed and became a once-was-place is written, there will be your picture. Enjoy it. It's likely the only thing your generation will be noted for. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
NovaKart
Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Location: Iraq
|
| Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2010 8:10 am Post subject: |
|
|
I suppose it's useless to argue with you since you apparently know everything about me including how I was raised. Never mind that my father used to hit me with a belt, according to you I just got "time outs" and was coddled my whole life.
Military service was hardly universal in the last generation either so I wouldn't say there's a big difference now.
I've known many men who were forced into military service and none of them found it useful either to themselves or their country. It's one thing if you choose that, but it shouldn't be forced on anyone.
Perhaps policy-makers would be more careful about going into a war with conscription but it's hardly a realistic proposal. Those who were wealthy would get deferrments. For one thing, you can't just shut down all universities and ship all the students out, society needs to continue despite a war. Conscription would only force the poor into the army. At least now they have a choice. Regardless I would be wary of placing such power in the hands of the government. It certainly didn't stop them from going into Vietnam.
You can twist whatever irrelevant historical examples and bizarre future hypothesis you want but people shouldn't be forced to act againsit their conscious or to sacrifice years of their life just because you feel like they're spoiled or you have some resentment against them. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
|
| Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2010 9:30 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| daskalos wrote: |
[q By the time I finished my service in the US military, as an enlisted man, I was making nearly $70 a year. That's not enough to get rich, but it's more than most high school graduates could hope to make, after 20 years.
. |
You mean 70 K don't you? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
