The draft

[Chump]

I've recently seen the term "draft-dodger" used as an insult (not here) and it got me thinking about the nature of the draft itself.  Personally, were I to be drafted, I would refuse.  It's a moot point now - I'm no longer of age - but what say you?

Edited to reflect my retraction, courtesy of Carl.

[DumbAss Tanker]

The real answer is "Only if we're fighting," without that stoopid Joooz bullshit on the end of it.  A peacetime draft is a particularly wasteful means of fielding a substandard Army.  In real wartime it would be a necessity...and I don't mean small wars conducted with tailored forces like 'Major regional contingencies,' I am talking what is called 'General war' in strategic writing.

In such circumstances, refusing to serve based on philosophical objections to the concept, or objections to the drift of current political leadership, is not really an option, unless you want to do a few years of hard time to make your point (Or just having your happy ass put up against a wall and shot, in less enlightened times and places).  

ETA:  'Draft dodger' is a slur because it boils down to making someone else go, who doesn't want to do it any more than you do.  It's not like the national government is going to draft one less person just because you didn't want to go.  The same number of people will be going, you are just making someone else who wouldn't have gone risk his life in your place, avoiding your selection by the society that fostered you and provided benefits to that point in your life.  It is actually pretty damned reprehensible, when conscription is truly necessary for national survival.  

[Chris_]

And then there's the whole issue of "quality", it seems to me that a force composed of people that actually want to be in the militery is far superior to one that is full of conscripts........the old USSR would likely be a good example of this.....

doc

[Chump]

Answers edited per DAT.

[Chump]

DAT, I would submit that if national survival is at stake, a draft would be unnecessary.  When given a choice between fight for your survival or sit on your ass and be guaranteed death, the military's ranks would be filled to the brim.

But even if that were not true, the issue at stake is whether or not the government has the right to dispose of your life.  Denying someone the ability to make a decision about their personal survival is reprehensible and outside the government's powers by definition of those powers.

The fact that someone else goes "in your place" does not make the draft any more moral or reasonable, nor does it make your refusal any more immoral or unreasonable, because the very act of drafting someone in the first place is immoral.  It's akin to saying that fleeing from a serial killer is immoral because he then went on to kill someone else instead of you.

[Chump]

And then there's the whole issue of "quality", it seems to me that a force composed of people that actually want to be in the militery is far superior to one that is full of conscripts........the old USSR would likely be a good example of this.....

doc

Absolutely.  When one knows what he is fighting for, voluntarily, he is formidable indeed.  The nature of war has shifted from brute force through numbers to higher technology, as well.

[DumbAss Tanker]

DAT, I would submit that if national survival is at stake, a draft would be unnecessary.  When given a choice between fight for your survival or sit on your ass and be guaranteed death, the military's ranks would be filled to the brim.

But even if that were not true, the issue at stake is whether or not the government has the right to dispose of your life.  Denying someone the ability to make a decision about their personal survival is reprehensible and outside the government's powers by definition of those powers.

The fact that someone else goes "in your place" does not make the draft any more moral or reasonable, nor does it make your refusal any more immoral or unreasonable, because the very act of drafting someone in the first place is immoral.  It's akin to saying that fleeing from a serial killer is immoral because he then went on to kill someone else instead of you.

History would say you are quite mistaken on the willingness of the populace to rise in national defense, since individual and national survival aren't the same thing at all.  Nor is that particularly efficient in filling and fielding forces, the timetable and manpower needs of which have to be planned rather than left to chance.  The threat of national destruction proved totally insufficient to fill the ranks at the necessary pace for every major nation involved in two world wars, which is a pretty good indicator of the weakness of that argument.

I can't say I agree that the government is outside its powers to call on individuals to put their lives at stake to preserve it.  It very much has the power to do that, whether you approve of that or not.  It is the nature of government that it must protect the whole over the individual parts, which essentially means the parts are expendable at need in order to preserve the whole.  Good government does this only at great need and as sparingly as possible, bad government is profligate with the lives of its people. 

As far as the morality of the choice is concerned, you are certainly free to call it as you see it, but don't be surprised when those who see it otherwise beat the crap out of you and send you off sit out the war, plus a few extra years, in a penal institution.  My personal evaluation of the morality is that dodging such a grave societal duty for no reason beyond a philosophical objection to it, indistinguishable to the observer from cowardice hiding behind the artful articulation of an excuse, is merely a craven and selfish breach of the social contract, and deserving of very severe sanctions.  I cannot respect a person who had enjoyed the benefits of his society and would then behave that way in a time of national peril. 

Avoiding a peacetime draft (While hardly laudable), or a victim's flight from forced service in an oppressive political regime's forces, are different situations entirely.  Selfish but not cowardly in the first case, and wholly understandable or even praiseworthy in the second.

[Chump]

DAT, it's really difficult for me to believe that I'm reading things like, "It is the nature of government that it must protect the whole over the individual parts, which essentially means the parts are expendable at need in order to preserve the whole," on a conservative political forum.  But, there they are.  The only proper function of government is to protect individual rights.  Essentially, your view asserts that the government, or nation, or society, or "whole," has the right to survive while, and by, denying that very right to its individual citizens!  If the individual does not have the right to life, then it is tautology that the government also does not have that right, unless we're talking about a statist dictatorship (and I am not).  You even allude to this idea when you qualify government disposal of the lives of its citizens as good if done sparingly, and bad if done excessively.  Who decides how many people's lives should be disposed of before it becomes excessive?  I say one is enough, so we're at an impasse.

While I clearly will never match your experience and knowledge of all matters military, I contend that the numerical strength of numbers available to commanders is a limiting variable.  In essence, war tactics should be designed with numbers in mind, not vice-versa.  Take my opinion for whatever it's worth on this particular subject.

[formerlurker]

The fact that someone else goes "in your place" does not make the draft any more moral or reasonable, nor does it make your refusal any more immoral or unreasonable, because the very act of drafting someone in the first place is immoral.  It's akin to saying that fleeing from a serial killer is immoral because he then went on to kill someone else instead of you.

Wow.   Morals in war?   The day you start to think about morality in war is the day you lose the war.

We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.

Words our founding fathers uttered on signing the Declaration of Independence.    Their intent rather clear.

[formerlurker]

DAT, it's really difficult for me to believe that I'm reading things like, "It is the nature of government that it must protect the whole over the individual parts, which essentially means the parts are expendable at need in order to preserve the whole," on a conservative political forum.  But, there they are.  The only proper function of government is to protect individual rights.  Essentially, your view asserts that the government, or nation, or society, or "whole," has the right to survive while, and by, denying that very right to its individual citizens!  If the individual does not have the right to life, then it is tautology that the government also does not have that right, unless we're talking about a statist dictatorship (and I am not).  You even allude to this idea when you qualify government disposal of the lives of its citizens as good if done sparingly, and bad if done excessively.  Who decides how many people's lives should be disposed of before it becomes excessive?  I say one is enough, so we're at an impasse.

While I clearly will never match your experience and knowledge of all matters military, I contend that the numerical strength of numbers available to commanders is a limiting variable.  In essence, war tactics should be designed with numbers in mind, not vice-versa.  Take my opinion for whatever it's worth on this particular subject.

The Union must survive, i.e. the Constitution.   

[Chump]

Wow.   Morals in war?   The day you start to think about morality in war is the day you lose the war.

We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.

Words our founding fathers uttered on signing the Declaration of Independence.    Their intent rather clear.

I'm speaking to the morality of denying someone their right to life.  Morality is not thrown out the window because a nation is at war.  Likewise, that a war is in progess does not entitle a government to enact evil on its citizens.

Our founding fathers all went to war willingly, voluntarily, and through the force of their arguments and the fact that they were fighting for a just cause convinced others to do the same.  They did not jail those who disagreed with them and refused to fight.

[LC EFA]

My concern with a draft - is would YOU want someone who really didn't want to be there and wasn't giving their 110% to the effort watching your back in a foxhole ?

[Eupher]

I'm speaking to the morality of denying someone their right to life.  Morality is not thrown out the window because a nation is at war.  Likewise, that a war is in progess does not entitle a government to enact evil on its citizens.

Our founding fathers all went to war willingly, voluntarily, and through the force of their arguments and the fact that they were fighting for a just cause convinced others to do the same.  They did not jail those who disagreed with them and refused to fight.

Might want to read the entry of Elisha Lawrence. In fact, the entire Lawrence family has an interesting chronology.

[DumbAss Tanker]

DAT, it's really difficult for me to believe that I'm reading things like, "It is the nature of government that it must protect the whole over the individual parts, which essentially means the parts are expendable at need in order to preserve the whole," on a conservative political forum.  But, there they are.  The only proper function of government is to protect individual rights.  Essentially, your view asserts that the government, or nation, or society, or "whole," has the right to survive while, and by, denying that very right to its individual citizens!  If the individual does not have the right to life, then it is tautology that the government also does not have that right, unless we're talking about a statist dictatorship (and I am not).  You even allude to this idea when you qualify government disposal of the lives of its citizens as good if done sparingly, and bad if done excessively.  Who decides how many people's lives should be disposed of before it becomes excessive?  I say one is enough, so we're at an impasse.

While I clearly will never match your experience and knowledge of all matters military, I contend that the numerical strength of numbers available to commanders is a limiting variable.  In essence, war tactics should be designed with numbers in mind, not vice-versa.  Take my opinion for whatever it's worth on this particular subject.

Think what you will, "Conservative" does not mean I hold the individual untouchable by society, or the life of one more valuable than the lives of many just because he wants to stay out of the business of protecting theirs.  My Conservativism is founded in concepts individual liberty within the boundaries allowed by reciprocal duties between the individual and society, you seem to think it is all one way and the individual owes his society nothing but what he chooses to give it.  That is basically the path of an Anarchist or a spiritual follower of Alistair Crowley, not Conservatism.  Providing for the common defense, which you will find mentioned in the Nation's founding documents, has been known to end up occasionally involving dead people, very few of whom wanted to end up dead, I'm sure.

I just don't think you've thought through the consequences of your position.  However, if you really are an Anarchist and that is where you are comfortable, far be it from me to shout you down, that freedom of political thought is part of the social contract in this neck of the woods.

[formerlurker]

If he came afterwards to peruse the plan itself, he would be surprised
to discover, that neither the one nor the other was the case; that the
whole power of raising armies was lodged in the LEGISLATURE, not in the
EXECUTIVE; that this legislature was to be a popular body, consisting of
the representatives of the people periodically elected; and that instead
of the provision he had supposed in favor of standing armies, there was
to be found, in respect to this object, an important qualification even
of the legislative discretion, in that clause which forbids the
appropriation of money for the support of an army for any longer period
than two years a precaution which, upon a nearer view of it, will appear
to be a great and real security against the keeping up of troops without
evident necessity.

 

Though a wide ocean separates the United States from Europe, yet there
are various considerations that warn us against an excess of confidence
or security. On one side of us, and stretching far into our rear, are
growing settlements subject to the dominion of Britain. On the other
side, and extending to meet the British settlements, are colonies and
establishments subject to the dominion of Spain. This situation and the
vicinity of the West India Islands, belonging to these two powers create
between them, in respect to their American possessions and in relation
to us, a common interest. The savage tribes on our Western frontier
ought to be regarded as our natural enemies, their natural allies,
because they have most to fear from us, and most to hope from them. The
improvements in the art of navigation have, as to the facility of
communication, rendered distant nations, in a great measure, neighbors.
Britain and Spain are among the principal maritime powers of Europe. A
future concert of views between these nations ought not to be regarded
as improbable. The increasing remoteness of consanguinity is every day
diminishing the force of the family compact between France and Spain.
And politicians have ever with great reason considered the ties of blood
as feeble and precarious links of political connection. These
circumstances combined, admonish us not to be too sanguine in
considering ourselves as entirely out of the reach of danger.

http://federalistpapers.com/federalist24.html

It is the duty of legislature to raise an army, the intent of which provided for by example by Madison et al.    

I can think of a few things that our founding fathers would order on one who refused to fight to preserve the Union.   Neither of which would be resultant in that sob continuing to draw breath (of liberty no less).

ETA -- quoted wrong section!

[rich_t]

I've spoken to several Viet Nam vets over the years about the draft during their time....

The consensus that I have gathered from them is that the draftees that they personally served with fought just as hard as the volunteers when the bullets were flying.

[Chump]

Might want to read the entry of Elisha Lawrence. In fact, the entire Lawrence family has an interesting chronology.

I might.  Can you summarize?  The only knowledge I have of the draft in relation to the founding fathers and Revolutionary War is that Washington specifically exempted conscientious objectors from the order.

[Chump]

Think what you will, "Conservative" does not mean I hold the individual untouchable by society, or the life of one more valuable than the lives of many just because he wants to stay out of the business of protecting theirs.  My Conservativism is founded in concepts individual liberty within the boundaries allowed by reciprocal duties between the individual and society, you seem to think it is all one way and the individual owes his society nothing but what he chooses to give it.  That is basically the path of an Anarchist or a spiritual follower of Alistair Crowley, not Conservatism.  Providing for the common defense, which you will find mentioned in the Nation's founding documents, has been known to end up occasionally involving dead people, very few of whom wanted to end up dead, I'm sure.

I just don't think you've thought through the consequences of your position.  However, if you really are an Anarchist and that is where you are comfortable, far be it from me to shout you down, that freedom of political thought is part of the social contract in this neck of the woods.

I absolutely reject anarchy as a different form of tyranny: the tyranny of lawlessness.  However, I do hold that an individual does not owe society his life, to be disposed of against his will.  I have thought through my premise, and I remain open to new information and arguments.  If I truly felt that the individual should pay nothing for the benefits he receives from living in a lawful society, I would not be typing on this computer, having this discussion.  That is a far cry, however, from what the draft is.  The draft is the government invoking the right to existence while denying that right to its citizens.  Because government is formed to protect individual rights, the draft is a perversion of both the government's existence and the inalienable right to life.  Remember, your rights stop where another's begin.

I also absolutely reject any sort of idea that the whole is worth more than the individual, as that is a core tenet of statism in all forms.  What that amounts to, in relation to the topic, is that some people in society have "more" right to life than others, an indefensible position in a free society.

I do acknowledge that my position may not be popular here, but that makes me all the more appreciate the chance to have the discussion.

[rich_t]

I'm speaking to the morality of denying someone their right to life.  Morality is not thrown out the window because a nation is at war.  Likewise, that a war is in progess does not entitle a government to enact evil on its citizens.

Our founding fathers all went to war willingly, voluntarily, and through the force of their arguments and the fact that they were fighting for a just cause convinced others to do the same.  They did not jail those who disagreed with them and refused to fight.

Chump, compelling one to serve in a time of need is not the same as denying their right to life.  You may be compelling them to risk it their life, but you are not condemning them to certain death.

I wish that all Americans, male and female, loved this country enough to be willing to fight for it and serve a tour of military duty even during peace time.


But unfortunately history has proven that not to be the case.  Thus the unfortunate need for a potential draft.

[Chump]

 
http://federalistpapers.com/federalist24.html

It is the duty of legislature to raise an army, the intent of which provided for by example by Madison et al.    

I can think of a few things that our founding fathers would order on one who refused to fight to preserve the Union.   Neither of which would be resultant in that sob continuing to draw breath (of liberty no less).

ETA -- quoted wrong section!

In many cases, I would agree with you 100% that is craven and cowardly to refuse to serve your country when faced with a mortal threat.  But the rub is in the fact that my opinion holds no weight when we're discussing inalienable rights, namely, the right to life.

[Chump]

Chump, compelling one to serve in a time of need is not the same as denying their right to life.  You may be compelling them to risk it their life, but you are not condemning them to certain death.

I wish that all Americans, male and female, loved this country enough to be willing to fight for it and serve a tour of military duty even during peace time.


But unfortunately history has proven that not to be the case.  Thus the unfortunate need for a potential draft.

The right to life does not only entail the right to not be condemned to certain death.  Compelling someone to risk their life is the same as denying their right to life because you've taken their ability to dispose of their life as they see fit.

Consider this: if a country is faced with certain doom from a mortal threat if it does not rise to meet it with force, and all but a handful of its citizens refuse to willingly rise to fight the threat, does that country even deserve to exist?  Beyond that, who is actually struggling to survive when a government must force its citizens to risk their lives in self-defense?

[rich_t]

The right to life does not only entail the right to not be condemned to certain death.  Compelling someone to risk their life is the same as denying their right to life because you've taken their ability to dispose of their life as they see fit.

Consider this: if a country is faced with certain doom from a mortal threat if it does not rise to meet it with force, and all but a handful of its citizens refuse to willingly rise to fight the threat, does that country even deserve to exist?  Beyond that, who is actually struggling to survive when a government must force its citizens to risk their lives in self-defense?

Perhaps you are correct.  If enough people no longer wish to defend the country that nutured them, then the country , as a political entity no longer deserves to exist.

Just let the enemy take over and make up their own new rules.  Although history shows us that that very rarely works out well for the conquered.

[Baruch Menachem]

Conscript armies don't work well for democracies.  
Also, as modern warfare evolves, you need a better and better class of recruit.  Conscription allows the politicians to evade their responsibility to the both the service and the recruits.  What works best is an intelligent, motivated military.  Conscription tends to damage both parts of that.



Just wanted to point out a couple things here.  Several democracies, notably Israel, have conscript armies, but they are in a state of perpetual total war, and the military also serves as an educational tool above and beyond its military function.  It is a means of integrating the state which still has a huge immigrant population.

South Korea is also on a perpetual state of total alert.   It is worth noting that in ROK, there are no exceptions on service.  Famous faces in the news will disappear for two years, sometimes never to come back.  I think in ROK, there is also a bit of the same reasoning as in Israel, a means to integrate a particularist population.

Spain forbids volunteer service for weird political reasons that relate to the pre Franco era.   Again, Spain has a history of and a problem with regional particularism. 

But given US needs, and the fact that the US does not have a real particularist problem, and only US nationals are allowed in, there should be no need for the draft here. 

[Crazy Horse]

But given US needs, and the fact that the US does not have a real particularist problem, and only US nationals are allowed in, there should be no need for the draft here. 

What countries military are you talking about, cause that sure as hell a'int the United States military

[Eupher]

I might.  Can you summarize?  The only knowledge I have of the draft in relation to the founding fathers and Revolutionary War is that Washington specifically exempted conscientious objectors from the order.

He was a Loyalist and was imprisoned. Several of his family members supported the Revolution or, as the text indicates, the civil war.

We tend to forget that we were in a civil war of sorts as there was a significant percentage of the population that was entirely happy with King George III and his ilk.