Military Draft?

[codenamepaul]

I have no experience with draftee's. Generally, I don't believe they would serve any differently when put into the position.

I don't believe in a draft-but I do believe in compulsory service. I believe that with this compulsory service comes two things-1) a hugely reduced college tuition when that service is up and 2) The privilege of voting in our elections. No service-no vote, no holding office. I have thought this for a long time.

 

[number9]

Nope. Even if we never set foot in their lands or did anything to affect them at all, It's the Islamic religion that says all infidels must die.

They invaded much of southern Europe, much of Africa, southwest Asia in the past for no other reason than Allah commands it.

Umm... how long ago were those events? Oh, that's right, hundreds of years ago. It's not like Christians ever involved themselves in those kind of shenanigans, is it?

Islam of today != islam of 300 years ago.

 

[Pilgrim]

Islam of today != islam of 300 years ago.

Why do you say that ? Seems the same to me, just a little slowed down by our technology and the fact that they want to remain living in the darkages.

Their 'kill the infidels' is built into their religion and that hasn't changed.

 

[number9]

Why do you say that ? Seems the same to me, just a little slowed down by our technology and the fact that they want to remain living in the darkages.

Their 'kill the infidels' is built into their religion and that hasn't changed.

The "kill the infidels" bit is only believed by what, about 0.1% of the Muslim population worldwide? I don't place much stock in it. There are plenty of Muslim-majority countries that are not in the dark ages; in fact I think you could safely say the majority of them are not in the dark ages.

I am not a fan of painting all with the same brush.

 

[Jose]

There are plenty of Muslim-majority countries that are not in the dark ages; in fact I think you could safely say the majority of them are not in the dark ages.

Name one.

And please don't name the UAE. Behind the glitzy faccade, foreign "guest" workers live in virtual slavery and indenture.

 

[JmasterJ]

Anyone who believes that it's because we're doing bad things to them should have gone to some place other than a liberal arts college.

Be careful, some people on NES might take offense to comments like this, not all can be as educated as you I suppose. Smile like a donut

 

[dwarven1]

BTW does anyone remember the chorus from the "Draft Dodgers Rag"? if you do then my last statement will make sense

Sarge, I'm only 18; got a ruptured spleen
and I always carry a purse.
Got eyes like a bat and my feet are flat
and my asthma's getting worse.
Oh, think of my career and my sweetheart dear
and my poor old invalid aunt!
'sides, I ain't no fool, I'm a-going to school and
I'm working in a defense plant!

Or something close to that, anyway.

 

[highlander]

dwarven you got it right

 

[number9]

Name one.

And please don't name the UAE. Behind the glitzy faccade, foreign "guest" workers live in virtual slavery and indenture.

Are we going by "official religion" status or majority religion status? I lived in Mali and Senegal, both are >95% Muslim but there is no "official" religion. Neither are in the "dark ages". Brunei has Islam as its official religion, it's a rather nice place to go. Kuwait and Qatar are also reportedly nice places, as is Tunisia. Those are all "official" Muslim nations. Malaysia has a Muslim majority and is a great country, I have also spent a lot of time there.

To say that "islam == dark ages" is about as accurate as the communist fears of McCarthy and his pals drummed up.

 

[vellnueve]

The "kill the infidels" bit is only believed by what, about 0.1% of the Muslim population worldwide? I don't place much stock in it. There are plenty of Muslim-majority countries that are not in the dark ages; in fact I think you could safely say the majority of them are not in the dark ages.

I am not a fan of painting all with the same brush.

Countrywise maybe not, but population-wise, I tend to disagree. My parents were born and raised in the largest Muslim country on earth (Indonesia) as non-Muslims and non-ethnically Indonesian. From what they have told me, the majority of Muslims in that country would like nothing more than to kill every single non-Muslim/non-Indonesian there.

 

[EZEKIEL 25:17]

From another angle

I think folks are overlooking the benefits of a draft. With a draft the % of really hot women in the military ranks should dramatically increase and there is nothing sexier than a hot chick with an automatic weapon. Like for instance when miss california (or was it NY) was driving that russian T-62 around on the amazing race last night....first rate. Just subsitute piece of junk T-62 for Abrams and you are all set.

 

[kendall-op]

Hey Jose, I'm just stating a fact that when our country called, Mr. Rangle answered,so in my book he earned my respect whether or not I agree with him or not.

 

[Kurtz]

Most of the democrats don't want it.

 

[hminsky]

Are we going by "official religion" status or majority religion status? I lived in Mali and Senegal, both are >95% Muslim but there is no "official" religion. Neither are in the "dark ages". Brunei has Islam as its official religion, it's a rather nice place to go. Kuwait and Qatar are also reportedly nice places, as is Tunisia. Those are all "official" Muslim nations. Malaysia has a Muslim majority and is a great country, I have also spent a lot of time there.

To say that "islam == dark ages" is about as accurate as the communist fears of McCarthy and his pals drummed up.

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE170051996?open&of=ENG-KWT

Kuwait is a Muslim hell hole like the rest of them.

KUWAIT

Hussein Qambar 'Ali:
Death threats

August 1996
AI INDEX: MDE 17/05/96
DISTR: SC/GR/CO

On 29 May 1996, a Kuwaiti Islamic court declared "Robert" Hussein Qambar ' Ali, a convert to Christianity, an apostate. This is the first legal case of its kind in Kuwait.

Hussein Qambar Ali, a 45-year-old Kuwaiti businessman, converted from Islam to Christianity more than a year ago. In his interviews with the news agencies, Reuters and Agence France Presse (AFP), in March 1996, he said that since reports about his conversion had appeared, he had received numerous death threats and was in constant fear for his life. His conversion was also reportedly denounced in Kuwaiti mosques by preachers and in parliament by some Islamist members of parliament. According to Reuters he said that he was forced to change his accommodation often as a security measure and that his marriage had broken up because of family opposition to his conversion.

A law suit to declare him an apostate and strip him of his civil rights was brought against him by three independent Islamist lawyers. Hussein Qambar 'Ali first appeared in an Islamic family court, which has jurisdiction over personal status and family matters, on 6 March 1996 to answer the case against him. Representing himself, he confirmed that he had become a Christian and proposed changing his name to "Robert Hussein", but he insisted to the three-judge panel that it had no jurisdiction in the case. He asked for his case to be sent to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that Article 35 of the Kuwaiti Constitution allows for freedom of thought and belief. (Article 35 states: "Freedom of belief is absolute. The state protects the freedom of practising religion in accordance with established customs, provided that it does not conflict with public policy or morals".)

At a further hearing before the Islamic court on 24 April, the case against Hussein Qambar ' Ali was led by
' Abd al-Latif al-Saleh and Mohammad al-Jadai, who called for Hussein Qambar 'Ali to be stripped of his nationality and civil rights for offending against Islamic Law by abandoning his Islamic faith. Hussein Qambar 'Ali, conducting his own defence, reportedly argued again that the charges against him should be put before the Constitutional Court. He was reported to have said that he felt he was being punished as if the court had already found him guilty of apostasy. He added, "...for six months I haven´t seen my kids, my family, my home. I blame the Kuwaiti Government. They do not come forward and say "this man is protected by the Constitution". He was also reported to have told AFP that there were few lawyers willing to defend him and even then they asked for exorbitant fees of up to one million dollars, which he was unable to pay.

 

[Jose]

Are we going by "official religion" status or majority religion status? I lived in Mali and Senegal, both are >95% Muslim but there is no "official" religion. Neither are in the "dark ages". Brunei has Islam as its official religion, it's a rather nice place to go. Kuwait and Qatar are also reportedly nice places, as is Tunisia. Those are all "official" Muslim nations. Malaysia has a Muslim majority and is a great country, I have also spent a lot of time there.

To say that "islam == dark ages" is about as accurate as the communist fears of McCarthy and his pals drummed up.

You are one naive dude, you know that, don't you?

Hint: most any place outside North America, Western Europe, Japan, and Korea is a dark ages shithole in one way or another.

 

[JmasterJ]

I think folks are overlooking the benefits of a draft. With a draft the % of really hot women in the military ranks should dramatically increase and there is nothing sexier than a hot chick with an automatic weapon. Like for instance when miss california (or was it NY) was driving that russian T-62 around on the amazing race last night....first rate. Just subsitute piece of junk T-62 for Abrams and you are all set.

I like your point.

 

[MrsWildweasel]

I think folks are overlooking the benefits of a draft. With a draft the % of really hot women in the military ranks should dramatically increase and there is nothing sexier than a hot chick with an automatic weapon. Like for instance when miss california (or was it NY) was driving that russian T-62 around on the amazing race last night....first rate. Just subsitute piece of junk T-62 for Abrams and you are all set.

And you forget the draft is for men, not women.

 

[number9]

Countrywise maybe not, but population-wise, I tend to disagree. My parents were born and raised in the largest Muslim country on earth (Indonesia) as non-Muslims and non-ethnically Indonesian. From what they have told me, the majority of Muslims in that country would like nothing more than to kill every single non-Muslim/non-Indonesian there.

Yeah, I didn't mention Indonesia on purpose. It's not a nice place.

You are one naive dude, you know that, don't you?

Hint: most any place outside North America, Western Europe, Japan, and Korea is a dark ages shithole in one way or another.

You call me naive, but you are happy to be ridiculous. Do you REALLY think that every country other than those mentioned is a dark ages shithole? I guess there goes all of Asia-Pacific, too.

There are lots of bad aspects to be found in lots of countries around the world. Almost all of those bad things can be found here, too. Does that make this country a dark-ages shithole? I think not.

 

[Lynne]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't good ol' Charlie submit a bill a number of years ago to reinstate the draft and then voted against his own bill? Not only that, but IIRC, he also urged everyone else to vote against it too.

What...he's having a dejavu moment????

 

[drgrant]

Mike, I really enjoy your posts and your intelligent reasoning. I agree with most of what you say, but not this particular posting.

'more dramatic' ?!?!?! What do you need to see that will be more dramatic than 9/11?

Agreed, I'm not talking about what WE see, I was referring to what
the dumb voters in our population see. Since we have not had another
attack, complacency has set in. Events have occured which also make
the islamofacists look like a bunch of bumbling fools. (we've caught and
killed a pretty significant amount of them, although they're far from being
eliminated).

My point was is that islamofascism isn't really recognizable by the
public. The only "face" it has to assign to it is osama bin laden and
maybe a few others. There isn't one organization, one country, one
formalized, standing army, one dictator, to be mad at. There isn't
a plan that everyone -knows- the terrorists will take as an end
game. Because it's all uncertain, it will get unconciously derided as
being a fake threat. Sure the clerics and the like in the mideast
talk a lot of hot air, but one has to ask the question.... why aren't
these fools attacking us more here? It would be trivial for them to
carry out more attacks, and they haven't done so. (Some would
state that the reason for this is they don't want us to get more pissed and
turn their host country into glass, and I won't argue with that theory
at all... )

I guess what I'm driving at... is it was a lot easier for the public to
hate the germans or the japs, or even the russians, because we knew
more or less what their goals were, and who they were, and what their
agenda was. Now we have the problem of an enemy which posesses
none of those regularities or certainties. The only thing we really know
about "them" is that they want to kill americans. You would think that'd
be enough, but it's not.

I stand by what I said in the rest of my post. I don't think the draft
is that valuable of an asset to the GWOT. We're better off reforming
the DOD so that it will recruit more good people and try to retain the
talent it already has. It would be trivial to do this. I think that
aggressively recruiting the best and brightest pools of willing applicants is a
better idea than randomly meathooking the "library temper tantrum
kid" and being forced to incarcerate him for insubordination. The
pool of young men and women who are "military age" is not what
it used to be 30 years ago. Back in those days your parents were
more apt to beat your ass if you said something unpatriotic; now some
of the parents are giving these kids gold stars for doing shit like not saying
the pledge of allegiance in class. Drafting from a pool of eligibles which
may have a reject rate as high as 20-30% (or more) just isn't sound
recruiting. Not to mention the mere presence of the draft would make
it more difficult to stay in a prolonged conflict if needed, due to the
political blowback of such. I just think the toothpaste is out of the tube
on the draft. A nation like Israel can still justify conscription, but
their culture allows them to do so.... and that's because most of the
population understands how important it is to keep a strong military
there. That simply isn't reality in the US. We have a large enough (again, not
by MY standard, but by dumbass voters' standards) military force that the impetus
simply isn't there. And on top of that, most don't think that the terrorism
problem can be solved by military force alone. If it could, we'd be doing mop up
by now, given that we have the most capable military machine in the world.

-Mike

 

[centermass181]

My opinion is that a draft really only works when you have a large war either imminent or happening that people recognize must be fought. A peacetime draft really serves no useful purpose for reasons others have noted.

Ive always thought there should be 18-24 months federal service. I think of what a f#ck up I was and would have been had it not been for the service.

Im not saying 2 years as a grunt by any means, Forest service, coastie, conservation corps, picking up trash ....anything to get the kids off the doggone nipple.

Send them into a PeaceCorps type opn, or City year, but I feel it should be compulsary.

 

[dwarven1]

Im not saying 2 years as a grunt by any means, Forest service, coastie, conservation corps, picking up trash ....anything to get the kids off the doggone nipple.

Civilian Construction Corps? Boy... that'd help solve the problem of our infrastructure crumbling.

As for the federal service being only for boys... ever been to Israel, Sue? I have a vivid memory of seeing this REALLY cute Israeli girl on my first trip there (when I was all of 14!) who was wearing a uniform and carrying an Uzi. Let's make that service for EVERYONE.

 

[MrsWildweasel]

Yes, Ross I know other countries do draft women. I don't think our country would stomach it. I do believe it should be for both sexes. Equal rights.

 

[dwarven1]

Yes, Ross I know other countries do draft women. I don't think our country would stomach it. I do believe it should be for both sexes. Equal rights.

In Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the BOOK, not the abomination that Hollyweird put out!), to get the vote, a person HAD to do some sort of service first. Not all of it was military, either, IIRC. There were other government programs that one could serve in.

But you couldn't vote until you finished your service.

 

[MrsWildweasel]

We kinda felt that way too.

 

[reinbeau]

Ive always thought there should be 18-24 months federal service. I think of what a f#ck up I was and would have been had it not been for the service.

Im not saying 2 years as a grunt by any means, Forest service, coastie, conservation corps, picking up trash ....anything to get the kids off the doggone nipple.

Send them into a PeaceCorps type opn, or City year, but I feel it should be compulsary.

I agree 100%. Both male and female. No exceptions.

 

[number9]

Just an FYI...

Typically, you can apply to become a U.S. citizen 3 years after becoming a permanent resident. If you're in active-duty military, I believe it's 1 year; if you're deployed into either OIF or OEF then you are eligible for naturalization after just 1 day.

 

[Lynne]

Hey centermass....

When are you going??

 

[Jose]

Do you REALLY think that every country other than those mentioned is a dark ages shithole? I guess there goes all of Asia-Pacific, too..

Yes.

Having been to Singapore, Philippines, Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Japan several times I have a pretty good frame of reference.

ETA: I bet you thought I was another ignorant American who had never travelled outside his own state.....

 

[FPrice]

Hey Jose, I'm just stating a fact that when our country called, Mr. Rangle answered,so in my book he earned my respect whether or not I agree with him or not.

I will give him credit for serving, apparently with distinction.

However, just like McCain, Murtha, Kerry, and a few others, that service does not entitle him to a pass on being a bad legislator.