The entire idea of fighting "for your country" is ridiculous to me. It's not my country.
Almost the entire human race has no influence on the events that occur at all.
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
97 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
1454 readers
59 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Everyone I know thinks I’m a weirdo because I’m not patriotic to my country. The way I see it, I was born here by chance and so I don’t particularly love my country more than any other, except that it’s more familiar I guess.
I’ll happily ~~through~~ throw as much shade at my own country as I will any other.
Exactly, we get randomly born in a spot on Earth and then we are supposed to feel love for our country? Why?
Is there anything to be proud of for each country? All I see is politicians trying to gain popularity by lying, wars being started and finished with lies and propaganda, and citizens being generally unhappy and ignored.
It’s the same for religion too, it’s incredibly fortunate that most people are born in the right place for their religion of choice.
I do think every country can be proud of some things they do, but they should also be equally ashamed of other things they do.
Politicians are only really interested in the length of their term(s), they’re not invested to do anything outside of that.
Hardly anybody cares and I don’t know if I envy, resent, or pity them for it.
I think I feel anger about it, but I have also given up on them. The future will only be worse. I think we were much better off in the 70s and 80s.
I was born in the 80’s so don’t recall a lot, but what I do know is that my dad worked in a warehouse, my mum didn’t work and we had pretty much whatever we wanted, went from the UK to Orlando on holiday every year. And I had two siblings too.
You couldn’t even support yourself now working as a professional let alone a warehouse worker.
Nobody seems to acknowledge it though they’d always be like yeah but we got paid less.
I’ll happily through throw as much shade at my own country as I will any other.
I'm more likely to throw shade at my own country because I am more informed about the goings on of my own country. If I were to talk shit about France, I would just be talking out my ass. I have no idea what's going on there.
If I criticize the US, it's because I demand better from the nation that I live in and support. If I criticize France, it's just for funsies.
For most countries I would agree. I would say I know just as much, if not more, about US politics compared to the UK (my country of residence).
For me my country is things like the institution of the local pub, liberal use of gallows humour, and deeply despising the idea that cities and fields ought to be organised on regular grids rather than things like Parliament or the monarchy. I love my country in the sense of the former, I think I’ll live out my days frustrated and pessimistic about the latter.
It's not ridiculous when the most probable enemy has a significantly worse governance.
This is how they keep humanity not moving forward. By making us focus on our differences instead of our similarities. An eternal conflict that never ends, preventing our species from focusing on other things than war with itself.
I fully think that every euro spent on defense is a horrible waste of resources in global sense, but it's necessary to prevent every place on this planet being ruled by who are essentially barbarians.
Tribalism is probably innate, but we should fight it, not embrace it.
It’s not my country.
Yep... it's always "our country" this and "our country" that when they need you to play cannon fodder - and when it's all over, it just goes straight back to being their country. No different than rich people telling us how we're "all in this together" during COVID.
It's cute how they tell everyone we can just go vote to have a lot of influence on things too. :)
As if any of us has any influence on what's going on whatsoever.
100% against.
People don't belong to the government, and shouldn't be forced into doing any sort of job, especially one where they could be killed or traumatized for life.
If the people think their country is worth fighting for and a threat is legitimate, they should choose to defend it if the system is working properly.
There are two main reasons to conscript citizens. The first, to fight wars, has largely faded into irrelevance (barring exceptions for those waging war, like Russia, or those defending their country, like Ukraine). For the most part wars are better fought by paid professionals.
It's the second type of conscription that I will discuss. Many governments promote a system of national service for reasons of social cohesion, (the so-called Scandinavian model). It has much to recommend it. It creates a shared experience in otherwise fragmented societies, breaking down barriers of class, race and gender. It can be used to instil the values of a country in its population. It builds respect for the armed forces, teaching civilians that their freedom ultimately depends on others’ willingness to kill and be killed. And it subjects a pampered population to a bracing dose of spartan clean living, away from iPads and alcopops.
The problem is in the implementation. Social service should not be confined to the young. One of the biggest divides in society is generational, and national service only for the young would not change that. Moreover it would do many older folks a lot of good to learn the value of inclusion and diversity.
For the most part wars are better fought by paid professionals.
That only goes for dirty wars that you have no good reason to fight.
It has much to recommend it. It creates a shared experience in otherwise fragmented societies, breaking down barriers of class, race and gender.
The US would like to disagree.
It can be used to instil the values of a country in its population.
In other words... nationalist brainwashing.
And it subjects a pampered population
Only a boomer could think this.
I am conflicted.
On the one hand, conscription is essentially forced labour. Some countries take that concept even further and allow the potential conscripts to choose between military service and straight-up forced labour e.g. in social jobs like emergency services or care jobs. Im my home country this goes so far that some parts of the social system wouldn't work without this system.
This is also an equality issue, since almost all counties only apply something like that to young men and not women, even though women are totally capable for that kind of work as well.
On the other hand, if a country has a military that is primarily based on carreer soldiers, it becomes much easier for an emerging dictatorship to order these soldiers to e.g. shoot at protesters. A military based on mostly ordinary people who were conscripted as young men and stay trained using a militia system (like e.g. the Swiss does) is imho much more stable against e.g. military coups.
But it is a significant and non-voluntary investment.
In the Swiss, for example, every man has to spend ~2% of their work life in the military, which can be directly equated to a ~1% loss in GDP, just for mandatory military service.
In Israel, men have to serve for a minimum of 2 years and 8 months, while women have to serve 2 years, which roughly equates to a loss of ~5% GDP.
Conscription doesn't make a military cheaper of stronger compared to a complete volunteer/carreer army.
(Take these back-of-the-napkin calculations with a lot of salt, they are just there to show a rough dimension.)
So yeah, forced labour and lots of involuntary time investment of a significant portion of the population vs higher resistance against coups.
Do you think if the period demand served was shorter (6 months to a year) and it was equal regardless of gender that would be much better?
I feel like that time in a social program wouldn't be too off putting for someone's goals in life and I imagine if someone were to go the military route instead most of that time would be eaten up by basic and trade training.
Over here (Austria) it's 6 months for military or 9 months for social. The people in the social program are actually contributing labor and their work is really important.
The people going into military spend most of their time in training. While there they can learn some skills free of charge, e.g. they can do their driver's license or the truck driver's license or get some medical training, stuff like that. So it's not completely wasted time for the individual, but almost completely. They serve mostly a political/ideological purpose.
One thing to note here regarding Austria's military service that will not apply to other countries: Our military is total and utter crap when it comes to combat. Like, they aren't even pretending that they could defend the country.
Instead, the biggest part of the real usage of the military is in disaster mitigation/recovery. So for example, currently there are some severe floods in southern Austria and some villages are actually completely cut off by the floods. So the military is there to first airdrop supplies, then they built a temporary ferry service and now they are building a new road through the muddy forest. Recruits doing their mandatory service are used for these purposes. So even from a social aspect, they aren't completely useless either.
The question is whether it is fair to force people to do that, and also if they wouldn't force them, who else would do it? That's not really the point of conscription at all, but it's a major side effect over here.
If we have a system like that, it should totally be equal regardless of gender.
But if we should have a system like that, I cannot answer that.
It's funny you mention it because yesterday I had a long talk with someone about it.
She was a conscientious objector and they threw her in jail for quite a while. We're from the Netherlands and apparently they shared this data with the US. So strangely enough she isn't allowed to enter the US now. That's really shocking to me.
Whatever your opinion on war is, you can't expect everyone to be able to shoot someone else. I know for certain that I couldn't.
I'd say it depends on the country, I could understand if the country's military is a self defense force like Japan's military for example. In my particular context, I live in US and I hope to see that conscription never happens again, we have an insatiable military industrial complex and war machine. We have 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad, we even have one in Syria near the oil fields and we were never invited there. Plus we have a long history of interventions that have gone awry, including the more recent ones like Libya back in 2011, we made the situation even worse. All conscription would do is just serve our imperialism.
I live in a country with mandatory conscription.
If the time served is reasonable and the army is organized enough to actually train you and take advantage of your skills, yes i'm all for it.
If not, it just an excuse for permanent stuff to boss around people and make them do meaningless work to look busy.
I knew where you were from before looking at your username :P
I'll speak from the perspective of Greece, which has mandatory military service for all males >= 18yo that lasts a full year.
It makes sense that the country needs conscripts and a population that knows how to fight, since we have a neighbor that doesn't play so nice with their surrounding countries.
However the way it's implemented is pure bullshit:
-
The actual training happens in the first few months, after that it's just free manual labour.
-
You get to deal with so much BS from the permanent staff, they have a huge superiority complex that you have to accept and play by in order to not have penalties or military prison.
-
You can't go home, can't see your loved ones, your life is basically shit except the days that you're given leave, which is around a month or so in total.
-
You get no sleep and work all day, it's a common phenomenon to sleep 3 hours every day.
-
It's unpaid. (it's actually 8.5 euro a month which is arguably worse than unpaid, it's like getting spat on the face)
-
You pay for lots of things, travelling to/from the base, buying food outside etc.
-
It's corrupt as fuck. There are so many people that know someone in the military or meet someone inside, and get very special treatment while the rest have to work twice as hard to cover up for them.
-
It is extremely hard to avoid it completely, there are parents with little kids that are missing from home for months because of it, there are poor people that can't afford not to be working but still have to go, there are mentally ill people that aren't given a full exclusion.
And it used to be much worse than this, we're the ones that "have it good"..
Conscription is not good or needed, the modern military is equipped with a wide array of technology and the best training available, it takes year(s) to fully train a soldier. There was a time when you could hand a consript a gun and point him in a the right direction and you had an army, in a modern conflict that lack of training is lethal.
Also in an all volunteer force it's hard enough to manage groups who volunteered to be in the military, I can't imagine controlling people who were forced to be there.
Constipation is not good or needed, the modern military is equipped with a wide array of technology and the best training available, it takes year(s)
They just need some fiber I think really
Auto correct has made me a clown, fixed.
Against.
If I get conscripted you'll never find me.
I'll fight for the country on home soil but never overseas.
Government should incetivise population to fight for it rather than force service.
IMO, it's always wrong.
At heart, I believe that the claimed authority by which governments draft people is illegitimate - that all nominal justifications for it are necessarily insufficient, self-contradictory or self-defeating.
But that's a more fundamental point, and one about governance as a whole.
Even if I pretend that such authority is legitimate, I still oppose conscription.
A volunteer army serves as a check on militaristic excess. If a war is both legitimate and necessary, then people will willingly fight it. If people will not willingly fight it, then it's almost certainly the case that it's not necessary or justified.
And if it is indeed the case that a war is necessary and justified and there's still insufficient support to provide for a volunteer army, then frankly, the nation is too sick to be worth saving anyway.
On the contrary, a volunteer army allows the ruling class to prosecute wars without risk to their own families. Volunteer armies are primarily recruited from poorer and disadvantaged families, and the "volunteers" are serving because they see no other option to support themselves.
If a war arrives that is necessary, justified, and also has broad support among the population there will still be those who avoid fighting because they know that others will do so for them. They will unjustly reap the benefits of victory without making any sacrifices.
You can make a similar argument about taxation. By your logic payment should be optional, since a society that genuinely wants to be just and fair should also voluntarily want to give money to achieve that.
On the contrary, a volunteer army allows the ruling class to prosecute wars without risk to their own families.
As does conscription, since there are always exceptions made for that explicit purpose.
So that works out the same either way.
If a war arrives that is necessary, justified, and also has broad support among the population there will still be those who avoid fighting because they know that others will do so for them.
Yes - there will always be such people. The issue is how many of them there would be.
I would say that a nation that's unhealthy enough to have so many such people that they would make the difference between winning and losing deserves to lose.
You can make a similar argument about taxation. By your logic payment should be optional, since a society that genuinely wants to be just and fair should also voluntarily want to give money to achieve that.
Yes, and I in fact would. And with the same proviso - any society that would fail as a result deserves to fail.
I think it's utterly necessary in situations like what Ukraine is facing. Could a government misuse it? Sure, but most government powers can be misused.
Maybe, under specific conditions, and only if certain requirements are met.
Firstly, I’m only (reluctantly) in favor of conscription for defensive wars. Never mind the propaganda - if a conscript is ever stationed outside their nation’s borders, that’s not “defense” (by conscription standards, anyway). None of that “preemptive strike” bullshit. They also must be adequately trained. Throwing people into the meat grinder is not okay.
Secondly, conscripts get free, high-quality healthcare for life (I know, some of you already do, but I’m American). No exceptions or exclusions of any kind, and no red tape. Individuals must be well compensated for any injuries, and family must be well compensated in case of death.
Thirdly, conscripts must be well paid, and guaranteed a return to their peacetime job regardless of company size, length of absence, etc.
I’m sure there are many points I haven’t addressed, so feel free to add them!
It's not ok but it's unfortunately necessary
Absolutely against. Why should I risk my life / die for someone else's interest's.
I think mandatory military service is likely a good thing for a population (maybe not the individual). With a highly trained population, volunteering would likely increase and reduce the need for conscription during times of war.
The benefits of military service for young adults are numerous. Discipline, exercise, comeradity, professional exposure, etc. Could reduce some of the mental issues we see due to isolation through technology. Of course I'm taking in peace time.
Annihilation of critical thinking, cultivation of blind obedience, proportion of violence as the main way of resolving conflict. Yeah, that's not bad at all.
Not all militaries function in this way. I'm sorry yours does.
As an example, Israel has the concept of Rosh Gadol which empowers members of it's service to be better than the system itself.
Given the atrocities committed, I'd say they've failed utterly.
Just pay people for the job instead.
I don't want to die for my country as I'm more valuable being alive, but on the other hand if no one does the bully will just take it.
I have the option to just leave as I'd get a job everywhere in the world, with the financial stability to go wherever. A lot of people don't have this option. I also have no kids required to protect.
I would however fight from a distance, or for a more targeted assassination mission to end the war.
It's different per person, but I haven't fought my whole life for a normal life, to now get my ass shot off. I've already PTSD from my abused childhood, I don't need another.
So yes it's required to have conscription, but I'd be the first to refuse. So what is my opinion worth?