What a stupid reply. Maybe you could reply back with something more intelligent?
"Nanananaaana. Your reply is even more stupid than mine. Why? Because I say so."
Let me try to make it more explicit. During the education of new recruits in the military they reflect on the values they are met with - alone and with each other. If their fellow recruits are not all someone who want careeres in the military a conscious critical reflection over what they are taught is more likely to occur than if everyone wants to be accepted in the brotherhood. This way it is ensured than the morals taught in the military is more likely to be on par with that in the general population. This those who then go on to have a real carrere in the military take with them so even in the elite units morals distanced from the general population is less likely to occur.
I have seen explicit studies done on the police force proving this notion and this is sociology 101 in group studies.
Better military? Better in killing or better in handling wars ethical?
You can have the special forces with the nessesary training for specail assignments. But if they are not rooted in a general army that reflects the average citizents of the country the army will go moral astray IMO.
Better all around. If you're doing something by choice you tend to be more "into" it. Or at least that's how it works with me.
If the draft does get implemented, who is in favor of compulsory military service, and who is against?
I'm all in favor, but I think people should have other options as well. Peace Corps, Military, hell, even police training. Mostly anything that gets these kids out of the country for a while is a good thing.
Better all around. If you're doing something by choice you tend to be more "into" it. Or at least that's how it works with me.
if i'm reading Anders right, and i might just be illiterate, he's suggesting that the people who are "into" the army don't reflect the general morality of the populace; and he'd apparently prefer an army that better represents the people.
personally, i'm a bit conflicted on whether or not i like the draft. on the one hand, i'd be pretty boss to have a gun and government issued license to kill. but then, like, my "boss", in effect, wouldn't be hounding me over tps reports, but like, isntead demanding that i kill people. and its not a cause i'm totally infavor of, so like, i'd have even more trouble taking those lives than usual.
Quote:
Originally posted by bunge
I'm all in favor, but I think people should have other options as well. Peace Corps, Military, hell, even police training. Mostly anything that gets these kids out of the country for a while is a good thing.
well, if it was a choice between this man's army and a pig parade, i'll go to irak and maybe get college paid for.
Virtually every unit in the US Army is committed to ongoing operations. As of 2/2004, 16 of 31 combat brigades were deployed, awaiting imminent depolyment, or had just returned from deployment. That does *not* include non-hardship deployments to Germany, Japan and the like. Virtually all the rest are reconsituting from previous deployments. The US is redepolying a brigade from S Korea to Iraq. The "experimental" Striker brigade went into Iraq early this year. Even the OpFor brigade from Fort Irwin is slated to go - that unit has *never* been deployed outside the US before.
Besides running out of units, the Army is scraping the manpower barrel to fill them. Stop orders on all deploying units. Massive Reserve and Guard call-ups. Activation of the individual ready reserve. That last hasn't happened since the Korean War.
When is the pressure going to let up? The administration now admits we need to maintain current force levels in Iraq for several years. Kerry, for his part, thinks we need *more* troops in Iraq, without being at all clear where they'll come from. The Army is down to last-resort measures, but this level of deployment isn't a sprint - it needs to last several more years at the minimum.
Finally, what effect does this have on recruitment and retention? Well, you can order troops to remain in the service, so if you're willing to sacrifice some morale, retention isn't a problem. But what about recruitment? If you join the US Army right now, it's virtually certain you *will* go to war in Iraq. That *must* hurt recruitment. It's one thing to join with the possibility that, someday, you might be called to war. It's very different to face war as a near-guarantee if you sign those recruitment papers.
Too many needs, too few units, too few soldiers, and one heck of a deterrent to enlistment. Read up on the state of US ground forces. Then see if you still think the draft is a ridiculous idea.
Good thing I'm color blind, one legged, HIV positive, hemopheliac with manic depressive tendencies. (at least that's what I'll have my doctor put down....I pay him enough)
/reallythough
I don't want to die for something I don't believe in. At least give me a president I like so I won't have to come back and haunt his ass.
Can't move to Canada, eh? I can't believe those anti-draft dodging stipulations. Maybe go South? "You boys like Mexico?! Woooo!!!" "Republicans" of all people should agree that if a person doesn't believe in a war they shouldn't have to go over, kill people, and die.
I think you make a reasonable argument. Tha being said, I have to take issue with some things:
The first is the "several more years" of troops in Iraq. I don't know that this has been made clear. I don't think we'll know until after the (US) election, but recently the momentum of analysis and events seems to suggest an earlier pullout...particularly after Iraq's first elections. I have been hearing an awful lot more about "mid to late 2005". I would have agreed with you a while back...but there do seem to be signs.
We also hear a lot about "being stretched too thin". I'm sure that's partly true, but I'm also sure a lot of it is rhetoric. Speaking of which, you then make this statement:
Quote:
But what about recruitment? If you join the US Army right now, it's virtually certain you *will* go to war in Iraq.
Again..that may not be true. I don't know for sure...but can you provide some backing for the claim? Thanks.
I think we do need two more active divisions based on what I've heard. I don't know how recruiting is fairing now, but I seriosuly doubt a draft is going to be coming back without another major event of 9/11 proportions.
I don't think we'll know until after the (US) election... I have been hearing an awful lot more about "mid to late 2005". I would have agreed with you a while back...but there do seem to be signs.
Well, it's fundamentally a political decision. We can pull out whenever we want to. I can't imagine, though, that we won't stay at least until the elections, and for a while afterwards. That would be mid-late 2005, like you suggested. But even that is a year + away, and will require another complete troop rotation, probably bringing back most of the units that originally fought the war in the first place. Maybe we can begin drawing down after the elections, but then again right now we have more troops in the theater than we did during the war. It would be folly to make long-term plans on best-case scenarios.
Quote:
We also hear a lot about "being stretched too thin". I'm sure that's partly true, but I'm also sure a lot of it is rhetoric. .... that may not be true. I don't know for sure...but can you provide some backing for the claim?
Mathematics. Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan presently require about 200,000 troops between them. But there's not even 500,000 in the entire active-duty Army. Without NG/Res, that would mean every single soldier would have to spend 12 months out of 30 in one of those places. Even with NG/Res, 12 months out of 36 is probably about right, and more like 12 of 24 for soldiers in combat billets. Almost every major ground unit has cycled through at least one of the places at least once (often more) in the last three years. Obviously, certain units and certain jobs will make it more or less likely that a particular soldier will end up in Iraq. But odds are very much in favor, and increase the longer we keep our forces there at current levels.
Quote:
I think we do need two more active divisions based on what I've heard.
I agree with you. If we're going to maintain these sorts of commitments and capabilities, we need at least 2, and probably 4, more active duty divisions.
But it's fundamentally a political question - do we *need* to maintain these commitments and capabilities? After Vietnam, the Army underwent a number of reforms to ensure that the entire nation would be involved in any future conflict. It worked, sort of. This time around, those reforms are causing great stress on everyone connected to the military, but the rest of the nation is still aloof. Do we really want to be able to fight and win wars like Iraq every few years "out of our back pocket"? Or do we want to go back to the philosophy that guided those reforms: if we're going to go to war in a big way, go as a last resort and involve the entire nation? I'm not decided. It's a question that fundamentally determines our foreign policy, and I'm not sure of the right path.
It does say something about our position in the world, though, that we can make such a choice - given that we *can* have the power to defeat the military and destroy the regime of a major country every few years, do we *want* to have it? Every other nation in the world would love to be able to make that choice...
I don't see a draft happening unless a WMD is set off in an American city, and if that happens, God help us all.
And if that WMD(s) just happened to have been planted and set off by a lone individual, or a small group of, say, a dozen or so extremists, who could hail from any number of different nations, including ours, then what benefit would the draft do? Who would we attack? This worst-case scenario is simultaneous and intensive international cooperation between the domestic and foreign intelligence and police services of all nations. Big brother 'total surveillance' type of methods are counterproductive: they generate a huge quantity of often useless data, possibly hiding the real deal bz sheer volume, and there isn't the human power to sift and evaluate it. And secondly, duplicitous foreign (or domestic) policies that marginalize, alienate or make life hell for certain groups, or even supporting murderous groups because its expedient at the time.....when we stop falling into those traps, terrorism and the threat of future terrorism will start to fade.....
Good timing...the NYTimes today has a front-page piece on the state of Army recruitment. Free link here.
The gist of the piece is that recruiting is definitely different now. The war is on everyone's mind, and you see many fewer "casual" recruits. But so far the Army is meeting its goals. It helps that the recruits interviewed hoped things in Iraq would be either quiet or over before they finished training in 6 months. There are associated graphs, though, which show the Army's goals for Reserve recruitment shrinking ominously over the last three years - although they do manage to meet those much-reduced goals.
The left loves to use shock and appeal to people's fears. There will be no draft short of a major attack on the US as Fran said. The premise of this thread is typical leftist drivel aimed at scarring people from supporting the war on terror.
Well, it's fundamentally a political decision. We can pull out whenever we want to. I can't imagine, though, that we won't stay at least until the elections, and for a while afterwards. That would be mid-late 2005, like you suggested. But even that is a year + away, and will require another complete troop rotation, probably bringing back most of the units that originally fought the war in the first place. Maybe we can begin drawing down after the elections, but then again right now we have more troops in the theater than we did during the war. It would be folly to make long-term plans on best-case scenarios.
Mathematics. Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan presently require about 200,000 troops between them. But there's not even 500,000 in the entire active-duty Army. Without NG/Res, that would mean every single soldier would have to spend 12 months out of 30 in one of those places. Even with NG/Res, 12 months out of 36 is probably about right, and more like 12 of 24 for soldiers in combat billets. Almost every major ground unit has cycled through at least one of the places at least once (often more) in the last three years. Obviously, certain units and certain jobs will make it more or less likely that a particular soldier will end up in Iraq. But odds are very much in favor, and increase the longer we keep our forces there at current levels.
I agree with you. If we're going to maintain these sorts of commitments and capabilities, we need at least 2, and probably 4, more active duty divisions.
But it's fundamentally a political question - do we *need* to maintain these commitments and capabilities? After Vietnam, the Army underwent a number of reforms to ensure that the entire nation would be involved in any future conflict. It worked, sort of. This time around, those reforms are causing great stress on everyone connected to the military, but the rest of the nation is still aloof. Do we really want to be able to fight and win wars like Iraq every few years "out of our back pocket"? Or do we want to go back to the philosophy that guided those reforms: if we're going to go to war in a big way, go as a last resort and involve the entire nation? I'm not decided. It's a question that fundamentally determines our foreign policy, and I'm not sure of the right path.
It does say something about our position in the world, though, that we can make such a choice - given that we *can* have the power to defeat the military and destroy the regime of a major country every few years, do we *want* to have it? Every other nation in the world would love to be able to make that choice...
Good points. Concerning active duty divisions, I'd have to agree. If we need to keep these levels of deployments, then we need them.
I have often thought that we should withdraw troops from many areas, particularly South Korea and Europe and Japan. Then again, I assume many of them are there to keep our "presence" bases going...so that in the event of a major war we'd have a base of operations. But, 116,000 in Europe? 43,000 in Japan? 37,000 in South Korea? Seems like overkill...does it not? After all, any nation attacking in those regions would have to know that we would use our "ricockulous" air and sea power to defend ourselves and allies. North Korea would be insane to attack S. Korea. We would anhilate them. And if they went nuclear, they would have to know that the whole of North Korea would be Crispix within about five seconds.
Sorry...I've had a few rum and cokes as you might be able to tell.
As for Europe, it almost seems like we are at Cold War levels. I can't imagine why we have that many troops there. Japan may be trickier as it pertains to Taiwan. Then again...same argument as with NK. If China ever decides to invade and retake the Island, we're going to need a lot more than 43,000 troops.
That's BS you're right, and you'd think "conservatives" would be the first people to object to defending countries like Germany et al that are perfectly capable of defending themselves.
Comments
Originally posted by giant
For the sake of accuracy, chicken hawks = chicken littles.
Case in point: Iraq
Good reply!
I was thinking that myself!
Originally posted by Scott
What a stupid reply. Maybe you could reply back with something more intelligent?
"Nanananaaana. Your reply is even more stupid than mine. Why? Because I say so."
Let me try to make it more explicit. During the education of new recruits in the military they reflect on the values they are met with - alone and with each other. If their fellow recruits are not all someone who want careeres in the military a conscious critical reflection over what they are taught is more likely to occur than if everyone wants to be accepted in the brotherhood. This way it is ensured than the morals taught in the military is more likely to be on par with that in the general population. This those who then go on to have a real carrere in the military take with them so even in the elite units morals distanced from the general population is less likely to occur.
I have seen explicit studies done on the police force proving this notion and this is sociology 101 in group studies.
Originally posted by Anders
Better military? Better in killing or better in handling wars ethical?
You can have the special forces with the nessesary training for specail assignments. But if they are not rooted in a general army that reflects the average citizents of the country the army will go moral astray IMO.
Better all around. If you're doing something by choice you tend to be more "into" it. Or at least that's how it works with me.
Originally posted by Whisper
Better all around. If you're doing something by choice you tend to be more "into" it. Or at least that's how it works with me.
Yea, it fits the "three army" plan..
A - A forced, conscription army (Israel) or
B- A basically mercenary, money-first army (Mexico) or
C- A paid volunteer army (USA)
All of these have their own patriotic justifications as well...
Originally posted by sammi jo
If the draft does get implemented, who is in favor of compulsory military service, and who is against?
I'm all in favor, but I think people should have other options as well. Peace Corps, Military, hell, even police training. Mostly anything that gets these kids out of the country for a while is a good thing.
Originally posted by BuonRotto
I'm going to lock this if it doesn't shape up real damn quick.
Punish the people not the thread.
Originally posted by Whisper
Better all around. If you're doing something by choice you tend to be more "into" it. Or at least that's how it works with me.
if i'm reading Anders right, and i might just be illiterate, he's suggesting that the people who are "into" the army don't reflect the general morality of the populace; and he'd apparently prefer an army that better represents the people.
personally, i'm a bit conflicted on whether or not i like the draft. on the one hand, i'd be pretty boss to have a gun and government issued license to kill. but then, like, my "boss", in effect, wouldn't be hounding me over tps reports, but like, isntead demanding that i kill people. and its not a cause i'm totally infavor of, so like, i'd have even more trouble taking those lives than usual.
Originally posted by bunge
I'm all in favor, but I think people should have other options as well. Peace Corps, Military, hell, even police training. Mostly anything that gets these kids out of the country for a while is a good thing.
well, if it was a choice between this man's army and a pig parade, i'll go to irak and maybe get college paid for.
Look at the evidence of overstretch:
Virtually every unit in the US Army is committed to ongoing operations. As of 2/2004, 16 of 31 combat brigades were deployed, awaiting imminent depolyment, or had just returned from deployment. That does *not* include non-hardship deployments to Germany, Japan and the like. Virtually all the rest are reconsituting from previous deployments. The US is redepolying a brigade from S Korea to Iraq. The "experimental" Striker brigade went into Iraq early this year. Even the OpFor brigade from Fort Irwin is slated to go - that unit has *never* been deployed outside the US before.
Besides running out of units, the Army is scraping the manpower barrel to fill them. Stop orders on all deploying units. Massive Reserve and Guard call-ups. Activation of the individual ready reserve. That last hasn't happened since the Korean War.
When is the pressure going to let up? The administration now admits we need to maintain current force levels in Iraq for several years. Kerry, for his part, thinks we need *more* troops in Iraq, without being at all clear where they'll come from. The Army is down to last-resort measures, but this level of deployment isn't a sprint - it needs to last several more years at the minimum.
Finally, what effect does this have on recruitment and retention? Well, you can order troops to remain in the service, so if you're willing to sacrifice some morale, retention isn't a problem. But what about recruitment? If you join the US Army right now, it's virtually certain you *will* go to war in Iraq. That *must* hurt recruitment. It's one thing to join with the possibility that, someday, you might be called to war. It's very different to face war as a near-guarantee if you sign those recruitment papers.
Too many needs, too few units, too few soldiers, and one heck of a deterrent to enlistment. Read up on the state of US ground forces. Then see if you still think the draft is a ridiculous idea.
/reallythough
I don't want to die for something I don't believe in. At least give me a president I like so I won't have to come back and haunt his ass.
not joking...
-Neø
I think you make a reasonable argument. Tha being said, I have to take issue with some things:
The first is the "several more years" of troops in Iraq. I don't know that this has been made clear. I don't think we'll know until after the (US) election, but recently the momentum of analysis and events seems to suggest an earlier pullout...particularly after Iraq's first elections. I have been hearing an awful lot more about "mid to late 2005". I would have agreed with you a while back...but there do seem to be signs.
We also hear a lot about "being stretched too thin". I'm sure that's partly true, but I'm also sure a lot of it is rhetoric. Speaking of which, you then make this statement:
But what about recruitment? If you join the US Army right now, it's virtually certain you *will* go to war in Iraq.
Again..that may not be true. I don't know for sure...but can you provide some backing for the claim? Thanks.
I think we do need two more active divisions based on what I've heard. I don't know how recruiting is fairing now, but I seriosuly doubt a draft is going to be coming back without another major event of 9/11 proportions.
I don't think we'll know until after the (US) election... I have been hearing an awful lot more about "mid to late 2005". I would have agreed with you a while back...but there do seem to be signs.
Well, it's fundamentally a political decision. We can pull out whenever we want to. I can't imagine, though, that we won't stay at least until the elections, and for a while afterwards. That would be mid-late 2005, like you suggested. But even that is a year + away, and will require another complete troop rotation, probably bringing back most of the units that originally fought the war in the first place. Maybe we can begin drawing down after the elections, but then again right now we have more troops in the theater than we did during the war. It would be folly to make long-term plans on best-case scenarios.
We also hear a lot about "being stretched too thin". I'm sure that's partly true, but I'm also sure a lot of it is rhetoric. .... that may not be true. I don't know for sure...but can you provide some backing for the claim?
Mathematics. Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan presently require about 200,000 troops between them. But there's not even 500,000 in the entire active-duty Army. Without NG/Res, that would mean every single soldier would have to spend 12 months out of 30 in one of those places. Even with NG/Res, 12 months out of 36 is probably about right, and more like 12 of 24 for soldiers in combat billets. Almost every major ground unit has cycled through at least one of the places at least once (often more) in the last three years. Obviously, certain units and certain jobs will make it more or less likely that a particular soldier will end up in Iraq. But odds are very much in favor, and increase the longer we keep our forces there at current levels.
I think we do need two more active divisions based on what I've heard.
I agree with you. If we're going to maintain these sorts of commitments and capabilities, we need at least 2, and probably 4, more active duty divisions.
But it's fundamentally a political question - do we *need* to maintain these commitments and capabilities? After Vietnam, the Army underwent a number of reforms to ensure that the entire nation would be involved in any future conflict. It worked, sort of. This time around, those reforms are causing great stress on everyone connected to the military, but the rest of the nation is still aloof. Do we really want to be able to fight and win wars like Iraq every few years "out of our back pocket"? Or do we want to go back to the philosophy that guided those reforms: if we're going to go to war in a big way, go as a last resort and involve the entire nation? I'm not decided. It's a question that fundamentally determines our foreign policy, and I'm not sure of the right path.
It does say something about our position in the world, though, that we can make such a choice - given that we *can* have the power to defeat the military and destroy the regime of a major country every few years, do we *want* to have it? Every other nation in the world would love to be able to make that choice...
Originally posted by Fran441
I don't see a draft happening unless a WMD is set off in an American city, and if that happens, God help us all.
And if that WMD(s) just happened to have been planted and set off by a lone individual, or a small group of, say, a dozen or so extremists, who could hail from any number of different nations, including ours, then what benefit would the draft do? Who would we attack? This worst-case scenario is simultaneous and intensive international cooperation between the domestic and foreign intelligence and police services of all nations. Big brother 'total surveillance' type of methods are counterproductive: they generate a huge quantity of often useless data, possibly hiding the real deal bz sheer volume, and there isn't the human power to sift and evaluate it. And secondly, duplicitous foreign (or domestic) policies that marginalize, alienate or make life hell for certain groups, or even supporting murderous groups because its expedient at the time.....when we stop falling into those traps, terrorism and the threat of future terrorism will start to fade.....
But what about recruitment?
Good timing...the NYTimes today has a front-page piece on the state of Army recruitment. Free link here.
The gist of the piece is that recruiting is definitely different now. The war is on everyone's mind, and you see many fewer "casual" recruits. But so far the Army is meeting its goals. It helps that the recruits interviewed hoped things in Iraq would be either quiet or over before they finished training in 6 months. There are associated graphs, though, which show the Army's goals for Reserve recruitment shrinking ominously over the last three years - although they do manage to meet those much-reduced goals.
Originally posted by Towel
Very reasoned response, SDW...
Well, it's fundamentally a political decision. We can pull out whenever we want to. I can't imagine, though, that we won't stay at least until the elections, and for a while afterwards. That would be mid-late 2005, like you suggested. But even that is a year + away, and will require another complete troop rotation, probably bringing back most of the units that originally fought the war in the first place. Maybe we can begin drawing down after the elections, but then again right now we have more troops in the theater than we did during the war. It would be folly to make long-term plans on best-case scenarios.
Mathematics. Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan presently require about 200,000 troops between them. But there's not even 500,000 in the entire active-duty Army. Without NG/Res, that would mean every single soldier would have to spend 12 months out of 30 in one of those places. Even with NG/Res, 12 months out of 36 is probably about right, and more like 12 of 24 for soldiers in combat billets. Almost every major ground unit has cycled through at least one of the places at least once (often more) in the last three years. Obviously, certain units and certain jobs will make it more or less likely that a particular soldier will end up in Iraq. But odds are very much in favor, and increase the longer we keep our forces there at current levels.
I agree with you. If we're going to maintain these sorts of commitments and capabilities, we need at least 2, and probably 4, more active duty divisions.
But it's fundamentally a political question - do we *need* to maintain these commitments and capabilities? After Vietnam, the Army underwent a number of reforms to ensure that the entire nation would be involved in any future conflict. It worked, sort of. This time around, those reforms are causing great stress on everyone connected to the military, but the rest of the nation is still aloof. Do we really want to be able to fight and win wars like Iraq every few years "out of our back pocket"? Or do we want to go back to the philosophy that guided those reforms: if we're going to go to war in a big way, go as a last resort and involve the entire nation? I'm not decided. It's a question that fundamentally determines our foreign policy, and I'm not sure of the right path.
It does say something about our position in the world, though, that we can make such a choice - given that we *can* have the power to defeat the military and destroy the regime of a major country every few years, do we *want* to have it? Every other nation in the world would love to be able to make that choice...
Good points. Concerning active duty divisions, I'd have to agree. If we need to keep these levels of deployments, then we need them.
I have often thought that we should withdraw troops from many areas, particularly South Korea and Europe and Japan. Then again, I assume many of them are there to keep our "presence" bases going...so that in the event of a major war we'd have a base of operations. But, 116,000 in Europe? 43,000 in Japan? 37,000 in South Korea? Seems like overkill...does it not? After all, any nation attacking in those regions would have to know that we would use our "ricockulous" air and sea power to defend ourselves and allies. North Korea would be insane to attack S. Korea. We would anhilate them. And if they went nuclear, they would have to know that the whole of North Korea would be Crispix within about five seconds.
Sorry...I've had a few rum and cokes as you might be able to tell.
As for Europe, it almost seems like we are at Cold War levels. I can't imagine why we have that many troops there. Japan may be trickier as it pertains to Taiwan. Then again...same argument as with NK. If China ever decides to invade and retake the Island, we're going to need a lot more than 43,000 troops.