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Comment by adamnemecek | Hacker News Reader

How about getting rid of draft altogether?

On the contrary, make it mandatory with no exemptions. That way rich or poor, we all have skin in the game and suddenly people’s opinions on foreign policy directly impact their sons and daughters.

That didn't prevent Vietnam.

Yea because a fuckton of rich white men were able to get their sons deferments. Have you not listened to Fortunate Son? Also women were not in the draft, to the previous commenter's point.

Women, transgender, non-binary etc should all be included in a draft.

It's a nice thought but look at, for example, Donald Trump's deferment to see how it actually plays out for rich people.

How is that an interesting response to "make it mandatory with no exemptions."

You could explain why you are cynical about it happening, but just saying you are cynical about no exemptions is pretty boring.

Just make all the politicians go to war. See how their decisions change.

Then you get Israeli politicians. Service is compulsory so they've all got at least an idea how the military works, and the older folks were involved in wars, and therefore ex military or intelligence officers. Some work toward peace and improvements, and some become hard-liners. So, sorry, but it's still hard to pidgeonhole them even if they've been to war.

You know what will happen then? They will never be exposed to actual combat.

If society believed it was immoral to start a war unless you're personally exposed to the risks of warfare then there would be outrage every time it happened.

In my opinion any politician calling for war needs needs to at least have a family member fighting in real combat. If I find out they don't then I will happily vote against them, even if it means voting against my ideology.

> If I find out they don't then I will happily vote against them,

That would not work because it would work only after the fact. You want to prevent this kind of things from happening BEFORE they are even elected.

That's true but if it's an expectation we all have and violating it comes with social consequences then they will at least think twice before doing it

> In my opinion any politician calling for war needs needs to at least have a family member fighting in real combat. If I find out they don't then I will happily vote against them, even if it means voting against my ideology.

What if it's a family member they don't like?

Or as System of a Down says:

> Why don't the Presidents fight the war? > Why do they always send the poor?

It's easy to send someone else to die when they're just a number on a report.

So we should force a quadriplegic to join the military? We should force a hemophiliac to crawl under barbed wire? A blind person should have to learn to shoot a rifle?

You said "no exemptions".

Only a fraction of military assignments are combat positions. I knew one Viet Nam vet that spent his entire tour in an air conditioned bunker in Saigon hanging tapes on the computer that printed payroll checks.

Another, technically in a combat role, spent his tours in the radio room of navy destroyers banging out Morse code.

The problems you list are mostly surmountable.

Someone who enters the military goes through military training. If we're just forcing people to work, it's not military service. It's slavery.

Indeed, the abolition of the Selective Service System appears to be an option:

"The ruling comes at a time when an advisory panel, the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, is studying the draft system, considering whether it should continue and whether women should be included."

Makes sense too: the government already has all of its citizens' personal information. Why keep maintaining the SSS as a separate and redundant database - after all, they can draft whomever they wish at any time by decree, whether or not they're registered with the SSS.

How about expanding it instead?

If upper middle class families knew that their sons+daughters were going to Iraq, we wouldn't have done that stupid thing. Instead, we relied on a 'volunteer' class who didn't have anything better to do and then we kept them there with a backdoor draft.

The Vietnam War protests ended when the draft ended. The war didn't end. Just the draft.

Having a draft means that if you're opposed to a dumb war then you have to get out in the streets and in the politicians faces.

They would still get out of it.

If you think the military is mostly composed of those 'who didn't have anything better to do' then you don't really have any idea about the composition of the US military.

>How about expanding it instead?

In the US the draft just allowed the US government to continue the Viet Nam war far longer than it otherwise would have gone. Over 2.7 million Americans served in Viet Nam. If the politicians could have possibly gotten millions of young people to drop what they were doing and go 5 thousand miles to fight in a civil war in a country most had never heard of before, they would certainly have done so. There is simply no obvious way they could have gotten that many troops on a volunteer basis, or they would have done so.

>...The Vietnam War protests ended when the draft ended. The war didn't end. Just the draft.

Nixon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. The war continued, but US involvement ended.

Having a volunteer force means the soldiers have to treated better and paid more than a draftee. Having a volunteer force in the 1960s would have meant that if the USA got involved, the Viet Nam war would have been fought with a lot more concern for the loss of life of the solders, and it likely wouldn't have been fought anything like it was fought.

It's highly unlikely that the US will return to conscription, particularly for anything less than WWIII. The problem with draftees is that they tend to be less effective soldiers (since they didn't sign up to be a soldier), and the terms of conscription are too short to effectively train them--if someone is in the army for a year, and it takes 6 months to train them, you're spending a lot of money to little effect.

The main value of undertrained infantry soldiers is to provide literal boots on the ground to bolster the mass of a fighting force, but modern warfare tactics have generally lessened the effectiveness of this kind of mass: an integrated combined arms team can easily steamroll a fortified infantry line, as was shown quite clearly in the First Gulf War.

Getting rid of selective service registration seems like the best outcome. In the case of need for the draft again, we could implement it without the SSS. There's also the weird problem that a truly existential war which would otherwise justify the draft is also the kind of war which would likely escalate to WMD and thus make the draft irrelevant.

My preference is, in this order: 1) No draft 2) Universal draft registration-only 3) Universal draft and national service of some form 4) Male-only registration-only 5) Female-only registration-only 6) Male-only universal draft/service 7) Female-only universal draft/service

Good news! There already is no draft.

Now that all people will be effected by the selective service's demands it's much more likely to happen. This is progress on that path.

That is simply impossible. We’ve been at peace for a long time, but one day war will break out, and not enough people will join the military voluntarily.

Sounds like that might factor into the country's willingness to enter war at all.

So now the war has been prevented. Seems like a good solution.

Evil Communist Islamic Fascist Caliphate of Mexico, Canada and China: "We're declaring war."

USA: "We done have an army."

ECIFCMCC: "Nevermind then."

Evil Communist Islamic Fascist Caliphate of Mexico, Canada and China: "We're declaring war."

Drone operators in air-conditioned office buildings in Nevada: "Bring it."

Not a native speaker, I confused army and military.

No, it means countries would be much more willing to negotiate a fair deal rather than die over it. Why would you start a war over resources when you can cheaply buy them.

I'm not sure I understand your argument. Are you claiming that countries don't go to war because to do so is irrational? Because that clearly contradicts reality, countries do go to war.

If there's not enough volunteers then pay them more. Conscription is slavery.

Nail on the head here. The US increases the military budget year over year yet soldiers pay does not increase.

Instead the president looks to raid funding for military housing for his own boondoggle.

Wars changed a lot since WWII, having a very large military with cheap guns does not work at all anymore. The army is much more specialised than in the past, nowadays you need a smaller amount of well-trained people with expensive gear.

> We’ve been at peace for a long time

Who's we? And what peace? America's been at war for the last 17 years. It is America's longest war and it's still not clear when it will be ended.

At this point what is the win condition? How do you know when you're finished?

The us is waging wars in seven countries. How is the us at peace?

> We’ve been at peace for a long time, but one day war will break out

Say what? Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Iraq, Panama, Grenada, ...

I think if they do that now, women will regret it for decades to come. Ending the draft the moment they would have been asked to stand beside their brothers, matching their promise to risk themselves in defense of our shared values? It would be a hollow victory for peace, and a great defeat for equality and solidarity. Expand the draft. Have all women of age sign up. Give it a few years to sink in, and then decide together whether to abolish it.

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