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Comment by thomaswang | Hacker News Reader

Plenty of countries manage to conspript pretty much everyone at a certain age. Train them and let them home without having a special problem with them. Now what is the US army doing during training/stateside service?

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Most of these Tweets seem to be about experiences from operations. Most countries never deploy on operations. Fewer deploy on expeditionary operations. Even fewer do so at the intensity of the US. You’re not comparing something equivalent.

I think it is two things. The first is that everyone goes into the military for four years or something like that (Ex: Israel), so it is a shared cultural experience that everyone understands. Second, while some of those soldiers see conflict, the scale is much less than something like Vietnam where entire graduating highschool classes of boys were wiped out and the war wasn't popular and it wasn't a defending our country in the normal sense, but a proactive war to help curb Soviet expansion. Afghanistan and Iraq have Veterans in a similar (if less extreme) circumstances. The war is a geopolitical policing act and extension of US foreign policy at this point more than an actual defend the nation type situation. I've never served, but to go through all that and then have issues and have to jump through hoops at the VA would be crushing.

> four years or something like that (Ex: Israel)

Israeli conscription is mandatory for adult citizens on or about their 18th birthday with a service obligation of 3 years for males and 2 years for females, but you can defer service until after completion of undergraduate education for 6 years as an officer.

Thanks for clarifying! I knew I wasn't very far off.

US seems to be pretty terrible but that does not mean that draft service is/was OK in other countries.

Stories of abuse during draft service were so common in many countries that people normalized them.

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