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Comment by bb88 | Hacker News Reader

Agree. However the key word there is "voluntarily". If a war gets too ugly, the supply of volunteers will dry up. And then you're looking at a draft.

It's been a while since the vietnam war, but we (the general public in the US) have forgotten how ugly a war can be.

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This is where just a refusal to participate comes in. I think I've posted this or other Tolstoy stuff on here before, but Tolstoy makes the best point about this:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1968/02/advice-...

> And to this question, for a person who understands the true meaning of military service and who wants to be moral, there is only one clear and incontrovertible answer: such a person must refuse to take part in military service no matter what consequences this refusal may have.

I’d say the USA has collectively forgotten the last time they were in a “civilians involved” war, which I’d place back to the Civil War.

WWII gave us Rosie the Riveter, rationing of materials and goods, internment, Pearl Harbor, etc.

9/11 was narrow geographically but had a large emotional, political, and economic impact stateside.

All those are true but they didn’t have bombs dropping on them.

In the civil war not only might your son be sent to the front, but the front might end up in your yard.

Yeah, it's been awhile since then. Normally when bombs get dropped on Americans we do to ourselves. (Tulsa, for example)

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