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Comment by nick_riviera | Hacker News Reader

I admire your stance on this.

I too would do the same if drafted for national service. I'd rather sit in a prison than fight because someone told me to. I'd defend my country at the border but nothing more. If I don't have that choice I'd rather not fight.

In the UK, we have a nut job politician[1] who recently tried to bring national service back. There are several crackheads trying to roll this back in periodically sponsored by the likes of Help the Heroes, Clarkson, Daily Mail, The Sun and a rather moronic populous. It's all propaganda driven by the armed forces themselves and utterly sickening to watch service glorified like it is.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Hollobone

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One of the 'advantages' of national service is that it spreads the cost of war more equitably to the country. For that reason I support it. I was of the right age to have gone to Iraq or Afghanistan. Many of my friends did. I actually considered joining at a couple points.

My parents were very much in favor of the wars. They also were 100% adamant that I could not join the military.

With national service, that choice doesn't really get to get made. I feel that over the last 10+ years, the wars were out of sight and out of mind for a lot of people because their kids weren't at risk. I feel like the questions would have been a lot harder on the gov't if we still had a draft going on.

Interestingly, the US armed services absolutely 100% do not want the draft. They get less oversight without a draft. The all volunteer force is higher quality and there are fewer issues with people going AWOL, and people are more likely to stick around so training costs are lower. I think the people that don't want a draft are those that could be drafted (totally understandable, I wouldn't actually want to go to a war myself), and those that like their wars without having to deal with the costs.

I find it frightening that people support slavery because of vague and unsupported ideas about how it will influence public opinion.

I can kind of sort of understand the people who say that the draft should be used for national defense when fighting a critical war. I disagree, but I can see their point of view. But I can't understand at all the idea that we should force every person of a certain age (I'm assuming we won't leave women out anymore) into involuntary servitude because it might get people to think more carefully about waging war.

Thanks for a constructive and well thought out reply.

"I'd defend my country at the border but nothing more."

If you had been a young man during WW2 would you have fought beyond the UK's borders to liberate Europe from Germany?

Actually I'm half German and half English so that's a bit of a hard one to answer isn't it?

Do I support Europe or do I avoid getting my family killed by the German authorities for refusing to fight the other half?

War is ugly. Everyone refusing to fight is the only answer.

Yeah it would be great if nobody agreed to commit any violence ever.

But until that point, it's nice to have some soldiers on our side who can liberate your country if the other side does decide to fight, or special forces to rescue you if you get kidnapped in a failed state by some people who decide to fight. And let's hope they're intelligent, disciplined, responsible and care about your life.

Ah. So you're saying that in practice there is no answer.

Everyone involved in WW2 could do worse than research who funded Hitler, and why.

WW2 wouldn't have happened without that funding.

Orwell's answer to this is interesting, for those who haven't read it.

Orwell is one of the most self reflective and critical thinkers I have ever come across. It would appear as if he had almost no ego. Our own Spock.

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