Social Justice Warriors Thread

[skankhunt42]

As far as wars go, when he had the draft it didn't really keep Americans out of the questionable ones like Korea and Vietnam. Its like that Herman Goering quote where he talks about how you get people eager for war the same way in any type of system. In some ways, the draft would sober people up, but long term I don't think it would fix the war fever that seems to be endemic to the American experience. Maybe it would be better if America saw where their meat comes from so to speak. I don't know.

Name one time in American history when we sent young people to fight a war for sixteen years straight when there was a draft.

Name one time in American history when we carried on a sixteen war with no tax to fund the war.

Name one time in American history when we carried on a sixteen year war, without any rationing whatsoever, so that the American people would feel the impact of their war.

Name one.

I'll wait.

Honestly, what a great post.
Professional military forces do professional military force things, and we treat it like we treat Verizon Wireless. Plus one Okee Plus one. Very profound point.

[heydaralon]

Name one time in American history when we sent young people to fight a war for sixteen years straight when there was a draft.

Name one time in American history when we carried on a sixteen war with no tax to fund the war.

Name one time in American history when we carried on a sixteen year war, without any rationing whatsoever, so that the American people would feel the impact of their war.

Name one.

I'll wait.

You might be onto something when you say that volunteer force wars last longer than draft wars. We didn't even stay in Vietnam 16 years. All I'm saying is that the draft didn't keep us out of Vietnam or any other conflict we fought in. One thing that drives me nuts about the American public is when they are all for a war, but then they quickly change their mind within a year or two which has happened in every post WW2 war. A draft might be a step in the right direction to reducing the length of our conflicts, I'm just not convinced it will keep us out of them. There is a deeper underlying issue that needs to be looked at.

The opposition to vietnam evaporated after the draft went away. the hippies went on to earth day the second the draft went away. it wasn't by accident.

Oh yeah, Nixon knew what he was doing. But my original point was not that there wasn't opposition to the draft. There was. People did not want to fight that war. All I am saying is that the opposition and the draft did not prevent war from being declared and people being sent abroad. It still happened.

[heydaralon]

Do you think that if a draft was brought back tomorrow, Americans would no longer fight in foreign wars? Looking at our history, I have trouble believing that.

[Okeefenokee]

Combat medicine has improved too, although I don't think that alone would account for the disparity in casualties

Yes it does. The majority of combat deaths have always come from bleeding out. The focus on that in recent years has made a big difference.

[Speaker to Animals]

I think in the optimal configuration of enfranchisement, a warrior class would run the national government and a business class would run the state governments.

If national enfranchisement were limited to people who completed a term of enlistment, I don't think you'd see many people signing up just to get the right to vote. I don't think most people really even care that much. They pretend like they do because voting is free and they can always vote for more shit for themselves at no cost to themselves. But couple that right with an obligation to serve, and they won't bother. Yet military service increasingly has become a family tradition within a small subset of the American populace. These families are becoming a subculture of their own.

I think this subculture needs their own universities in addition to the military academies, where they gain a solid grasp on geopolitics, foreign policy, history, and maybe even the classics. I guess I'd imagine the best minds in this group attending universities organized by people like Victor Davis Hanson. They could still learn the same degree programs as their majors as everybody else, but instead of this marxist shit students currently get indoctrinated with, they'd learn military history, classics, philosophy, political science, etc.

The business class universities would focus more on domestic policy. They would teach graduates a solid grasp of economics, sociology, business administration, and so forth as their core curriculum. So a professional class in the states would likely send their kids here.

At the state level, the professional class would likely rule the roost. They are the ones who pay most of the taxes and generate wealth. Their universities are focused towards the things they will need to know as state voters whereas the warrior class students would learn more about foreign policy and war.

Beyond that, I could still envision a universal enfranchisement at the municipal level, though I think a city budget would need some careful management by state officials to ensure they won't need bail outs down the road due to corruption by whatever passes for a democratic party in the cities.

County governments should probably be enfranchised based on property ownership.


What we sure as fuck do not want more of is a huge urban plebiscite dominating national or even state politics.

[Smitty-48]

Another point to make is that the body count has become a lot lower in post Vietnam conflicts. I don't know why this is. It might be the nature of the conflicts we have been fighting, which is urban vs. the open warfare you see in Korea and Vietnam. Maybe the Taliban and Sunni militias aren't the same level of fighters as the VC and North Koreans. Combat medicine has improved too, although I don't think that alone would account for the disparity in casualties.

In addition to the Vietnamese Nationalists being highly trained, extremely disciplined, supremely motivated, and well equipped, you simply had far more large scale high intensity battles in Vietnam, not just an ongoing insurgency against the National Liberation Front, but prolonged campaigns against the North Vietnamese Army with ferocious engagements against whole regiments and even divisions, also factor in a largely dimounted infantry war at close quarters on complex terrain, as opposed to mounted and mechanized at often stand off range.

[Okeefenokee]

Do you think that if a draft was brought back tomorrow, Americans would no longer fight in foreign wars? Looking at our history, I have trouble believing that.

I don't think that Americans would no longer fight foreign wars. We had foreign wars even with the draft. When the war was broadcast into every living room on a nightly basis, as it was for the first time during Vietnam, the opposition grew so great that the government was forced to abolish the draft.

The frequency of American involvement in conflicts has increased since the abolition of the draft. There are other factors as well. The Libyan intervention involved nearly no Americans being placed in harms way. A draft would probably not have affected that.

Despite what others, who pay their mortgage on their Lockmart dividends, would say, I believe it is absolutely immoral for a nation to adopt a system of foreign policy where unending war is carried out on the backs of one percent of the nation while the rest of the nation sits it out entirely.

[heydaralon]

In terms of poorly chosen conflicts, the American electorate bears the lions share of the blame. But what if in your hypothetical society the warrior class still wanted to fight in Middle Eastern Wars that have minimal strategic value? There are examples of this in history.


During the Peloponnesian War, Nicias did not want to go to Sicily. His strategy to avoid having to lead an army there was to keep suggesting a bigger and more costly force to turn the Athenian voters off from the whole thing. It didn't work, and the voters still decided to go. They ended up losing a generation of men and a huge portion of their wealth. This was a citizen army by the way. Self interest didn't keep them from sailing to Sicily.
Are you both okay with fighting in questionable conflicts as long as the soldier class agrees that this is the course of action they want to take? In other words, if you treat war like a legally binding contract, content is not as important as the fact that all parties signed off on it?

[heydaralon]

Do you think that if a draft was brought back tomorrow, Americans would no longer fight in foreign wars? Looking at our history, I have trouble believing that.

I don't think that Americans would no longer fight foreign wars. We had foreign wars even with the draft. When the war was broadcast into every living room on a nightly basis, as it was for the first time during Vietnam, the opposition grew so great that the government was forced to abolish the draft.

The frequency of American involvement in conflicts has increased since the abolition of the draft. There are other factors as well. The Libyan intervention involved nearly no Americans being placed in harms way. A draft would probably not have affected that.

Despite what others, who pay their mortgage on their Lockmart dividends, would say, I believe it is absolutely immoral for a nation to adopt a system of foreign policy where unending war is carried out on the backs of one percent of the nation while the rest of the nation sits it out entirely.

I'm not a fan of any of the wars we've gotten into in my lifetime, and now there is another round of sabre rattling of Syria which is very worrisome, considering we already have a full plate war wise. I think its a bad system, but I don't see any sign of it changing.

[Okeefenokee]

If the people who are voting for the war are also the people who are dying in said war, I find that much more preferable than a system in which there is no decision to go to war, because the political system allows wars to be entered unilaterally, and with no meaningful opposition.