ok so while the paint fumes might be having some effect on the logic centres of my brain i thought i would put this one out there.
if the USA/UK was to re-introduce the conscription/draft in our new “woke/joke society” would women (real women) be included in this now and if not, could you as a man (real man) refuse conscription on the grounds of sex discrimination, or invoke any other sexual equality laws to avoid enforced military service?
kind regards
Klaus
P.S. i can already hear the blue haired land whales yelling “Hell no, we won’t go”
Way to pull the pin on the grenade this Sunday morning.
While I don’t think it would be a good idea for many reasons, the fact that combat roles have been opened to women makes it only fair to include them in any draft.
Even without the opening of combat roles, they could be included as they can fill “noncombatant” roles and men can be assigned direct combat roles. I am sure down the road people will complain as men are given promotions based on combat experience that it’s not fair.
Haven’t kept up but I believe there was a bill to add women to the US selective service requirement. I don’t think that passed but if your parties point is things are equal now, then they are equal and you have to sign up like the males do. You don’t get to have selective breaking of the patriarchy to when you don’t want to do the hard stuff or it’s not convenient for you. Course in this upside world they want to create that can happen.
the other way for women to evade this is the old fashioned way by announcing they’re pregnant as this has been used in more recent times to avoid Afghanistan etc.
I’m a retired soldier and am against the draft as I wouldn’t want to be next to a soldier who was forced to serve.
I understand Germany is thinking of bringing back conscription.
If you are talking about conscription on a war footing requirement then as it stands, they could be drafted into combat units as they wouldnt get a choice if they passed the basic entry level tests. However, further issues would arise down the road. Women are not physically capable to do those roles in depth for prolonged periods. Thats a fact, medically and scientifically proven as well as by ones that have tried it.
If it was a draft for war, then basic training would have to be reduced to get a quick turn round to supply units. less training = less knowledge about the job and failures that would then happen do to no undertanding about how things are done correctly. This would be a critical fail in a Tank unit or Inf Bn.
Women had served for years in the front line in Combat Service Support roles and also in certain SF roles behind the scenes. And all doing a great job. A certain few lefty do gooders then wanted women in the combat arms and that wagon started rolling with everyone wanted them in it, and as soon as as they got the green light … guess what, none of them wanted to join it !! And the very very few who did wnat to, couldnt finish the basic training or complete the mandatory testing throughout … so what happens next … the fitness standards/tests are changed so its no longer male/female testing, but universal testing and they are now assessments and no straight fail - Joke !! and let me be blunt, this was a move to get women into Combat arms as it was the only way they could do it.
When they do these courses/tests then in most circumstances I have known and heard about, they are given leeway in certain areas, or they are allowed to miss critical build up areas that guys have to do, or if they fail something, they are allowed to retake it after a certain time which years ago would of been a straight fail, you’re gone.
if all else fails and you didnt want to, you could go down the conscientious objector route
Sweden is also expanding the conscription but we need to rebuild barracks, train officers (all levels), get equipment et.c so expansion is slow.
Conscripts vs volunteers.
Nobody sane really wants to go to war. The most “belligerent” of my fellow conscripts were the ones that nearly got sorted out as intellectually unfit.
The other conscripts that I shared quarters with came from all walks of life,
some went on to become doctors or engineers, some were mechanics
or had other useful skills.
The result was a unit filled with a wide variety of skills and intelligence levels.
If military service, in some country, is the only option for those that are not
bright enough for other jobs then that country may end up with a military force
that can only follow their drill and rules and not come up with new solutions.
I am not saying that the US suffers from this but the idea that all conscripts are
unwilling is not correct.
I think the rules of the road depend on the level of attrition. If not in war you can afford to let women do what they want. In combat the rules change, you have to be fit enough to participate at your units expected level. Driving truck units are different than Airborne units in what is physically required. When your troop losses are higher than your replacement rate, you speed up training and increase draft numbers. At some point your training may only be weeks long if things are going poorly. I do not think most women want to be in combat arms. I think it is female officers that want to, based on combat for promotions. A Spec 4 probably is not seeking combat time for promotion.
I think if a woman want to volunteer for a combat unit, fine as long as she can physically participate at the appropriate level. The appropriate level is not the “low enough so all can play” but if representative of actual expected conditions.
Apparently, nearly our entire country was not sane after 7 December. Dudes lining up to enlist in droves, even lying about their age to do so.
We had a similar wave of enlistment after 9/11 - patriots who volunteered to go and fight for the protection of their loved ones,
My sanity my have been questioned from time to time, but my decision to “want” to go to war was based upon the same principle. My sister lived very close to the towers. A nose wheel from one of the planes landed across the street from her building on Rector Place. She had also lived there for the first attack on the towers. Now, I’m not a Manhattanite (neither is she if you get right down to it - she was born at Tripler Hospital) but I was born in the Bronx. So an attack on NYC is an attack on my hometown.
I made the decision the very next day to leave the relative safety of being a Reserve Drill Sergeant to going back into SF - not exactly an easy thing for a 39 year old.
Perhaps no sane person wants war, but once that gauntlet is thrown down, thankfully there are still those who want to go and take care of business.
While obviously not anything like mass insanity, there was certainly a measure of “war fever” or being caught up in the events that inhibited clear thought. If you look throughout history there are plenty of examples of the enthusiastic volunteer becoming a bitter cynic when the reality of the situation becomes clear: Our Civil War, WW I, Vietnam. If told in October 2001 that they would be spending their service changing oil on trucks in South Korea or fighting the same enemy in the same place for 15 or 20 years straight, would the same decisions be made?
I asked my father why he enlisted out of high school in 1943 at 17. Did he have some desire to fight the Nazis or the Japanese or to protect the country? No, he said joining up “was just what you did.” I also asked once why he didn’t wait to be drafted, and he said that by enlisting one got to choose their service and to some extent their job. I believe his uncle’s experiences in France in 1918 may have convinced him to avoid being a “ground pounder” if at all possible.
(He signed up for the Aviation Cadets, and for reasons I haven’t been able to definitively determine he was not called up until early in 1945. He maintained that he wasn’t called because they had enough pilots and didn’t have anything for him to do. My own research found that admission to the cadets was suspended or reduced but primarily because we needed more infantry replacements and every other service branch was culled for suitable bodies. I suspect they were waiting for him to turn 19, as the higher brass at War Department thought this was the minimum age acceptable for sending overseas.)
When we had large scale conscription we could get conscripted for different periods of initial training:
7.5 months: troops, soldiers, no command function whatsoever
10 months: first level of leaders, typically leaders of up to maybe 10 soldiers
12: months: me, some “specialist” roles like company quartermaster, the company commander would be my boss and I would organise company logistics (2 platoons of 3 120 mm mortars + fuel + food + mail + payroll).
15 months: platoon leaders, in my company there was the platoon leaders for the two mortar platoons + the guys who would lead the fire control teams (him + 2 or maybe 3 soldiers).
Those that did 10, 12, and 15 months got dressed in uniform on the same date, the 7.5 month guys arrived 2.5 months later. The leaders at the three levels were then partially ( very little but still …) responsible for training the raw recruits.
Ten months later the 10 month and 7.5 month guys left and 12 and 15 months stayed in uniform. Two months later, after a full year, I left and the 15 month guys went on to ensign school for more education and leadership training.
If I had been called in again for repetition training I would have been a sergeant.
After the initial training the leaders (12 & 15 mont guys only??) would get called up for a 2 week repeat training (staff exercise) after about two years, the full unit would train for 4 weeks after four years.
I would have been doing a 2 week - 4 week - 2 week et.c cycle getting called up every two years.
This never happened because “eternal peace” after 1990 and now we all know how that ended …
That could be considered a slap in the face to every 91B who ever served. But let’s overlook that.
That very theoretical soldier had the opportunity to invest in the TSP for twenty years, not to mention probably attaining the pay grade of E-7 through E-9, half of which he will get paid for the rest of his life.
Educational benefits - during and after time in service, I’ve just decided to return after 34 yearts for an MA. It’ll cost me exactly nothing. I can probably even wrangle a grant for gas money if I try hard enough.
Lifetime of friends made and experiences had that you cannot get anywhere else. (plus virtually no one spends twenty years in Korea) You’d probably do time in Alaska, Germany, or any number of other cool places.
And no matter how long your service there is - the food, the women, the sights, the snorkeling. The cheap Hello Kitty socks. It’s a virutal paradise!
As an aside, infantry soldiers will spend time in the motor pool performing oil changes, tire changes, and if they make the mistake of showing any mechanical aptitude, possibly replacing U-joints and other components. All this at the direction of the twenty year E-8 91B who is about to retire at 38, start a second career managing or owning his own shop, using leadership skills he learned supervising others while they worked, It doesn’t go this way for everyone, but ya get what ya put into it.
If I had to make the same decision after 9/11, knowing then what I know now? Training and fighting in extreme heat and extreme cold, looking into the mouth of the dragon, enduring countless insults to my body, like carrying 100 pounds of “lightweight” sh!t on my back climbing up and down mountains - or sleeping in a pile of sheep excrement after a thirty six hour mission - yes, absolutely. I’d do it all again and ask for seconds.
I made a new SF friend two weeks ago who enlisted for SF after 9/11 - not to avoid conscription into something desirable (there was of course no conscripton) but to do what he felt he had to do. And while enlistment was up during that time, there were many, many people who did not. Certainly not SF, because that’s not just something you do, that’s something you commit your life to.
Jon Cavaiani, whom I knew from when we were both at Ft. Devens in 10th Group, was drafted. I don’t know how he felt about it, but he was awarded the MOH. Funny story about that which I’ve related in the past.
