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If you had a military draft, would you serve ?

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Tender Branson

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We here in Austria have the military draft, you Americans don’t (much of NATO countries either).

I was drafted at age 18 and medically examined for fitness, which I passed.

But I didn’t serve in the military draft and instead opted for the alternative civilian service.

About 45% of each year group of males serve in the military draft, 40% serve in the alternative civilian service (Red Cross, retirement homes, charity organizations, social workers etc.) and 15% are ruled unfit to serve (too fat, mentally ill, diseases etc.)

What would you do / did you do ?
 

post

Lady of the house wonderin' where it's gonna stop
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I refused to cooperate in any way whatsoever and later was a beneficiary of this,


I had no way of foreseeing that the majority of U.S. voters would ever elect such a POTUS between Nixon and Reagan. In hindsight,
even if President Carter had not been elected, I cannot see myself doing anything different than what I committed to at age 18.
Each of us has to find his or her own way AFA working out an arrangement in which we can live with ourselves.

Conscription and the Color Line: Rawls, Race and Vietnam

https://www.cambridge.org › core › journals › article › co...
by BM Terry · 2021 — The racial injustice of draft deferments, on Rawls's account, ... here is Martin Luther King Jr's reaction to the crisis around the war and ...

The Washington Post Compares the Choices Bush and Kerry ...

https://historynewsnetwork.org › article
... after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. ... Richard B. Cheney began his ascent up the ladder of Republican Party ...

January 17, 2022
"...And on April 4, 1967, he publicly rebuked the president’s war policy in Vietnam at Riverside Presbyterian Church in New York City in a speech titled “Beyond Vietnam.”

“I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam,” he told those gathered in the majestic cathedral. “I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam.”
King was initially optimistic that Johnson’s Great Society program, which aimed to make historic investments in job growth, job training, and economic development, would tackle domestic poverty. But by 1967 the Great Society appeared to be a casualty of the mounting costs of the war in Vietnam. “I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such,” King said in his speech.

King saw the grinding poverty facing Black people at home as inseparable from the war overseas. As he noted, “If our nation can spend 35 billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and 20 billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on earth.” King could no longer ignore that military force ran contrary to the nonviolence he espoused. As urban revolts in Watts and Newark in the late 1960s rocked the nation, he pleaded with people to remain nonviolent.

“But they ask – and rightly so – what about Vietnam?” King said in the same 1967 speech. “They ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.”
 
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Cordelier

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We here in Austria have the military draft, you Americans don’t (much of NATO countries either).

I was drafted at age 18 and medically examined for fitness, which I passed.

But I didn’t serve in the military draft and instead opted for the alternative civilian service.

About 45% of each year group of males serve in the military draft, 40% serve in the alternative civilian service (Red Cross, retirement homes, charity organizations, social workers etc.) and 15% are ruled unfit to serve (too fat, mentally ill, diseases etc.)

What would you do / did you do ?

Seems like a good system... I'm against compulsory military service, but the alternative civilian service is a good idea. I think it'd do a lot of good for young people to think more outside of themselves.

Did you go to school while you served?
 

tacomancer

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When I was younger, I would have served. These days I am older and have a few injuries as well as disqualifying arthritis.
 

Tender Branson

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Seems like a good system... I'm against compulsory military service, but the alternative civilian service is a good idea. I think it'd do a lot of good for young people to think more outside of themselves.

Did you go to school while you served?

No, I finished school at 18 and then served the 9 month civilian service in a retirement home.

If you keep going to university after 18, you can complete your study first and only then serve.

If you start working at 15 (as an apprentice) or 18 after high school, you can either serve immediately or defer to any point until 35.

And you get some 500€ a month for serving along with meals, clothes and housing.
 

Cordelier

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No, I finished school at 18 and then served the 9 month civilian service in a retirement home.

If you keep going to university after 18, you can complete your study first and only then serve.

If you start working at 15 (as an apprentice) or 18 after high school, you can either serve immediately or defer to any point until 35.

And you get some 500€ a month for serving along with meals, clothes and housing.

That seems pretty fair... especially if someone attends a state-subsidized school. Give back some of what you've learned for a while.
 

ouch

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Unable to answer the poll.

I was drafted, served w/honorable discharge back from Nam.

In order for a draft to restart again, I'd assume that WWIII w/ Russia would be the reason. Being that my age and medical conditions prevents me from galloping off to war, I would shoot any Russian soldiers who invaded the US that came close enough to my property.
 

Schism

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I'm a vet with combat experience. Knowing what I know today about US foreign policy and how we treat the rest of the world I would not join again. We need to scale back our military to defense of our borders and territorial waters, like every other nation on the planet.
 

post

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Been there, done that. Lottery #94 and in 1972 they drafted to #95.
My number was 316. You had to cooperate with the "Selective Service" draft administration to be exempted by drawing a high
lottery number. I had read too much to decide to cooperate. Cheney's "other priorities," and Bush's "TANG champagne unit" taught me
decades later that I had taken the Vietnam draft much too seriously. Nothing matters, vote G.O.P.
 

BirdinHand

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Women have never been drafted in the US.

I debated joining the military shortly after graduating college, but received a very nice job offer instead. It would have been interesting to go into linguistics though.

At this juncture in my life, no, I have no interest in joining the military. My son and my family are my priority.

Incredibly and forever grateful to the men and women that have served in our armed forces - almost every male member of my family has served from uncles forging birth certificates to join WW2 up to the current day. Thank you all for your service.
 

phoenix2020

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I'd be a negative asset on the front lines of a conflict since I'm clumsy and likely to trip and shoot one of my fellow soldiers in the back when charging the enemy position, so I would not volunteer for such a position and try to resist if drafted since I'm fairly certain I would not be contributing to the greater good.

I'd be much better positioned on the industrial or intelligence side e.g. figure out how to create more effective munitions at higher throughput, or analyze mixed-domain data to feed into better decision making, and if drafted into one of those roles I would go with nary a complaint.

Obviously, this only concerns a draft to defend my homeland.

A draft to go somewhere else and burn down some other civilization's cities because we think their stuff is best held in our hands? No thanks. I'd be the first in line to check the 'bone spurs' box, I guess. Wars of conquest and power are reprehensible and I will not contribute to them.
 

reinaert

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The US still has draft registration. All of my sons have signed their selective service cards.
 

donhughesmusic

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I thought if you didn't serve you went to jail? Of course I'd serve, I have no choice.

That being said, I'm 39 with a college degree, I'm probably incredibly low on the priority to serve.
 

Maccabee

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We here in Austria have the military draft, you Americans don’t (much of NATO countries either).

I was drafted at age 18 and medically examined for fitness, which I passed.

But I didn’t serve in the military draft and instead opted for the alternative civilian service.

About 45% of each year group of males serve in the military draft, 40% serve in the alternative civilian service (Red Cross, retirement homes, charity organizations, social workers etc.) and 15% are ruled unfit to serve (too fat, mentally ill, diseases etc.)

What would you do / did you do ?
I work in corrections so I'll probably do a couple years where I'm at and then serve because I have a financial contact with my agency.
 

Jredbaron96

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I volunteered back a few years ago and just now am getting out. I suppose I could do it again if need be.
 

jpevans

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I joined the U.S. Coast Guard to avoid Vietnam & was scheduled to leave for Boot Camp, when I got a phone call to stay home, seems I failed to mention a felony conviction for an incident involving liquor & burglary. I was reclassified as 1Y. I could have received a reprieve if I had pursued it, but only for the Army or maybe Marines, as cannon fodder. I had attended (& been photographed, by men in suits) a few anti Vietnam protests by then.
I would have been willing to serve in public service, if it had been an option.
 

Indydave

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we are too racially polarized for a draft.......the only way a draft might work is direct battle on American soil.....which imo would be unnecessary due to the fact that we are all armed to the teeth and actually have the ability to defend our nation in that regard........if WWIII comes the nukes will decide who wins......Putin apparently is crazy enough to use them
 

rickc

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If it were a real war where there was an actual threat to America yes

But not these political wars we claim to be spreading democracy and are really just protecting/expanding corporate profits.

If we show some balls and decide to straighten out Russia count me in.
 

mrdeltoid

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To clarify I joined the year the draft
 

EMNofSeattle

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We here in Austria have the military draft, you Americans don’t (much of NATO countries either).

I was drafted at age 18 and medically examined for fitness, which I passed.

But I didn’t serve in the military draft and instead opted for the alternative civilian service.

About 45% of each year group of males serve in the military draft, 40% serve in the alternative civilian service (Red Cross, retirement homes, charity organizations, social workers etc.) and 15% are ruled unfit to serve (too fat, mentally ill, diseases etc.)

What would you do / did you do ?
The American selective service system is for men aged 18 to 26. I am 29 and so I am past age for drafting and thus a moot point. But if a war started and the age was changed I would go if selected for conscription. At this stage though I am too old for the current draft and would likely end up serving in other ways like working in a war industry.
 

EMNofSeattle

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My number was 316. You had to cooperate with the "Selective Service" draft administration to be exempted by drawing a high
lottery number. I had read too much to decide to cooperate. Cheney's "other priorities," and Bush's "TANG champagne unit" taught me
decades later that I had taken the Vietnam draft much too seriously. Nothing matters, vote G.O.P.
There’s a lot of claims about Bush’s air national guard service and Bush never wanted to defend himself, but it’s worth noting that flying in an active Air National Guard sector during the Cold War was not a plush assignment. Bush qualified for the F-102 Delta Dagger, an air type was was incredibly dangerous. We literally lost 25% of the delta daggers ever built in accidents and many pilots died because of its difficulty to fly which is a testament to Bush’s competency as a pilot, furthermore many members of the Air National Guard did go to Vietnam, but usually only senior pilots. The F-102 was an interceptor and not useful for service in Vietnam.

So the narrative of Bush avoiding Vietnam and shirking military duties is largely a ficticous account. Bush did leave the ANG early, but when he left the F-102 was being phased out of service and he didn’t have enough time left in the guard to make it worth the military’s time to qualify for another airframe and in any event many pilots wanted to stay in the service so when Bush requested to leave early it was granted, if you have 10 pilots, and only 5 can be requalified and 9 want to stay in and 1 wants to leave you discharge the 1 under “convenience of the government” and it makes your life easier
 

mrjurrs

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Never registered, never served.

I do however gladly pay taxes.
 

armycowboy

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The American selective service system is for men aged 18 to 26. I am 29 and so I am past age for drafting and thus a moot point. But if a war started and the age was changed I would go if selected for conscription. At this stage though I am too old for the current draft and would likely end up serving in other ways like working in a war industry.
The maximum age for enlisting in the Army is 42. I enlisted when I was 28. You can enlist any time you want. You don't have to be drafted to enlist. So why haven't you?
 

Bum

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I volunteered and served 23 years; if I was truly needed, yes, I would serve again.
 
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