I don’t have the links handy, but yes many are fully aware that the AVF (All Volunteer Force) is in some ways sectioning themselves off from the rest of the population. In other ways I could argue it’s almost becoming a “warrior caste” situation, where fathers serve, (at least one of) their sons serve, and so on. I’m not ready to say this is unhealthy, necessarily, but it’s a very real trend. The only way to fix it is to bring back the draft, in either full or some modified form.
>Where have you heard that?
My classmates in grad school, other networking events with perhaps over-educated professionals. N = 1 and all that.
> The only way to fix it is to bring back the draft, in either full or some modified form.
One idea is a draft for the reserves, not for active duty. That gives us the benefits of an AVF - the professionalism, etc. - and also gives Americans 'skin in the game' when at war, when reserves are called up. It's hard to imagine Afghanistan dragging on for 20 years if, for the whole time, civilians were being sent there to drive trucks, make dinner, even do some skilled labor, etc. And it would solve the civilian-military divide.
But how much effectiveness would we lose with draftee reserves? I believe that volunteer professionals are far superior to draftees in active duty, but reserve jobs frequently seem different.
> I could argue it’s almost becoming a “warrior caste” situation, where fathers serve, (at least one of) their sons serve, and so on. I’m not ready to say this is unhealthy, necessarily, but it’s a very real trend.
I've seen that phrase many times, but how can that be a good thing, especially in a democracy?
We got lied to about Vietnam. Iraq had WMDs. Afghanistan was a budding democracy, fully equipped to stand on its own. Russia was an unstoppable modern military and we need hundreds of billions to hold them off!
Now. All those people lied - buy we're blaming the civilian population for not having skin in a game which is clearly run by liars, and not "doing more" to stop these liars?
We've watched it mangle generation after generation of our young people, and none of the liars are held responsible.
Of course we don't want skin in the game.
In a healthy democracy, these military liars wouldn't last. It's not a healthy democracy.
> All those people lied - buy we're blaming the civilian population ...
Those people are us. The system is us, including you and me. There's nobody else to blame, and nobody else to do anything about it. Nothing in the parent comment offers a solution, or a better solution, or an improvement on the existing solution.
Blaming some unnamed entity, pulling out a list of bad things that have happened over a half-century, simplifying and hyperbolizing them, taking them out of context (of the good, of the possibilities, of the causes and effects, etc.) - that only disrupts the situation further, and that act is part of the reason our system sometimes doesn't work. That comment was written in your capacity as a fully fledged, fully vested actor in the system. Of course it isn't working right here, right now.
No. There's no context - they lied to get us into multiple wars. The American people don't want that shit. This sounds like apologia for the military-corporatic interventionist garbage.
Honestly it's the same infuriating "personal responsibility" CRAP like recycling - it's a smokescreen, meant to make a collective problem your personal responsibility. It doesn't matter how many bottles you throw out if you allow the factory up the street to make 1B of them, some of them are going to end up in the river, but do we hold the businesses accountable or make them switch to glass bottles? "That would impact their profits!"
A rational actor would avoid, if at all possible, anything to do with the military. It hasn't "worked" for us for decades and decades. Those people are NOT US.
>Where have you heard that?
My classmates in grad school, other networking events with perhaps over-educated professionals. N = 1 and all that.