[QUOTE]Originally posted by anarky

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by KrayzeFoO

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by anarky

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by anarky

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Ulrich

 

Nah....I'll pass on this one.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by anarky

 

I'm merely pointing out some historical facts as well as something to consider when forming an opinion. The fact that they are 180 degrees opposite of yours does not make them any more or less legitimate than yours. My point being that there are always two sides to look at, and selective perception of history does not help to further an objective discussion.

You want to know where my attitude (I'd still call it "opinion") is coming from? Easy -- I grew up in a country with a draft. And as such my experience has been the following:

From a purely economic view, conscription is actually fairly expensive. You train people to reap a potential benefit for only a relatively short period of time, you have to pay for uniforms, equipment and whatnot and then discard them when they leave (I personally would not want to wear someone else's used clothing, but maybe that's just me), and I'd venture to guess that the back-office admin is more expensive if you have to track people over the years as well.

From a military efficiency view, it wrecks havoc on the army's performance, since people either did not get the same level of training, short-timers might be less inclined to take risks, and there may be political considerations that impact troop readiness (in Germany, for example, conscripts cannot be sent on out-of country missions unless they volunteer -- what kind of troop/mission planning do you think is possible under these circumstances if you don't know which troops are available to go?). Nevermind that the "quality of work" from people who don't want to be there to begin with is not the greatest.

The draft in Germany was started or re-implemented after WWII because of the experiences of WWI and the Weimar Republic. At the time, the military's officer corps became sort of their own, elitist and independent group that was somewhat disassociated from the rest of society and ended up supporting the rise of extremists to power. In order to integrate the military into society, they developed the idea of "citizen in uniform" and were thinking that there was less chance for a new uncontrolled elite to form if there was a constant influx of new people. From that point of view I guess the draft was successful.

Partly because of budget reasons, the mandatory time to serve has been reduced to a year, I think, if not even 10 months. Only men are drafted, and at least at the moment there is such a large pool available that they draft only a fraction of who could/should go -- the inequality is so large that even the German High Court has raised their eye browes at the issue. This is including vacation time, and including three months of basic training, so you really get only about five to six months of semi-useful time out of the conscripts. That time is typically spent in the barracks drinking beer and gambling (okay, slight exageration, but I am trying to make a point here).

There is alternative service available for conscientious objectors, and quite frankly, in my opinion that is the only reason why the draft still exists. These objectors are typically employed in caricative organizations or medical institutions (care for the elderly, drive an ambulance, whatever) and the health care system depends on them -- if they actually had to replace all of these people and hire replacements at market rate, the health care system would go bankrupt. Is that a good reason to keep the draft going? Not really.

Some people say that mandatory service would be good for people to learn about your government and country. How you are supposed to gain a deeper appreciation of government in such an environment is beyond me. To me and most of my friends it was just a collossal waste of time. And another impact on society as a whole is that people lose a year in their life and would enter the work force later, which would reduce the overall productivity of society as the active labor force is reduced (but I am sure it looks great in the unemployment statistics).

Why did the UK or France, for example, switch to all-volunteer armies? Because the draft does not work, especially not in today's environment where you need quick-reaction, well-trained professional units.