Conscription: State sponsored slavery?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

What do you call it then, Gawdzilla, when politicians order their military to start taking people against their will and sending them to war? Recruitment? Encouragement?

I call it not slavery. It can be coerced, but the government can do this for a multitude of things. Was Prohibition slavery because we couldn't legally drink?

If you mush the language, you will eventually be talking a language only you can understand.

You know that the folk who built those marvelous Roman roads and aqueducts were mostly state slaves, don't you? (not soldiers, just slaves... though I don't remember that public slaves were liable to be sold in the private market).

I don't personally know anyone who helped build those roads.

[Svartalf]

From a legalist/political definition, I don't see where you have to go into the absurd...
It's not because a slave acepts his condition (especially if it's temporary) that he's any less enslaved.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

From a legalist/political definition, I don't see where you have to go into the absurd...
It's not because a slave acepts his condition (especially if it's temporary) that he's any less enslaved.

What fucking position are you talking about.

[Hermit]

What do you call it then, Gawdzilla, when politicians order their military to start taking people against their will and sending them to war? Recruitment? Encouragement?

It's part and parcel of the social compact in the particular society that does that. If you can't do anything about it, vote with your feet. Join a society where this does not happen.

[Svartalf]

From a legalist/political definition, I don't see where you have to go into the absurd...
It's not because a slave acepts his condition (especially if it's temporary) that he's any less enslaved.

What fucking position are you talking about.

If I knew your effing meaning and basic position, maybe we could meet more efficiently?

a) you seem to deny that citizens deprived of rights and forced into service are enslaved, even when it is demonstrated that other citizens have gone off with much less service, or no service at all.
b) you repeated several times that those who hold that position are using a "special definition"

Maybe YOUR position ought to be made clearer?

[Svartalf]

What do you call it then, Gawdzilla, when politicians order their military to start taking people against their will and sending them to war? Recruitment? Encouragement?

It's part and parcel of the social compact in the particular society that does that. If you can't do anything about it, vote with your feet. Join a society where this does not happen.

No it's not... or you'll explain me why some conscripts go to war while others don't, in "peace time", and why, still in "peace time" and without reserve troops being called up or any kind of mobilisation being undertaken, some conscripts have seen their service time arbitrarily prolongated (with no say about it, of course)

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I've stated my position.

[Svartalf]

In a 12 page thread, it looks like I've missed it... then again, p 4-9 went like a blur.

[Hermit]

What do you call it then, Gawdzilla, when politicians order their military to start taking people against their will and sending them to war? Recruitment? Encouragement?

It's part and parcel of the social compact in the particular society that does that. If you can't do anything about it, vote with your feet. Join a society where this does not happen.

No it's not... or you'll explain me why some conscripts go to war while others don't, in "peace time", and why, still in "peace time" and without reserve troops being called up or any kind of mobilisation being undertaken, some conscripts have seen their service time arbitrarily prolongated (with no say about it, of course)

You live in a society, right? You elect representatives to make decisions on your behalf. Those representatives may deem it necessary to introduce conscription. You don't like it, so what can you do? That's right - elect representatives that think conscription is not a good idea. If you can't find enough supporters for your cause, don't pretend you have the right to be personally exempted from being subject to popular sentiment. Suck it up or fuck off.

And don't say we cannot do anything about what our representatives do. In 1972 the Australian voters chucked out the current government and brought in a new lot of politicians. Within two days of the election result conscription was finished for all intents and purposes. At the risk of sounding totally reactionary, I say say this: we live in the society we chose and we get the government we deserve.

[/devil's advocacy]

[Svartalf]

When the state starts treating some citizens less well than others... oh, wait, at the time, conscripts (being often 18-20 when 21 was voting age) did not vote yet... so, when the state breaks equality in the way it treats citizens, and subjects some to hardship that it does not inflict on others... I do tend to cry foul. For the record, even though I'm not particularly suited for the occupation, and allergic to discipline, I was seriously envisioning volunteering for a prolonged military service if I could have got a more interesting posting out of it... of course, I didn't know they would exempt me just because I'm effectively one eyed at the time I was thinking that.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Svarty, I served with an all-volunteer group for a few years, other young men stupid enough to find dangerous situations interesting, if not actually fun. I then went in to the "real" Navy and worked with people who had volunteered and who had been drafted. The draftees were treated exactly like the volunteers (other than the realities of a two year enlistment vice a four- or six-year hitch). That's the way it was in the American military, and this is why I call bullshit to slavery. There was never, to my modest knowledge, a unit made up of exclusively draftees. For one thing, the NCOs would have been in the military a lot longer than two years. Slavery in the US military simply did not exist.

[Svartalf]

Looks liike there is a misunderstanding.

What I'm saying is that, in what was officially peace time when no reserve troops were recalled, draftees have been known to be sent to combat lines and kept under uniform twice as long as the normal duration of military service. Earlier draftees (even during the Indochina war period) were not, nor were later ones sent to the various peacekeeping actions we have been part of, unless they volunteered (and I mean REALLY volunteered). This was not a basic military service to earn the franchise, this was not war time imposition (or at least nobody admitted to it or did anything else that would tell of war time), that was straight shanghaiing of supposedly free citizens into service that went far above and beyond their regular obligations to the Nation.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Looks liike there is a misunderstanding.

What I'm saying is that, in what was officially peace time when no reserve troops were recalled, draftees have been known to be sent to combat lines and kept under uniform twice as long as the normal duration of military service. Earlier draftees (even during the Indochina war period) were not, nor were later ones sent to the various peacekeeping actions we have been part of, unless they volunteered (and I mean REALLY volunteered). This was not a basic military service to earn the franchise, this was not war time imposition (or at least nobody admitted to it or did anything else that would tell of war time), that was straight shanghaiing of supposedly free citizens into service that went far above and beyond their regular obligations to the Nation.

And it's still not slavery.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Defense in depth has nothing to do with the infamous "elastic defence" of 1940...

Perhaps not that of 1940, insofar as an elastic defense still requires the troops to face to the front. But elastic defense and defense-in-depth are interchangeable terms denoting a defensive strategy based on multiple layers of resistance to an attack, rather than concentrating all resources into one line.

[Svartalf]

There was no such strategy in 1940 France.