Check out Sebastian’s for more information on Obama’s compulsory volunteer service plan.
Back when I was a Coastie, we had a word for a volunteer assignment that wasn’t actually optional – it was called “getting voluntold”. I wonder how our college students are going to react if they’re voluntold to go live in a barracks for 3 months?
I was told in bootcamp that Navy stood for Never Again Volunteer Yourself. It’s a notion that’s worked for me in the years since…
Nice to know that Israel and Singapore are now considered fascist states.
Kal -
To some degree it is fascist. But remember, they are still fighting their ideological wars in hostile environments.
Hab -
It may teach them some discipline and direction for once.
On the upside, I don’t see it actually happening, because the military has so many physical and mental restrictions on who can and can’t join. So regardless of who gets sent up, they may be outright rejected.
A compromise to that would be to offer more benefits to joining, instead of constantly stripping those things away from soldiers while they are over in Iraq (I want to slap Bush and all of Congress for letting things go bad in the last 6 years). It beats a draft, since you’d get longer, better trained individuals instead of instantly pulling 20k noobs off the streets and giving them 2 weeks to get ready for war.
There’s a difference between mandatory military service and “compulsory volunteer work”.
But it’s also worth noting that the modern military draft was the brainchild of noted liberal/progressive, Woodrow Wilson – who was also a big, big fan of Benito Mussolini.