"The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended themselves. Their system was to make every man a soldier and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so." - Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814.
Aug 18
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Sun, 10/26/2008 - 10:11pm
I respect the view of Major Newkirk, but have a different perspective, as a soldier drafted during the Vietnam War, who did not believe in the war and did not want to serve in the Army, but did for 2 years.
Just because I was a draftee did not mean that I did not do my duty, and serve as well as I could (even though I did not want to be in the Army). I had a low draft number, and came from a middle-lower-middle class family from a small town in Nebraska - so unlike some politicals, could not squiggle out of things. But what the draft did mean, was those who were at risk of being drafted, and the parents of those who were drafted had a serious political stake in the integrity of the war being fought. Was it really being fought for the defense of America? Was it necessarily in our country's defense and self-interest? I believe the answers to these questions were no - and it was the massive demonstrations of Americans in response to these questions and against the war which eventually ended the War. I believe the same questions are relevant with respect to Iraq - except since the children of the parents of middle and upper class America are not generally at risk - so the public outcry against the war has been limited and slow. If my two daughters were now at risk to shipping overseas to Iraq, my views would certainly become more vocal.
Although I did not want to serve, but did so with honor and diligence, I believe the pressure of a universal draft keeps a country and society honest in its warlike tendencies.
A Reluctant Soldier in Nebraska
Wed, 10/22/2008 - 6:00pm
As a current military officer serving in the U.S. Army, I feel conscription does not make a nation stronger. We (the U.S.), without a doubt, still have the best military in the world without conscription. Today’s military requires a professional service member who WANTS to be part Armed Services. A military force comprised of service members who are less than whole-heartedly committed, only serve as a detriment to an organization’s success (on and off the battlefield). Military service is not for everyone. The current force is indeed stretched thin, but implementing compulsory military service is the not the answer at this juncture.
A strong nation is one that has security, personal freedoms, a free democracy with the right to vote, a fair judicial system, and a strong military to defend it. Check, Check, Check, Check, Check, and CHECK!!
Major Scott H. Newkirk
U.S. Army
Command and General Staff College
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
Sun, 10/19/2008 - 11:16pm
I do not believe that conscription for long-duty service or overseas service can be justified in a nation committed to liberty and priding itself on preserving the freedom of all its citizens. However, these United States are a community that may in certain emergencies need to rapidly call upon its people to defend life, liberty, and property against natural disaster, civil disorder, or foreign invasion. It is for this purpose that the States are required to raise and maintain a militia, and it is for this purpose that all able-bodied, law-abiding adult citizens are expected to make themselves available to serve in that militia if called upon. An armed and vigilant citizenry is the best protection against tyranny. A nation in arms, especially so large and diverse as ours, would be a match for any invader, whether organized army or irregular bands of savages.
-- A Virginia Whig
Mon, 10/13/2008 - 8:37pm
As a serving military officer the answer is a undeniable no. The are multiple pillars that make a nation strong. Our's is a nation of laws. Ours is a nation with a free market place, ours is a nation of tolerance (compared to the rest of the world) and ours is nation that still clings to its idealism in which it is still possible to dream of what could be. The military is but a piece of the fabric of the nation. It's strength lies in the raw resource that is handed to it, its young people, WHO VOLUNTEER. The cataclysms of the 20th century demanded a rapidly expanded manpower pool, it served its purpose and quickly stood down when done. Society largely supported this call to duty. The tenets above are what allowed a VOLUNTEER force to stare down the barrel of an empire and win. Comparing us to Rome or Greece of years gone by is irrelevant. Simpler times, many challenges to their everyday survival by invading empires makes the analogy very different. Jefferson would not condone a compulsory military service but he would expect that every citizen would be thankful enough to be an American that the notion of serving would not be foreign to them if needed. Jefferson was a diplomat, a cabinet member and a President and when needed exercised military options in the interest of the nation. His views on our 21st Century politic with its military would be the conversation of a lifetime. Perhaps we should summon him, Washington, Hamilton and Adams back to see if the "thinkers" of their time could possibly digest what we have today. JG
Thu, 10/02/2008 - 9:40am
NO.
K. Suarez
Thu, 09/18/2008 - 8:35am
I would accept compulsory military service only if it were approved in a public referendum by majority vote.How many senators'/governors' children have died in the past wars compared to children of ordinary men and women?And who talks 'patriotism' to fight wars with other people's hands?
I am talking from the point of view of a person whose two brothers died in Vietnam,leaving 3 orphans,and 2 widows.Happy to live in Europe now.
Mon, 09/08/2008 - 11:07am
Slavery, regardless of the purpose never makes a country stronger. Compulsory military service is just another name for slavery. If one's country is such that people are not freely willing to defend it from a foreign invasion, then it's questionable whether one's country is worth fighting for or not.
An individual
Wed, 08/27/2008 - 10:34am
Most of the respondents said nothing against having, as we do, a standing volunteer army of professional soldiers. And, certainly, none can say anything but our military is the best, most committed, best trained, in the world! What possibly could make our country weaker is having to fight on several different fronts at once -- weaker in strength, weaker in economics -- which is only common sense. To characterize others' opinions as childish is beneath the standards of this blog. As I recall, we have fought for the individual's right to express one's opinion. An American in Florida
Wed, 08/27/2008 - 8:09am
I think this kind of childish commentary is ill informed. Show me one country that does not have a military and has existed more than 10 years? Did the military weaken America when it provided aid to Thailand and Burma? Did the military weaken America when it liberated Nazi concentration camps? Do not confuse poor leadership in the executive mansion with an effective military. Look around your home today? Obviously you used the internet to post this comment. Do you realize the US Military was the major impetuous behind the internet? So, I guess it did make the nation weaker?
Wed, 08/27/2008 - 8:01am
I would submit that the draft had a very positive impact on the US society. This year we celebrated 60 years of racially integrated services. Could we have achieved the civil rights accomplishemnts had we not shown our citizens that other races, and american subcultures (north vs south, urban vs rural) can live nad work side by side? My ultra-conservative father-in-law never met an African-American until he served in the USMC 9in the early 1950s. His entire perspective of the African-American culture changed through that experience. He challanged the racism he encountered when he returned home. How many other americans experienced the same thing?
Tue, 08/26/2008 - 6:45pm
Military doesnt make countries stronger it makes them weaker
Mon, 08/25/2008 - 10:32am
I think that compulsory service is feasible in a free society only when there is a bedrock assurance that such involuntary servitude is for the legtimate defense of the republic. As long as those in power have an international interventionist mindset, there can be no such assurance. The Swiss model is worthy of emulation in this regard. To hand over the power of and to assume the cost of compulsory national service to the federal government without explicit restrictions that the services of these citizens in uniform can only be used in the immediate defense of the nation would guarantee a never ending chain of small wars. All done to placate the ego of the professional polictical class.
The Modern Whig
Sun, 08/24/2008 - 3:27pm
Perhaps I was in error by assuming that what was meant by compulsory military service meant a year or 2 of training and a return to civilian life. A compulsory military draft and an army of draftees is/was not in my thinking – but rather, more in line with Israel’s military plan. This would definitely benefit our young men and women with discipline and responsibility, and our country’s readiness in any eventuality of serious threat or attack. And that would most certainly be agreeable to Mr. Jefferson.
Being the mother of sons, I do not say this lightly, but with a great deal of prayer. An American in Florida
Fri, 08/22/2008 - 4:08pm
I agree that society has changed a lot since Jefferson's day but I really do beleive that this countries youth would benefit from a short spell of Compulsory National Service. I'm not talking about send kids of to Iraq but perhaps a compromise of sneding them thorugh basic trianing, teaching them some discipline, instilling some values in them and then dispatching them to a short program which could include helping vulnerable people or overseas aid work.
I really think the USA would benefit from this...it might help get the gun crime and drug problem down if our kids were shown some strong role models.
Fri, 08/22/2008 - 3:26pm
Jefferson was from a different time. At the time that Jefferson was in office, and before it, America had a very weak centralized government, a weak national military, and little to no public education. At that time the matter of global influence was decided as much by military might as it was by economic persuasion. So with that in mind I can see why Jefferson would be in favor of wide spread compulsory service. I believe that Thomas Jefferson was a smart enough man that he, if he were in office today, would recognize the differences in our global and national situations and formulate his positions in a different manner. In this light compulsory service is no longer needed to advance us as a nation and a global player. Our military might will not be garnered through mass of numbers, as it once was, but through our grasp of military technology and the trained and calculated soldiers that wield it. This new warfare does not necessitate, and would be hampered by, the compulsory soldier, be it male or female.
Thu, 08/21/2008 - 7:20pm
Compulsory military services may make a country's armed services stronger, but it weakens its body politic, and undermines its governments.
The proof is no farther to seek than the Vietnam war in which compulsory service permitted four administrations to pursue reckless policies without reference to the views of individuals who it could and did require to enforce them, to become the canon fodder of foreign policy. Young people may have objected to serving the causes of mass murder, imperialism, indiscriminate aerial bombardment, free-fire zones, corruption of Indo-Chinese governments, and all the revolting rest in defense of an idiotic "domino theory," but Selective Service put their convictions beside the point. It didn't matter what the soldiers thought. They were required to kill.
Without the ability to force young men to participate in madness, the war would have ended in 1959 before it began, but just as it did in 1975, in a negotiated stand down lasting just long enough for us to get the hell out of a place in which we should never have been.
America's government should always be in the position of having, before they take the oath of enlistment, to persuade prospective soldiers of the rightness of its military adventures, and never in the position of being able to force men and women to fight and to kill and to die no matter how bad the cause. What stronger argument for that than the Vietnam Memorial? Try to stand in the angle of that polished black wall, in the list of names that record draft-fostered death, destruction, waste, and disruption of the life of a generation, without crying.
Long ago, as the war ended, just after the helicopters lifted off the roof of the Saigon embassy, I spoke with the mother of the last American soldier killed in Vietnam, a woman in Belleville, Illinois. About her son's death she wanted to know, "For what? For what? For what?" He was a draftee.
In this quote, Jefferson, the founder of West Point (he was trying to create a corps of engineers, and did), is arguing against a standing national army and its inherent evils, against the wicked uses of a conscript army by politicians unfettered of the peoples' will. He is arguing for a militia, a hearth-and-home citizen-based service for self-defense, not a professional soldiers corps standing by for geopolitical deployment to the other side of the world by whatever cretin we've put in the White House.
That was, however, a different world. In this world, our militia, our National Guard, now is but another creature of foreign policy. Jefferson would be appalled.
— A Virginian
Thu, 08/21/2008 - 2:43pm
I think serious questions about the power of the Commander-in-Chief have arisen in the modern era, and the War Powers Act has proven unworthy of answering those questions. Should a President be able to launch a war on his own? Since Jefferson's time we've also seen suffrage for all males of 18 years of age. Perhaps compulsory military service would impose a self-enforcing limit on the Commander-in-Chief. This may limit our nation from engaging in squabbles, but it might also lead to declared wars for more serious threats; a change that I think makes us more resolute.
A Hoosier-esque Tar Heel (who is too old for the draft)
Thu, 08/21/2008 - 10:41am
Jefferson wrote to James Monroe in 1813 that “We must train and classify the whole of our male citizens, and make military instruction a regular part of collegiate education. We can never be safe till this is done." Jefferson was a proponent of required military participation from capable males, but if he were alive today, would he extend that to females?
Tue, 08/19/2008 - 4:23pm
In our yet unborn nation, way back in the l7th C, there was a militia, and in the 18th C there was a militia made up of not only the poorer, uneducated men, but also skilled men, and middle class men who knew they would have no inheritance and needed to earn money with which to buy land. Some fought with Washington in the French and Indian War and were called Minute Men. As tensions mounted between England and the colonists, men were chosen from the militia for their ability in defensive military matters and that core became known as Minute Men. Non militia citizens would rally to them when word went out they were needed, as in Lexington and Concord. The militia and Minute Men stood ready to defend against the Red Coats. When Congress authorized the Continental Army under Washington, the militia ended.
In view of this history coupled with today’s complexity of military tactics and threats to our national safety, I have no doubt Mr. Jefferson would agree to training men and women against the eventuality of any such attack. In fact, Mr. Jefferson would probably prefer that readiness rather than a standing army. Although, I’m not sure if he knew all that we are up against, he well might say for the duration, at least, we need a standing army. An American in Florida
Tue, 08/19/2008 - 12:30am
One of the tenets of the Revolution was freedom from compulsory service, from being impressed into the military. It was one of the disadvantages of the colonies that drafting soldiers into the Continental Army met with indifferent success.
I think the question is irrelevant. Would compulsory service make the country stronger? Perhaps. But I'd submit that a better question might be: Is compulsory military service contrary to what the Founding Fathers in general intended?
A Delawarean
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