I came here to talk about the draft

[balmofgilead]

Props to anyone who got the reference in the subject line.

DISCUSSION QUESTION:
What do you think about the idea of a military draft, both a) in general and b) specifically now?

Random pieces of information:

1) I personally am opposed to the current war stuff going on in Iraq (Is it still a war? Did we "win"?), which prompts me to cursorily condemn the idea of a draft.

2) Someone recently told me that they believe a draft would/could be a good thing.
Their logic was as follows: if there's a draft, people from all walks of life will be fighting (including children and relatives and family friends of the warmongering politicians and businesspeople), and this will cause The People In Charge to act more moderately/responsibly and give more thought and consideration to what they're doing. The assumption was that the military currently consists largely of poor people and minorities, and that The People In Charge may (sadly) view these people as more expendable than, say, middle-class white people.

3) There are more things I could say, but instead I'll shut up and see what people say/think.

Comments

[tobeginagain.livejournal.com]

I think I'd actually have loved to be asked to do mandatory service. [I did it in Israel for a year and paid a shitload, but that's another story.] I think I would have been more likely to take a year off between highschool and college to volunteer if it were more accepted in our society. As it is, I felt pretty off the college-gradschool-career track by going to Israel. Now I'm staying off by working and feel like all my peers keep getting ahead of me. But then I remember that I'm exactly where I want to be and it's all okay again.

(Any reason youdeleted your tsunamisongrant?)

[balmofgilead.livejournal.com]

I think I'm ready for a volunteer sort of thing now, but I wasn't in the right mode for it after highschool (I was desparate to get the hell out of there and focus on myself for awhile, which may not have been a good thing).

I think what you're doing sounds cool. I'm taking a year off (er, well, not proceeding directly to grad school or whatever further education I'll eventually submit to) sort of by default and not having a clue what I want to do yet and needing to hone some of my other-than-academic skills. I don't care so much about doing whatever everyone else is doing, but for some reason not "getting on with my life" makes me a bit anxious--which is really ridiculous, because if whatever I'm doing is what I want to be doing then, it is life.

I changed the tsunami post to 'private'...it felt a little..silly or something to put up for people to read. That's always a conflict I have: being torn between using this as a personal journal, writing what I want and making almost everything public in case anyone ever wants to read it vs. writing to an audience of some sort. I would totally keep it as the former on principle except that I've kind of begun liking getting attention. It's ironic that I tend to write less, and less openly, as more people have added me.

[tobeginagain.livejournal.com]

It's ironic that I tend to write less, and less openly, as more people have added me.

yeah, i hear you.

it's funny to see such a long chain of comments without any user pics - i can't differentiate the conversation at first glance!

[balmofgilead.livejournal.com]

Is this better?

[tobeginagain.livejournal.com]

yeah, but not fun/funny anymore. boy, i'm trouble. why'd you switch back?

[balmofgilead.livejournal.com]

to please my readership!

um, I dunno. I'm looking for ways to procrastinae.