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I'm amazed at how naive a lot of the comments in this thread are. You can hop over to other corners of HN or Reddit and you have people convinced that WWIII is
by remarkEon 8y ago
I'm amazed at how naive a lot of the comments in this thread are. You can hop over to other corners of HN or Reddit and you have people convinced that WWIII is around the corner, or the rise of China is going to lead to a hot conflict in the Pacific again, or that migration and refugee crises will continue to dominate political discourse and cause other security problems. I don't think it's controversial to state that we've returned to the regular flow of history and Great Power conflict.
But a lot of what I'm seeing here amounts to discounting the importance of this because the "likelihood" of a draft is low, or the usual (wrongheaded) arguments about how because the percentage of people in the military who actually fight is low, so adding women to selective service requirements isn't a big deal. Serious countries don't think like this - especially a country that, allegedly, is supposed to shoulder most of the global security responsibility. You don't get to make hand waivey dismissals and still expect peak performance from these huge complex organizations, nor do we get to put off thinking about it because we think an event like WWIII is "unlikely for a while". On what time horizon does it have to be "likely" for us to have to actually engage with it? 50 years? 20? 10?
I don't think we've thought deeply enough about this at all, and frankly I don't view the prospect of my daughter or sister being drafted into a war as "progress".
- x220 8y ago> I don't view the prospect of my daughter or sister being drafted into a war as "progress" Neither is the prospect of only drafting men.
- remarkEon 8y agoMore complete naiveté. The world is not a playground full of hipster cafes where people actually take statements like that seriously.
- eesmith 8y agoNorway and Israel have female conscription. Are you really trying to say that those countries are full of hipster cafes and only populated by naive people? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription#Drafting_of_women https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription#Drafting_of_women > As of 2013, countries that were actively drafting women into military service included Bolivia,[58] Chad,[59] Eritrea,[60][61][62] Israel,[60][61][63] Mozambique[64] and North Korea.[65] Israel has universal female conscription ... > After a law passed in March 2003, Tunisia became the first Arab country to universally conscript women. > In 2015 Norway introduced female conscription, making it the first NATO member and first European country to have a legally compulsory national service for both men and women
- remarkEon 8y agoNorway and Israel always come up in these debates. In Norway it's national service - not necessarily direct military conscription. That's something I'd be willing to entertain. Israel is different, since one could argue they have a constant existential threat on their border and it makes sense to have a deliberate military requirement in place. They also side-step the gender integration issue by having all-female units, which isn't what happened when changes were made allowing women in combat roles. I'd still be against this.
- eesmith 8y agoSince you know about this topic already, please explain how your quip about "hipster cafes" and "complete naiveté" is a valid or meaningful description. Regarding "all-female units" in Israel, I'll point out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracal_Battalion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracal_Battalion : > The 33rd "Caracal" Battalion (Hebrew: גדוד קרקל) is an infantry combat battalion of the Israel Defense Forces, one of the three fully combat units (alongside the 'Lions of Jordan Battalion' and the 'Cheetah Battalion') in the Israeli military that is composed of both male and female soldiers. ... While Caracal is a mixed gender battalion, it has been 70% female since 2009. It is part of the 512th Sagi Brigade of the Southern Command.
- slavak 8y agoAs an Israeli, I'm not sure the IDF has even a single all-female unit. Most of the service is quite definitely fully integrated. You appear to have no idea of what you're talking about here.
- MagicPropmaker 8y agoGreetings from Tel Aviv. There are many, many hipster cafes in Israel! Try one of my favorites: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g1968311-d4280672-r165150031-Coffee_Annan-Merom_Golan.html https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g1968311-d428067...
- x220 8y agoWas there an actual idea in there?
- remarkEon 8y ago"The prospect of only drafting men is not progress" is an empty, meaningless statement. You probably don't like the idea of the draft at all, and that's fine, but it's naive. If we don't make deliberate choices about this then they get made for us.
- ykevinator 8y agoNorway and Israel are not melting pots. It's not the same, their conscriptions are colored by race or religion.
- solatic 8y agoIsrael very much is a melting pot. Yes, only Jewish people are drafted. But that includes a wide variety of backgrounds - people whose families are from the Middle East, Russia, Ethiopia, the West (particularly recent French immigrants)... The drafting class takes people who grew up in completely secular homes and in religious homes. There's an ongoing political battle over whether to draft people from ultra-Orthodox backgrounds. Additionally, there are some ultra-Orthodox volunteers, as well as volunteers from the Bedouin, Druze, Circassian, and Christian and Muslim Arab minorities. Indeed, the IDF is what forges an "Israeli" identity within the melting pot of Israeli society.
- Pristina 8y agoAnd it's okay to draft my son and brothers? Don't be a whiteknight.