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I'm not sure if there is really any widespread acceptance in any democratic country that the government can just decide to send anyone to a foreign war. Every w
by qwytw 5y ago
I'm not sure if there is really any widespread acceptance in any democratic country that the government can just decide to send anyone to a foreign war. Every western soldier who died in Iraq, Afghanistan etc. volunteered. I think that if the US government just decided to reintroduce conscription back in 2003 it would had went down much worse than when they were sending conscripts to Vietnam and there'd probably be even much more resistance to that these days.
- yaur 5y agoI’m not sure if you are familiar with Stop-loss [1] but it’s been used to some extent in pretty much every conflict over the last 30 years to keep people serving involuntarily. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-loss_policy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-loss_policy
- qwytw 5y agoI'd assume that at this point anyone signing up is (or should be) aware that the military can arbitrarily extend their service time?
- RandomLensman 5y agoWhich country has given up its ability to conscript? Not just chosen not to exercise it. I would call that general acceptance of that policy. In a specific case, whether to exercise on that policy is a more complex choice.
- qwytw 5y agoThere are many things governments in theory could legally do that would not be generally accepted by the public. I can hardly imagine a realistic scenario under which any western country could deploy conscripts in an overseas war without extreme opposition.