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Being a citizen and a resident of the United kingdom it is obviously difficult for me to comment on the situation in the United States. However being an ex-military man i do have some input for the debate on national service.

So Military draft, national service or conscription however you choose to reference it, each description boils down to an infringement on civil liberty. To force any one to fight is wrong, regardless of their beliefs. It is considered morally and legally incorrect to force animals to do so, such as cockerels or pit bull terriers. So how can it be justified to make a man or a woman take up arms and engage in combat against their own will?

Quite simply it can not. If your armed forces are under manned, under strength and radically spread too thinly, the obvious thing to do, is stop inviting yourself to police the world, stop invading other nations and ultimately don't create or commit to war. da da! How difficult can it be? Keep yourself to your self. Withdraw your troops to the sanctuary of your own land and protect it from within.

The armed forces are essential, but training and standards have been allowed over the decades to fall, and many a slacker, a thief and a coward have been able to slip through the recruitment net. This tells me only one thing that the army the navy and the air force already sustains a life style for a percentage of the country's wasters and bad apples. These people are counter productive in any organization let alone one where you need to be able to count on your team members as a matter of life and death. Could you picture an army for instance that is made up of all the the gangsters and rogues from the communities that they skulk in.

Does a country like Iraq for example need to be occupied by a band of armed robbers and rapists? No i don't think so. The majority of service personnel are of good stock, ethically and choose to serve and protect. Those people who elect to become bank robbers, bullies and drug dealers couldn't possibly uphold the oaths taken by military folk as it is not in their nature to do so. In my opinion they would turn any war zone into a theater of racketeering and profit, for their own despicable gain.

We need to educate people at an early age before they fall prey to drugs and violent life styles in the hope that they will join the forces by choice as soldiers for the greater good. Not to treat their service as yet another prison sentence only one where the prisoners are trusted to handle weapons of destruction. Would you start issuing assault rifles to the inmates of a federal penal facility? Again i don't think so. The armed forces don't teach you respect it is something that is ingrained, most soldiers already posses it prior to enrollment and that is why they opt to join up.

On a lighter note conscription in the United States could save the tax payer a lot of revenue as a high percentage of recruits could provide their own fire arms. But seriously i do believe that there should be some kind of pre-governmental national service for any wannabe politician if they were made to serve a minimum of three years in a military outfit and experience first hand active service for them selves, they may not be so keen to jump on the band wagon of the war machine and send innocent men and women to face the horrific truth of combat, then a country and the environment could save on the manufacture of body bags!

Learn more about this author, Anthony Campbell-Innes.
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