Protestantism

» pink101 - Military

In response to Military posted by BrianTubbs:
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I wrote, "A conscripted military in which young men are trained--serve out a total of one year--and then released back into civilian life is not a 'Standing' military."
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and, Brian Responded with
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It would be a highly inefficient one.
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Please accept my apologies for saying this but you don't know what you're talking about.
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A military reserve, highly trained and ready to report in a moment's notice is probably as good a service as can be had. For one thing, they are individuals out of the regular society with a highly developed sense of what it means to be an American. They identify one hundred percent with every other American and do not see themselves as a class of people unto themselves.
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My military training was during a time when the draft was still going. Individuals drafted into the military were given the choice--if they qualified--to either go into the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, or the Coast Guard. Other than that, many young men enlisted when they got out of high school so they wouldn't have their career interrupted.
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A drafted army, it can be argued very well, is far better than a so-called "volunteer" army and in many ways.
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The military is thoroughly politicized. They depend on the party in power to provide them with their working conditions and they represent a large voting block. When I say, thoroughly politicized, I am not necessarily saying they vote one party or the other; but, they can be influenced to vote one way or the other. I'm sure the percentage of registered voters in the military approaches much closer to 100 percent than it does in the civilian population. Long time career people in the military are very politically oriented. My family has career military members.
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Comparing today's military in any way to the rag tag military of America's War for Independence is impossible. Volunteers came and went as they felt like it. I'm just learning some things about the Whigs and the Tories and how they fought each other. It's more appropriate to call that war a civil war than it is to call it a revolutionary war. It was a lot like the war being fought in Iraq in many respects. Bush should have read some history.
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-- posted by pink101