Chickenhawk Hall of Shame

[Farm Boy]

As the guy who was taking a beating for being sexist I am really glad you came along.

Well, quite possibly better than 120 guys not getting laid. This way you could just document and disable launch codes for a week every month. I suppose that would mean you need to add 25% more subs, but should make the whole fleet more stable.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Forgive my sheltered American-ness, but isn't that basically how it is done everywhere?

I wouldn't know, I'm also American, all I know is how it goes in the US military. And even then, I'm not an expert, I'm epileptic so I couldn't have joined even I'd wanted to. All I know is what I hear from the people I know who have served, and those guys tend to fall in to two camps:

1.) Guys that played too much Call of Duty and decided that being a soldier and getting to "kick down doors" was, like, WAY cool.

2.) Those who couldn't afford college and didn't get good enough grades in high school to get scholarships.

Luckily I've only known a few of the first kind, most of them are in the second category. The US military heavily pushes the "we'll pay for your education if you serve for (however many) years" message in high schools.

 

[Narz]

Shouldn't we be celebrating those smart enough to not go fight in dumb wars?

As long as that list is I've heard at least that many pleas on the subway starting with "I'm a homeless veteran..." (including today). Which of course shows how shamefully the US treats it's veterans but that idea that being a solider is naturally the best use of any (male) human being is ridiculous. Praise the lord for all those who dedicated their lives to better things than shooting gooks or A-rabs!

 

[Gori the Grey]

Shouldn't we be celebrating those smart enough to not go fight in dumb wars?

Maybe that, yes, but chickenhawks, as I understand it, are people who themselves avoided military service, but then advocated for (other people to go fight) dumb wars.

So, no, in the end, no celebration.

Now, how Britney Spears fits into either of those descriptions, I don't know.

Edit: Ok, by consulting the source in the OP, one can find that out. She 1) passed on an opportunity to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 2) apparently said this during Bush's presidency: ""I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that."

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Praise the lord for all those who dedicated their lives to better things than shooting gooks or A-rabs!

Would intimidating Soviets count as a better thing?

Not that I dedicated my life to it, but eight years is admittedly a long time.

 

[Hygro]

I'm not dodging any point. I think you're incredibly naive to believe that in whatever kind of circumstances would be felt to warrant a draft (immediate crisis, grinding war) that the country would then have a purely rationalistic discussion on the topic of whether women should also be conscriptable.

We don't seem to be able to have that discussion now when there are no complicating circumstances. Not only can't we have it, nobody's even thinking to have it, it's so far off our radar. So, big martial emergency underway, young soldiers dying, and that's when we're going to a clear-headed discussion of whether women should be draftable, too? Nuh-uh, let's go with the list we have on hand, and we'll have that hard discussion another time.

You tack on some unrealistic assumptions to assert your position. For example: why should including women be a clear headed discussion and not a part of the very patriotic surge that would be needed to finance the political capital necessary to reinstate a draft. Or that somehow including women presupposes scrapping or staying the current list, rather than adding on to it with, say, a delay.

What's especially weird to me is that until this thread, every person I've talked to in my adult life agrees that of course women would be drafted.

 

[Borachio]

Forgive my sheltered American-ness, but isn't that basically how it is done everywhere?

No. The British army has noticeably older personnel on average than its American counterpart.

For example, only 56% of personnel are under 30.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/284564/uk-af-personnel-report-1-april-2013-revised.pdf

 

[Commodore]

Shouldn't we be celebrating those smart enough to not go fight in dumb wars?

As long as that list is I've heard at least that many pleas on the subway starting with "I'm a homeless veteran..." (including today). Which of course shows how shamefully the US treats it's veterans but that idea that being a solider is naturally the best use of any (male) human being is ridiculous. Praise the lord for all those who dedicated their lives to better things than shooting gooks or A-rabs!

Soldiers are celebrated because what's the point of creating great works of art or having an intellectual and cultural paradise of you don't have the means to protect it? The fact remains that there will always be someone out there who would rather just take what you have rather than build it for themselves. To see what I'm talking about you only have to look at Athens and Sparta during the Peloponnesian Wars. Sure, the Athenians were intellectuals, democratic, and wealthy; but it was Spartan militarism that ultimately prevailed between the two.

Also don't believe all those "I'm a homeless veteran" people. A vast majority of them are not veterans at all and are just trying to play on the current "support the troops" trend in the US since 9/11. Every time someone tells me they are a homeless veteran I start asking them questions, since I served and will be able to tell if they really served or not by how they answer the questions. Even if they do turn out to be veterans I still have little sympathy, since the VA has a lot more programs than people think to help veterans in need. I remember when I was at a pretty low point after getting out of the military where I just couldn't find a job and we were running out of money pretty fast. I talked to a veterans representative that worked for the state that my uncle (who was served in the Air Force) referred me to. This vet rep hooked me up with all kinds of programs through the VA that ensured that the VA pretty much paid all of my bills until I could find a job. I would also go to my vet rep once a week with all the jobs I applied for and he would actually call them up with me sitting right there and pretty much pressure them to give an answer as to whether or not they would hire me. After a year of no success in finding a job, this vet rep got me employed in two months.

A big problem with actual veterans that are struggling or are homeless is that they are too proud to ask for help. I mean, the VA actually does a pretty decent job of helping veterans out, but they can't help you if they don't know you need it. So any homeless veteran (that actually is a veteran and not some scammer) I encounter, I tell to go to the VA and I give them the business card of the vet rep that helped me out when I needed it.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

No. The British army has noticeably older personnel on average than its American counterpart.

For example, only 56% of personnel are under 30.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/284564/uk-af-personnel-report-1-april-2013-revised.pdf

Wow.

 

[Borachio]

Are you surprised?

I think the British Army likes to recruit young men, but it likes to keep them for a long time. It's a small and highly professional body of men. Or so it tells me.

What are the demographics of the US Army?

Nearly onehalf
(48.8%) of Active Duty enlisted personnel are 25 years old or younger, with the next largest
age group being 26 to 30 year-olds (23.0%),

http://www.militaryonesource.mil/12038/MOS/Reports/2012_Demographics_Report.pdf

So, that's 71% under 30. Bit of a difference, there, I think.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yup, it's 15%.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Are you surprised?

I think the British Army likes to recruit young men, but it likes to keep them for a long time. It's a small and highly professional body of men. Or so it tells me.

What are the demographics of the US Army?


http://www.militaryonesource.mil/12038/MOS/Reports/2012_Demographics_Report.pdf

So, that's 71% under 30. Bit of a difference, there, I think.

The US could not possibly afford a force composition with a large 'professional' component. A recruit straight out of high school with no particular prospects doesn't need much pay on top of his three hot and a cot. But to keep them for a couple decades? That ain't cheap. There are way too many jobs in the world that don't involve killing people.

 

[Borachio]

I think you're right. The British Army is of course very much smaller. Around 147,000, I think.

US Army, 546,000.

Actually, that surprises me. The US population is 5 times that of the UK.

 

[Gori the Grey]

What's especially weird to me is that until this thread, every person I've talked to in my adult life agrees that of course women would be drafted.

Here's hoping we never have occasion to find out which of us is right.

Spoiler :

But it's me.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I think you're right. The British Army is of course very much smaller. Around 147,000, I think.

US Army, 546,000.

Actually, that surprises me. The US population is 5 times that of the UK.

I'm going to take a wild guess with absolutely no research or anything else to back it up.

The British Army, with its older force and large professional contingent, is doing for itself what the US military has large numbers of civilian DoD employees to do. Rather than fill those jobs with 'civil service', keeping them within the military allows for more higher paying positions for the career soldier.

 

[Borachio]

Um. I don't think so. Those 147,000 are active personnel.

The MoD is another matter.

Let's face it, the UK is still the world's number 2 hawkish nation. And maintains its NATO commitment of 2% of GDP devoted to its military. (Just about. Though no one likes it.)

 

[Narz]

Maybe that, yes, but chickenhawks, as I understand it, are people who themselves avoided military service, but then advocated for (other people to go fight) dumb wars.

So, no, in the end, no celebration.

Oh yeah, thats just disgusting.

Soldiers are celebrated because what's the point of creating great works of art or having an intellectual and cultural paradise of you don't have the means to protect it?

If our wars overseas really helped protect America I'd be all for them.

 

[Flying Pig]

I'm going to take a wild guess with absolutely no research or anything else to back it up.

The British Army, with its older force and large professional contingent, is doing for itself what the US military has large numbers of civilian DoD employees to do. Rather than fill those jobs with 'civil service', keeping them within the military allows for more higher paying positions for the career soldier.

Would that it were so! That was very much how we did things back in the seventies and eighties: you lived in a building built by a soldier, went to breakfast and ate food cooked by a soldier, opened your letters delivered by a soldier, went to the armoury to draw a rifle maintained by a soldier, shot on ranges staffed by soldiers, went to a medical centre staffed by soldiers, had your pay handled by soldiers... now all of those functions are, in at least some places, handled by civilians. I'll reserve judgement on most of them, but I can personally vouch for it that it's not done the food any good.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

You can be 'active personnel' and be assigned to support tasks.

One of the many reasons I got out of the Navy was that my particular NEC came with a five to one rotation. If I completed a five year shipboard assignment I was eligible for one year of shore duty.

Now, at the shipyard, there is an office where the maintenance history of every piece of equipment in the shipyard is maintained. Because it is a navy shipyard this maintaining of history is required to be done 'the Navy way'. There are a fair number of highly paid DoD folk who accomplish this. They might work in that office their entire career, because it is a pretty good job. The lamest bonehead in my division could do that job. Equipment history on the boat is maintained exactly the same Navy way, and we rotated through it as a 'collateral duty'.

Genuine sailors could have just as easily been rotated through that office, creating shore duty billets. More shore duty billets means you have to keep more sailors, but you could knock that rotation back to four to two and that would make it a lot easier to keep more sailors. That leads to more 'long term professionals' in the force.

It is entirely possible the British military operates that way.

EDIT: I think I was ninja'd by a Flying Pig, who made my point better than I did. The British apparently are sliding away from it, but did do things that way. I don't think the American military ever has...or at least they were well away from it by the seventies and eighties, which is 'my time'.

 

[Flying Pig]

How it's actually worked - for example with the food - is that they rolled most of the old service cap badges (like the Army Catering Corps) into one and got rid of or drastically cut most of their associated trades. Then they offered contracts out to private companies to provide food for military bases. There are still a few army chefs out there, but the only reason they exist is to be able to provide food on operations - most of the time, when you eat military food in the UK, it's been cooked by a civilian.

Most of the time this works, the problem is that you lose the sense of comradeship - a soldier delivering your mail has a personal investment in it arriving on time, because he knows what it's like to be away from home for several weeks or months and waiting on news from loved ones. A civilian doesn't. A conglomerate called DSG have taken over the maintenance (they were even at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan) of almost all equipment, including small arms and vehicles, and I'm not sure I'm entirely happy that today's soldiers don't have the reassurance that the person who works on their rifle might one day have their life depending on it.