Let's just get one thing straight: eighteen-year-olds should thank the US Government-cum-Army for the Vietnam War, because of which we are now granted voting rights. Without the chicken, see, the egg would've had a lonely childhood and would've died of sadness. Eighteen-year-olds would have never given a shit about the privilege of cognizant citizenry, had it not been that this privilege decided where they were going to be for the next four years.
With the war in Iraq in full bloom, we may once again have to thank someone: our fellow Americans. Depending on how things keep swinging (elections, see) in 2008, the draft may be reinstated. Some say that with the advent of community colleges and numerous financial aid programs (not to mention all the wonderful places you can hide in), one would have to be seriously deficient in the brain region to not get an exemption. But let's say, for the argument's sake, that the draft will be more rigid this time around, with wiggle room only allowing students already enrolled (or planning to enroll) in a four-year university to get out of it.
And let's look at a country - because I've vowed to be this site's ad hoc Eastern bloc correspondent - called Russia.
The Russian army (the once mighty Red Army, blah, blah, we only staved off Hitler because we starved) is in quite a bowel. It's not only understaffed, but also underfunded, so that soldiers who've had one, two months of training are immediately shipped off to Chechnya (or were, at any rate; now, only career professionals go to Chechnya, because Russia is getting its ass kicked like what, and mother groups are beginning to complain).
First of all, allow me to venture that any army is like a prison: there's a lot of misplaced rage and daddy issues, a lot of need for self-validation, a lot of hazing, and a lot of "tests." Second of all, allow me to venture that these conditions are only augmented in the framework of a conscripted army. Now, allow me to explain.
One of the biggest issues in the Red Army today is something called dedovschina. This is a very heavy form of hazing, one might say, but it's actually a little bit different. Hazing entails a brief period of torture perpetrated to "test" a person. Dedovschina is a period of torture that lasts as long as your army stay, often from Day 1 to demobilization, and does not only include torture, but various forms of slavery, too. Dedovschina - "grandfathery" - in layman's terms, is a group of career soldiers, mostly of age, who pick on newbies for derision or services. There's the ever-popular example of a young kid who was drafted and who was forced, by convention of dedovschina, to build a summerhouse for his colonel. The kid ended up dropping something on his hand and became an amputee. And this isn't even the worst one. There are countless instances of young kids getting beaten, mutilated (an especially popular place for that is the genitalia), or otherwise for not serving the old men food the correct way, for looking at them "weird," and so on. And this happens almost all the time, and almost to everyone. Unless you're a big boy who can stand up for himself, you are guaranteed a sound beating, either from the old men or, also popular as of late, "faces of Caucasian nationality" (I mean the actual mountains, not 'white people'). When the dedovschina selects a victim, the kid will definitely be beaten and subjected to involuntary servitude. Most people who emerge from the Red Army experience whole in body are fragmented in soul; kidney, spleen, and other portions-of-the-viscera-less-interesting-to-list damage is entirely commonplace.
Why do I think that this is a result of conscription? Because the gentler boys - the poets, or whatever - who would be much better suited for a profession in the intellectual, custodial, or agricultural arts are thrown into a brutal environment full of bitter old men who want to "make a man" out of them. This is why a division of labor is critical for the development of a successful society. We might be sending our next Henry David Thoreau (actually, I wouldn't mind seeing Thoreau roughed up a bit; he's a bore and a pretentious one, at that) to the front lines, when he'd so much rather bitch about materialism in American society while residing in pseudo-isolation (don't even try; his mother fed him daily).
The fact of the matter is, a draft would be detrimental to an army in any war. People who don't want to fight, are not meant for it, should not be forced into it. It's mind-rape and it's inconsiderate. In the long run, any army in a civilized society with a conscription policy is only setting itself up for unnecessary apoptosis. Once people have been exposed to choices, to the idea that they can do something better with their time than run around Baghdad with a mortar whilst getting fired at from all describable angles, they will not fight effectively if they don't want to. Then, wars will be lost and the Core will get upset (I don't mean the Corps, by the way). Coercion, in other words, is the easiest way to undermine yourself.
The End.
