Today’s army is a heckuva lot whiter than the drafted army of Vietnam.
If you pay volunteer soldiers what soldiers deserve, then it’s inevitable that soldiering will always be an attractive option for the poorer classes.
The problem lies in assuming that a draft will somehow be more egalitarian. The last one wasn’t, and the next one almost certainly won’t be - because the rules will still be made by the same rich people who always make such rules.
You really ought to look at the demographics of our current military. They publish them. Then compare them to the Vietnam-era draft armies.
The oft-repeated belief that only the poor and nonwhite volunteer is bullshit.
And even if it weren’t, the idea that current enlistees are ‘slaves’ is an insult to everyone who ever endured slavery, and pretty much everyone currently enlisted.
[quote=“zikzak, post:23, topic:70163”]
When I say bring back the draft, what you hear is “I want you to have to die for the government!”
[/quote] Wrong. I hear “I want some shlub who isn’t me to be forced to die for their country in order to suit my (supposedly) egalitarian agenda”
Forcing anyone to to give up their civilian life, join the military and die for their country is morally repellent. THAT’S slavery.
Paying entry-level volunteers a wage high enough to be attractive to the poor is NOT slavery.
Conflating the two, and then claiming that that false equivalency justifies a resumption of real slavery (even assuming it’s the egalitarian sort of slavery that would suit your egalitarian impulses - which it won’t be) is still morally bankrupt.
It proposes to sacrifice the lives of unwilling strangers (either for a period of several years, or permanently, as chance may have it) to suit your political goals.
