Used to be. They got rid of it entirely a decade or so ago.
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Commander in chief is less racist than the one they had last month, so that’s a start, anyway.
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Oh, no way! I went over in ‘94 and remember being kind of jealous of my slightly older Berlin friends’ stories about their service and wishing we had something like that here.
Was it overall welcomed by the populace, do you think? Not to put you on the spot, but any context greatly appreciated.
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They’ll have to go into the military and military prep schools.
Confed flags in barracks should lead to court marshals.
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It doesn’t address several of the problems with white supremacists, and makes a few others worse. It is neutral if the concern is a coup, but even after the sixth, I don’t think that is the most immediate concern. Traditionally violent white supremacist groups have used the military to obtain training for their members and to divert supplies. Diluting their share of the military doesn’t address those issues and risks actually driving a larger number of them into positions where that is possible. Historically mass troop mobilizations in the US have not been followed by particularly great outcomes in the civilian world. I’m thinking of Bring the War Home by Kathleen Belew, which tracks the role of returning soldiers in feeding violent white supremacists networks.
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To be fair, when you need a whole lot of people to go overseas and kill a bunch of brown people, racists are probably going to be first in the queue to sign up aren’t they?
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No. The poor will be first in line, as usual.
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In some ways you’re right, and some ways, you couldn’t be more wrong; it’s…weird.
First, you’re quite right, in that the military IS, overall, extremely conservative, and still has a sort of “1950s glasses” view of the world, especially re: women and LGBTQ people.
On the other hand, while there are of course still strong racial divisions and problems, the US military has been very, very proactive in rooting out overt white supremacy and racial discrimination for decades (with some notable failures at West Point, among others =x).
This may be a bit hard to believe, but perhaps less so, if you realize this attitude mostly spreads (slowly) from the “combat arms” portion of the military. Simply put, you don’t want to demonize the person in the fighting position next to you, because your life damn well depends on them!
The main problem is that this push towards equality comes from the very top AND the very bottom, but the center (“cadre”, long-serving NCOs) is…difficult…to reform, as you probably can imagine. And where you serve/whom you serve with is going to change things a lot! But I have at least a teeny grain of hope, over time, even if this particular effort comes to naught.
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there’s a reason why so many far right “Christian” churches and wacho religious right leaders are based in Colorado Springs, CO – they want to brainwash the troupes into serving the priorities of radical right Christianity instead of the Constitution.
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My college roommate was one of the last people to do compulsory service. He said that by his time (late 2000s) the Bundeswehr needed so few people that conscientious objection was effectively the default- all you had to do to get conscientious objector status was to write a “war is bad, mmmmkay?” essay, which for understandable reasons German high school students are very well prepared to do, and which he did.
He spent his year of service working in a group home for people with learning disabilities- though to make it more like military service, he was assigned to one on the other side of the country from where he grew up.
Other Germans from that generation of my acquaintance fulfilled their service requirement at weekends by working as a volunteer ambulance driver, or got out of it entirely by deliberately failing the hearing test (people who didn’t pass the military physical also didn’t have to do civilian service).
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I did that as well, yeah.
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It’s hard to tell from a modern perspective to be honest. During the cold war it was certainly seen as necessary. Afterwards it was seen more as a relic of the past. Certainly, when it was my time to serve I opted for the civilian service instead.
It’s interesting that you would have met your friends in Berlin. They must have moved there after their service. One of the big draws of West Berlin for young (male) West Germans was that it was always the only part of the country where residents weren’t required to serve.
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But that will just increase orthopedic injuries in the affluent young male population. /s
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Courts martial. 
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They were Ossies. It was ‘94, and I think the guys I’m remembering were young twenties, so they would’ve served even after the Wall came down?
That was an amazing time to get to know that city, still one of my all-time favorite cities of the world.
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Yeah, the Berlin exception obviously only existed until reunification
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I’d like a less militaristic society, not a more militaristic society, thanks.
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From every person I’ve talked to who’s gone through basic training, it sounds like a year or two of verbal and emotional abuse to the point where getting shot at seems like a nice break. In America’s case, for the point of providing people to ship over to its incredibly pointless and destructive wars overseas.
I’m don’t think that and the indoctrination that comes with it will help any of the country’s problems, but I am pretty sure it would be devastation for a lot of people to go through.
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A side effect of Germans not doing national service any more was a sudden dearth of cheap army boots. You used to be able to pick up splendidly robust boots for cheap, now they’re super expensive (well, splendidly robust, but don’t warm your feet next to the fire…
)
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Pretty much.
I follow FoxNews and the comments/ spin is already “they want to get conservatives out of the military! It’s an ideological purge.”
Like, my dude, if you’re conflating “conservative” with “white supremacist” you’re part of the problem.
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