nest0r wrote:

bodhisamaya wrote:

nest0r wrote:

You know who would've been happy if decent human beings didn't have a military? Hitler.

Germany was a nation of decent human beings until Hitler came into power.  No military= Hitler never makes the history books.

Why wouldn't the Nazis have a military?

I think his point was that if there was no military in the first place, Hitler and the Nazi party would've never came into power in the first place.

IceCream wrote:

Nukemarine wrote:

... a homosexual act which is forbidden by Article 125 of the UCMJ.

isn't that like, unconstitutional?! well, nice to know they are consistently hypocritical about constitutional issues...

There's a lot of things I disagree with when it comes to military laws.

1. To be fair though, the above is in relation to "actions" and is defined more as sodomy which has that funny definition "Unnatural carnal copulation" (ie, you can "be gay" but just not do what one would consider a gay act). I personally think it's BS and many in the US military think so likewise. Really, most could care less what type of sex you have with another consenting male or female (Sodomy covers acts that even heterosexual may do, such as fellatio or anal sex). Oh, also, there's laws against adultery, so it's illegal to have heterosexual sex with anyone not your spouse. Again, a law I don't think the military needs to worry about.

2. I REALLY hate the mandatory urinalysis. I don't do drugs, but something irks me about being forced to give evidence of your guilt. By Article 32 of the UCMJ and the 5th amendment of the US Constitution, they can't ask me "Did you do any drugs" but they can force someone to piss in a cup and use that? Does not equate.

3. There's whole other issues when it comes to marriage. It's related in part when I mentioned my pay (which was only that large due to a certain set of circumstances). Essentially, there's a financial benefit to being married. Lo and behold, military members 18 to 26 are three times more likely to be married than their civilian counterpart. Not surprising, the divorce rate is also higher.

4. If I do 19 years and 11 months of active service, I get ZERO retirement pay. I do 20 years, I magically get 50% of my base pay every month. Not surprising, many that would get out at 15 or 16 years will grind out that last four years for retirement. Those guys are very annoying to work with on average. Similar system encourages guys to stay in to 30 years (where they get 75% retirement pay).

5. Base pay is not housing pay is not food pay is not bonuses. You job can shift to a new location and you find your monthly pay cut in half or more. This has huge impact on one's family. So, do you move your family and lose location pay, or leave your family for a year or more?

6. Promotion system is highly messed up, and disparate among the branches of the military.

JimmySeal wrote:

I also don't see how bragging about your inordinately large paycheck is relevant to this discussion.

Guys, don't get hung up about my mentioning my last year's pay. It was in part a response to Liosama calling those that join the military stupid. It's easy to retort that taking a good paying job is not really that stupid. However, like most other things in the military, there were certain things that have to be met to get it (separate from my family for a year, be near a war zone, have my family stay in Japan, etc.). Yeah, it's that more than one side of the story thing going on.

In addition, you find out putting up with the crap to get it wasn't worth it. There's more to life than a paycheck, though a pay check is the first thing people look for in searching or offer up when hiring. Job satisfaction is much, much more important. That goes with military or civilian jobs.

Last edited by Nukemarine (2010 April 27, 5:30 am)

I wonder what would happen to the world if America collapsed along with its army... Would the Chinese invade everyone else without the world's police force to keep them at bay?  Who would they sell their plastic crap to then? 
Did America invading the Middle East make anyone else feel safer? 
As far as every other military in the world, if their defense budgets dropped to $0, all they would have to do is align itself with the US (until the next superpower arises).  Costa Rica is an example I suppose.

If the minimum age of enlistment was raised to say 25, would anyone join the army?

I think this really is a relevant question. If the the answer is anything other than yes, then the army is essentially relying on exploiting the uneducated/poor/naive to even exist in the first place.

Isn't in rather hypocritical to be opposed to the use of child soldiers but recruiting at 17 is magically okay?

Last edited by nadiatims (2010 April 27, 10:37 pm)

nest0r wrote:

Why does age matter? Just have your doctor flip the 'join the military' switch off early, rather than waiting for it to automatically deactivate at age 25.

Joke?

If the minimum age of enlistment was raised to say 25, would anyone join the army?

Actually, when I went through basic there were a number of guys in their mid-20's to early 30's.  Of course they were a minority, but they weren't an insignificant number either.  Beyond that, lots of people go through ROTC programs and military academies to become officers, and they are, by nature, older than 17-18 by the time they actually serve, though they've committed to it at a younger age.

Though I'm with nest0r on using science to turn off age-induced young adult idiocy in all its forms as early as possible.

Last edited by kendo99 (2010 April 27, 10:59 pm)

nest0r wrote:

bodhisamaya wrote:

nest0r wrote:

You know who would've been happy if decent human beings didn't have a military? Hitler.

Germany was a nation of decent human beings until Hitler came into power.  No military= Hitler never makes the history books.

Why wouldn't the Nazis have a military?

No, Germany was not a nation of decent beings until Hitler came to power. Do you think Hitler just rode a magic carpet into power? Was he placed there by God? All Germans didn't want Hitler but somehow he made his way up there? There weren't tens of thousands of people attending Nazi rallies?

A political leader is nothing. He is a product of the culture. If Hitler never existed then one of the other millions of Nazi true believers would have replaced him, and there were plenty of people vying for power that were more brutal than him.

nadiatims wrote:

If the minimum age of enlistment was raised to say 25, would anyone join the army?

I would, if my country was attacked and my country had a leadership that would send the military out to destroy the enemy regime in our self-defence, rather than build roads and sewers for people who hate me that are steeped in a primitive, medieval mentality. I also wouldn't sign up to "bring the vote" to people who want to vote themselves into a barbaric Islamist hellhole where morality police beat women and apostates are murdered by the state.

In short, I'd fly with Curtis LeMay over Tokyo but I wouldn't sign up these days.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hanson-battle.html

Last edited by Dixon (2010 April 29, 1:04 pm)

when it unself-destructed for a minute, i did, but yeah, that was a hell of a method for encrypting a link