I was asked to write a brief response to the following statement. Of course my definitition of brief is clearly much more conclusive than everyone else’s, so just roll with it!
The United States does not have required military service; on the other hand, many other countries across the world require at least a year’s service to the state. Should the United States institute a similar practice? Why or why not? Use specific examples and reasons to justify your response.
The government should not mandate nor require any such service to one’s country or state. It isn’t the government’s place to require citizens to serve their community because no where explicitly in the constitution does it specify that the government should regulate such service. Ergo, the government has no jurisdiction in such a matter. Once the government assumes it has the authority to demand military service where does it stop? And why should anyone fight and potentially die for a cause they don’t believe in? Is that not a violation of an individual’s constitutional rights in terms of free cogitation, inquiry, and speech?
Military service should be something that individuals specifically seek to engage in and view as a privilege not a requisition. Incentive is created by national pride and one’s own personal obligation to devote their time and self to the greatness of their country. One of the biggest reasons our military is so successful and strong is because it’s strictly volunteer-based. If one were to even contemplate stripping this imperative piece of the military away it would be detrimental to society as a whole. I personally don’t want people fighting for me when they don’t feel fervor for the cause.
Former presidential candidate and U.S. Senator John Kerry said in 2004,
Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.
This degrading statement, which Kerry jocularly claimed was a ‘botched joke’, inferred that those who serve in the military are somehow subservient in intellectual capacity. Now if Kerry had any sort of understanding of statistics or the fact that almost all military servicemen and women have well over a high school diploma he may not have made such a statement, but then again his political identification has never been overly anxious to support our military.
In conclusion, a mandated military service would impose a serious detriment to our national defense system, which is exceedingly important now that we are in a time of war. I have full faith in the volunteer-based military system we have now because it’s actually winning wars. Whereas, when a draft was instituted (by Democrats!) we lost a war we could have won and our troops, many of whom did not feel inclined to serve were demoralized by fellow Americans. Let Vietnam serve as the prime example as to why mandated military service is a colossal failure.
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