You should. You will not get a chance to sleep early once school starts. =P
ditto.
…but only if you *want* to sleep earlier…*g*
me too.
For soldiers that do not want to fight in Iraq, are their options either 1) conscientious objection or 2) desert? I wonder if conscientious objections are grounded (only or at all?) in religious reasons (?)
ryc:
I disagree! I think there may be many reasons why a person would want to leave a contract that required them to be available for military duty. Firstly, the military in today’s world does much more than simply defend it’s country or launch wars to take over another country. As you mentioned in your comment, you viewed the war in Iraq as a “stability mission for the most part”. Secondly, is it a fair contract? Can you contract away your right to refuse to do something immoral? Even if a soldier went to Iraq and didn’t “kill people” wouldn’t s/he still be partaking in an immoral act by facilitating the mission in other ways? Thirdly, those that run off may not be “afraid of death” given the well-publicized statistics showing that Iraqis are at far greater risk of dying in the current situation than soldiers are…so why would most “deserters” (for lack of a more neutral word) be afraid of what they know is a much lower risk? Fourthly, to put things into context, is it fair for the US military to recruit young people with long-term contracts with a wide-range of duties (or variable demands) in exchange for education and work? My sister had a friend who was a young man from Colorado who essentially signed a 10 year contract with the army to get an education because he wouldn’t have been able to afford one. His story is not all that unusual as he said many young people end up locked into long contracts of “service” for a shitty education because they can’t afford the sky-rocketing fees of private post-secondary education…
I wonder what the mechanics are of a “conscientious objection” and how it is ultimately decided that an individual troop is or is not sincere. Any objective investigation would have few indicators – is the person religious? If not, then what? How can there be a feasible, practical way of allowing for conscientious objections and granting them appropriately?
Comments (6)
You should. You will not get a chance to sleep early once school starts. =P
ditto.
…but only if you *want* to sleep earlier…*g*
me too.
For soldiers that do not want to fight in Iraq, are their options either 1) conscientious objection or 2) desert? I wonder if conscientious objections are grounded (only or at all?) in religious reasons (?)
ryc:
I disagree! I think there may be many reasons why a person would want to leave a contract that required them to be available for military duty. Firstly, the military in today’s world does much more than simply defend it’s country or launch wars to take over another country. As you mentioned in your comment, you viewed the war in Iraq as a “stability mission for the most part”. Secondly, is it a fair contract? Can you contract away your right to refuse to do something immoral? Even if a soldier went to Iraq and didn’t “kill people” wouldn’t s/he still be partaking in an immoral act by facilitating the mission in other ways? Thirdly, those that run off may not be “afraid of death” given the well-publicized statistics showing that Iraqis are at far greater risk of dying in the current situation than soldiers are…so why would most “deserters” (for lack of a more neutral word) be afraid of what they know is a much lower risk? Fourthly, to put things into context, is it fair for the US military to recruit young people with long-term contracts with a wide-range of duties (or variable demands) in exchange for education and work? My sister had a friend who was a young man from Colorado who essentially signed a 10 year contract with the army to get an education because he wouldn’t have been able to afford one. His story is not all that unusual as he said many young people end up locked into long contracts of “service” for a shitty education because they can’t afford the sky-rocketing fees of private post-secondary education…
I wonder what the mechanics are of a “conscientious objection” and how it is ultimately decided that an individual troop is or is not sincere. Any objective investigation would have few indicators – is the person religious? If not, then what? How can there be a feasible, practical way of allowing for conscientious objections and granting them appropriately?