XtremeSpeakFreely

^ You could also fight against the war machine. I think an objector who goes out of his/her way to inform the public and get their point across would also be a satisfactory moral choice(a secessionist even moreso)... We don't chose to be born, along with all it's inherent baggage: attractive/ugly, smart/dumb, white/black/red/yellow/purple, country/local ect. Being an US, Irish, British, Spanish, ect resident does not necessarily entail much of a choice - least of all when it comes to leaving the country. Would you abandon your home, family or friends because you disagree with your government's actions? Hell no, I would fight it(through peaceful means). For me, that means sending my Reps(mostly Sen. Nelson) the occasional letter expressing my concerns/opinions and sometimes marching on the state capital.

You are still funding what you claim not to agree with. You are passively agreeing.

And if there was mandatory service, then people would be more motivated to oppose that which they do not agree with since they had direct personal interest in it.

As it is now, people can just choose to ignore the whole situation and carry on. It doesn't really effect them, except paying for it, so why should they care so much?

Blabbering is 95% of life. How many humans make pure "true moral" choices? Would you leave or go to jail if you believed a war was unjust? Would you leave the country or go to jail if you believed the killing of unborn babies funded by your tax dollars was not a "true moral" choice? Somewhere between blabbering and "true moral" choices is the space where real people live.

If I were promoting mandatory national service this is the angle I would approach from. I would allude to the different degree of choice the various social classes have when it comes serving in the military. I would use Cooper's Walmart/drug dealing scenarios for the poor and point at the rich who always seem to avoid fighting in the wars that they seem to benefit from. Making everyone serve regardless of economic circumstances has a nice egalitarian populist ring to it. I wouldn't mention that guys like Rangel are just using the bill as political leverage or that that Obama would love more minions in his "national security" forces helping to build his socialist paradise.

The truth is the poor and working class will always have fewer attractive options. Is it the job of government to ensure this is not the case? Don't we want to maintain the status quo so that the aforementioned poor and working class are motivated by their circumstances to change them? Don't we want to maintain the rewards of success which include better options?

For me choice = freedom. Without the option to choose our liberty is diminished. Let us choose which wars we fight in to defend our liberty while maintaining our right to pass on those that do not. We don't all have to agree on which ones are which.
Are we really funding both sides of this war? Why on earth are elements of the Pakistani military supporting the Taliban? In a word, India. India is, first and last, the strategic obsession of the Pakistani military. The U.S. has come and gone from the region in the past; the perceived Indian threat is eternal. With the defeat of the Taliban by U.S. forces in 2001, there was fear that the new government in Kabul would be sympathetic to India and provide a strategic base for anti-Pakistan intelligence operations. And so, despite professions of alliance with the U.S. by Pakistan's then dictator Pervez Musharraf, a decision was made to keep the Taliban alive. A spigot of untargeted military aid from the George W. Bush Administration helped fund the effort. A commander of the vicious Haqqani Taliban network tells Waldman that their funding comes from "the Americans — from them to the Pakistani military, and then to us." Waldman reports that the commander receives from the Pakistanis "a reward for killing foreign soldiers, usually $4,000 to $5,000 for each soldier killed."

I have long been a proponent of mandatory military service. I would have no issue with that being expanded to some kind of civil service.

For those polesmokers that don't want to fight or serve, you will still have a choice.........to serve with Big Bubba or one of his buddies in the joint.

PS; mike this is TWO lines

In many wild tribes up till current days all teenagers have to pass the inauguration ( or whatever) to actually get accepted as an adult in their tribe. For this they have to learn certain skills and info and only then they can actually voice their opinions.
I do agree that disciplinary trainings should take place at some point or certain degree. Would definitely help build proper personality compared to current 20-25 y.o. businessmen who only know how to sell s*** and talk rubbish and that's it.

This story reminded me of this thread. I've got to tip my hat to this guy.

While I understand the idea of "giving something back to your country" I feel blessed that I have not had to use the federal government as the conduit for that giving.