Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9604873:


Grahor

40
Suit up...WITH GUNS 4 3, 9:20pm

@spoki0

As for replies: there were a lot of people writing to me following my posts, so I wasn't able and even willing to answer everyone. It's just takes too much time. I can't reply to everyone or even to majority.

I've used age bracket 40-60 as the bracket which includes most people who decide the policy in modern democratic states. It's not the draft in itself that I'm objecting to; it's that the people who make decisions (40-60) are deciding that someone else have to sacrifice, not themselves, but someone else.

My next line of objection was: conscription is not a reasonable response in this situation. Yes, I do think that strong military is important; I don't think conscription is the way to achieve the strong military Sweden needs. You've said yourself: Sweden doesn't even have resources to make it a universal conscription; why make it conscription at all if what Sweden really needs is a selection of capable people? It's a demonstrative response, I don't know how to call it in English: It's a response where instead of doing what really needs to be done politicians make a demonstrative, popular, hurrah-patriotic gesture which is not actually really useful in this situation. It is important to have a good strong military; but is the conscription really the answer here?

As for how good or bad the conscription and army is, I obviously don't have any idea about Swedish army; obviously, the army of my youth can't compare (as you could guess I've evaded my own conscription and never felt bad about it; not everyone of my friends were as lucky, although many were; not everyone of those unlucky ever recovered completely). However! While obviously not as bad, some Swedish people are still consider army experience negatively; may be they have their actual reasons?