Ah but, only people who are willing to go to war are allowed to hold public office, vote on laws and public spending, receive benefits from govt, and the whole rest of Starship Troopers' full citizenship. No serve, many fewer rights. I think it sounds great, truthfully. I wanted combat infantry, but marines, army, navy, air force, (fvck) even the coast guard turned me away. Born with genetic defect and need glasses. Best they could offer was state side administrative positions. With that ammendment, I could have at least seen a chance at combat.
Something more doable? Each State votes for any combat incursion beyond a certain length and if 26 vote for it, we do it. But all the States that vote for it institute a draft among their registered voters to replace the deployed troops as quickly as possible.
And completely without direct accountability. Apparently that’s been obvious for at least 100 years. Wars should not be fought unless they absolutely have to be. In a representative democracy we should weight the risk onto the constituents in order to hold the Senators accountable for their choice. Who gives a shit about the quality of the military? If it’s worth doing it’s worth throwing away lives to do it.
Wars should be fought when the nation's interests and people will benefit.
Congress is the constituency, they exist to make that call. Their state doesn't like it? Vote. Taking the time to inform and ask the common person will only destroy OPSEC and waste time, and time is blood.
Who gives a shit the quality of the military? We do. Our mothers and wives and daughters, too. And when the enemy is at the gate, everyone will.
You don't win wars by dying for your beliefs, you win by making the other dumb bastard die for his.
it's just a stupid idea. the secrets that guard our nation are just as important as the weapons we use on the battlefield. so either you have people voting and don't have all the facts to make an informed decision. or we tell the people all the things we know and our enemies know who, what, where,and when, if we have spies, how deep into their government our spies are and it just snow balls from there. and that's just the tip of the ice burg. look at ww2 who would have voted to send our troops all the way to Europe to fight Germans? especially when a vote for yes means you go not just some generic soldier? no one, it was on the other side of the world and he was just some dictator starting shit.
it wasn't until later we found out how bad he really was and it wasn't until the end we found out about the genocide going on. so would we have taken new votes when we got new info? and when would america have finally voted to go to war? how many Jews would have died because we were jerking around voting to make sure every one felt equal instead of having a leader that got our boots on the ground before it was too late. history is written by the victors but the truth is we barely won ww2, dday could have been the biggest fuck up the world had ever seen. secrets and misinformation is the only reason we're not all speaking German.
You guys are missing an important factor in what I’m proposing. The same military we have now stays in place for defense of the homeland and whatnot. If we want to go to war then congress will vote (not the people) and the states that are pro-war supply the necessary troops to carry out said war. This will provide a concrete incentive to use diplomacy first and force only when necessary. Frivolous wars will cause representatives to be replaced.
Representatives are already the people. They are already accountable to the people. Going over there IS defense. I will go over there so that the bloodshed will be on their land, the bombs on their roadsides, and my sister can sleep peacefully at night. I'm not staying home just because Washington State is too chickenshit to fuck up Saddam. And I'm sure as fuck not going to let Alaska face off against China without heavy armor, and it would be intolerable to let Arkansas go with bare bones indirect fire capability just because the state hosting artillery decided that Russia is more of a flyover state's problem.
Again, defense of our homeland is not what we are talking about. Representatives are the people but I’m talking incentives not authority. And the idea of going there is defending us here is bullshit. You don’t remember Desert Storm or 9/11 but I do. “Them brown people hit our buildings let’s invade somebody” then they spun the wheel of countries and Afghanistan lost.
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Want to take care of America first? Great. Keep the troops here and stop shoving every kid as you walk down the hall until one snaps. Our interest in the Middle East is oil but not for us. We get our oil from Canada. We just want to keep our hand on everyone else’s supply. That’s not homeland defense.
Please do illuminate me. What ties did Afghanistan have to 9/11? What WMDs were discovered when Saddam was ousted? What percentage of US oil is imported from the Middle East?
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It’s not homeland defense. It’s a desire for geopolitical influence that keeps us making flimsy excuses to keep military there and change out governments when we want.
Congress is the constituency, they exist to make that call. Their state doesn't like it? Vote. Taking the time to inform and ask the common person will only destroy OPSEC and waste time, and time is blood.
Who gives a shit the quality of the military? We do. Our mothers and wives and daughters, too. And when the enemy is at the gate, everyone will.
You don't win wars by dying for your beliefs, you win by making the other dumb bastard die for his.
.
Want to take care of America first? Great. Keep the troops here and stop shoving every kid as you walk down the hall until one snaps. Our interest in the Middle East is oil but not for us. We get our oil from Canada. We just want to keep our hand on everyone else’s supply. That’s not homeland defense.
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It’s not homeland defense. It’s a desire for geopolitical influence that keeps us making flimsy excuses to keep military there and change out governments when we want.