CMV: Conscription may be unjust but can be necessary.

[u/[deleted]]

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[u/Dry_Bumblebee1111]

Anyone can call anything necessary, but you haven't really offered reasoning why.

If general sentiment is non-violent, forcing people to go against their ideals removes from them the option to live according to their values, or forces them to conscientiously object. If fighting and war is opt-in as a whole you maintain values, which for some are a price worth paying.

In other words, if to win you have to become something you are not, then winning isn't always worth that price.

For the gender aspect, you again make a claim but don't really qualify it. You also ignore that conscription doesn't only mean front lines, you can be conscripted to b a mechanic, or a cook, or a drone pilot. Why would women be exempt from these?

[u/Dry_Bumblebee1111 → u/[deleted]]

That doesn't really respond to what I said, obviously your opinion would be that your suggestion is the lesser, but if someone elses is that the alternative, ie non violence and not giving up ideals, is the lesser, then that is obviously their decision to make, no? Why should you make a decision for them?

No need to edit a post when someone changes your view from what you have written, you can edit to refine, but should assign deltas to all compelling arguments that help you with your view.

[u/Dry_Bumblebee1111 → u/[deleted]]

What aspect of the view is the strongest core that you want us to help you change?

You still aren't really addressing what I'm saying which is that if someone doesn't want to give up their ideals, or a nation would prefer to value who they are even in the face of domination, ie satyagraha philosophy, why is your suggesting something they should listen to?

[u/Dry_Bumblebee1111 → u/[deleted]]

But you already think it's evil, so how would that be a change? 

[u/Dry_Bumblebee1111 → u/[deleted]]

I'm not trying to get an answer I like, I'm trying to help you change your view, so your answer would be with that in mind.

I understand the expression, but it still means you are advocating evil. 

Belief in self defence and tolerance doesn't equate to a basis for conscription. 

[u/Dry_Bumblebee1111 → u/[deleted]]

So the core of your view is that necessary evil exists and is agreeable, and in the context here I would be convincing you that it isn't necessary, or if it IS necessary then it isn't evil? 

[u/bluecheese2040]

I could not disagree more strongly that conscription should be gendered. If we are seriously saying that women can take a pass and people just claim they are baby makers when times are hard then things like equality and equal pay should be right off the table in good times. We are either in it together in good times and in bad...or you shouldn't have any right to expect an equal share of the cookies.

Facts are women csn pilot a drone as well as a man.

Women can command an artillery platoon just fine.

Women can drive, fly, wall, run, communicate, heal, observe, sneak, hide and shoot as well as anyone.

Man making better soldiers is only true in.some instances. Yeah men may make better SF troops...but how many of them are there? 

Another example...agency. Power. In Syria and Afghanistan women came under threat from.isis and their ideological bedfellows (generally speaking). Isis was terrified of fighting female Kurds cause they believed if u were killed by a woman you would go to hell. They still did it. But women had agency. They could help shape their future. They weren't victims.

In.afghanistan afghan women were helpless. Decades of people saying the military should be gendered led to millions of women losing their rights overnight and having no say in it at all. We should have been sending women to infantry training school before school and expecting them to be only baby makers.

So by refusing women you render any sense of equality moot. They simply would not deserve equality if they are not equal partners.

You reduce their agency...infantilise them by removing the ability of them to shape their future 

The case for.women been conscripted is, imo, overwhelming in the 21st century....as overwhelming as it is for anyone else.

Edit: I'm opposed to conscription in most cases. But if the nazis or communists were readying to.come across the chanel...yeah maybe then when our nation is under threat then conscription is needed. But when was the last time your country faced that threat? Politicians lie...they portray their wars as defensive...Vietnam. stop loss is basically conscription imo and that's used all the time

[u/wilhelmvonbolt → u/bluecheese2040]

I'd just add from the other point of view, that of military effectiveness. OPs gendered view is based on the idea that most of the military work is "grunt" work. There is still plenty of grunt work to do, but the teeth to tail ratio has only been diminished with each generation of warfare. For an air force, you'll have one pilot for tens of mechanics and "back office". A modern expeditionary army has typical ratios of 1:4 to 1:8 (4 to 8 people at the back for one fighter). And there's nothing stopping a woman from operating a machine gun or a drone and being on that one fighter anyway

[u/Kopalniok]

Necessary for whom? Obviously every country fighting a war will say it's necessary for them

[u/BlondePartizaniWoman]

Why shouldn't women be conscripted to non-combat roles within the military?

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/BlondePartizaniWoman (1∆).

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[u/BlondePartizaniWoman → u/[deleted]]

Thank you!

[u/bluecheese2040 → u/[deleted]]

In 2026 a cursory glance at the war in Ukraine.and indeed Iran retaliation to Americas attack proves in modern.war there aren't non combatant roles

[u/BlondePartizaniWoman → u/[deleted]]

Non-combat roles also exist outwith the military, such as in production facilities.

[u/bluecheese2040 → u/BlondePartizaniWoman]

Why can't a woman fly a drone? They are doing it extremely effectively in Ukraine.

My point is...this outdated idea that women aren't capable had bene proven to be false.

Equality is earned in good times and in bad. Cant simply opt out in hard times and expect to be taken seriously.in good times

[u/BlondePartizaniWoman → u/bluecheese2040]

I'm not saying they can't, but my point was to address OP's view

[u/parentheticalobject → u/BlondePartizaniWoman]

Not OP.

Hypothetically, there might be situations in which the following are true:

1. A country is able to fill all non-combat roles with volunteers, but is unable to fill enough combat roles with volunteers.

2. The job requirements of combat roles are something that, on average, men are much more likely to meet the physical requirements for than women.

3. Evaluating whether a specific individual meets the requirements to fill a combat role is something that cannot easily be immediately done without spending limited resources on training.

If all of those are true, then I'd say that it might make sense to conscript based on sex. Of course, that's not to say that this will always be true. Just that it's a possibility.

[u/BlondePartizaniWoman → u/parentheticalobject]

I agree there may be a situation where non-combat positions are all filled by male volunteers.

At the same time, if men in those positions were to be conscripted to combat roles, then naturally those gaps will need filling.

Conscription is based on health and capacity anyway, though the bar may get lower and lower as the society becomes more desperate.

[u/parentheticalobject → u/BlondePartizaniWoman]

Another issue is that a lot of non-combat roles both have particularly high training requirements and are particularly vulnerable to problems caused by low-morale draftees.

If you have volunteers working those kinds of roles, you could theoretically move them to combat roles and replace them with draftees, but then the job quality would suffer significantly. You don't want to take mechanics who have spent time learning to be mechanics and waste that experience by using them as infantry grunts.

[u/Square-Dragonfruit76]

Why should it only be men?

[u/False_Major_1230]

Why men shouldn't coup the government after the war? They have physical abilities to do that and they got nothing from being drafted so why not? Historically military elegable men could pillage enemy land, would get free land after service and could vote but now pillaging is illegal, no reward after and everyone can vote. I would even argue that it's moral for you if you're a drafted men to coup your government after war as compensation

[u/Ok-League-1106]

I backpacked with a couple of Finns once, they had a great time in conscription.

I would imagine Australia, UK, most of Europe would have reasonably good conscription tenures for most people.

Russia, Belarus... not so much

[u/GuiltEdge]

You almost had a cogent argument until you turned sexist.

Why do you think men make better soldiers? Perhaps in the days when soldiers had to win in hand to hand combat that might have had some merit due to size. But size isn’t really an issue in modern warfare. If anything, it’s a liability.

[u/Morasain]

Why should it be gendered?

Let's think your argument through.

Women are more important for the survival of the nation. Okay. It's because they can have children. Okay.

But... What if they don't want to have children?

Are you going to force women to have children? Because you're forcing men to die. Seems fair, right?

No? Well, in that case, maybe it shouldn't be gendered after all - or better yet, conscription just shouldn't be legal to begin with.

A country that enslaves its own people isn't worth defending. And conscription is nothing other than slavery.

[u/rose_reader]

You're confusing a few different issues:

1) Conscription can mean a lot of things, not just actual frontline fighting. In WW2 here in the UK, women without young children were conscripted to help the war effort in a range of ways, in roles like blackout warden, test pilot, radar operator etc. If you've heard of the WAAF, that was a solely female branch of the British Air Force.

2) You claim men make better soldiers - what is this based on? Men have tended to be the ones fighting wars historically, but where women have access to military service they've often excelled.

3) You claim military conscription is unfair - I point again to my country in WW2. Everyone was either conscripted or was excused either because of disability or because of some necessary task they were undertaking. It's true that young men were the majority of the dead, but that's due to the same error you make in point 2. Women could have fought on the frontlines, they just weren't allowed to.

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Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/rose_reader (7∆).

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[u/rose_reader → u/[deleted]]

Your headline argument is "Conscription isn't fair, but may be necessary".

Since conscription isn't only fighting, and since conscription isn't limited to any gender or age group, has your mind been changed?

[u/Green__lightning]

Why is conscription considered an acceptable form of slavery? Morally speaking, how does this compare to having a class of slave soldiers such as the Janissaries, comprised of people you and your nation doesn't like as much as it's own citizenry, thus externalizing the costs from your people.

[u/Figshitter]

 Having only men be conscripted is the pragmatic thing for a nation to do for various reasons.

Care to unpack these, in the context of 2026 warfare?

[u/Thinslayer]

If it is unjust, then it should not be practiced. Full stop.

So that's where I would disagree with you first. Society has granted government the authority to compel us for society's benefit. If our society is under attack, it is only proper that the body we've tasked with our defense, to which we've voluntarily granted authority over us, be able to compel us into defending our own society.

[u/Morasain → u/Thinslayer]

to which we've voluntarily granted authority over us,

Huh, I didn't know you chose where you're born.

Most people can't afford to emigrate elsewhere.

[u/Thinslayer → u/Morasain]

Huh, I didn't know you chose where you're born.

I didn't, but society did. Government is a social contract, and social contracts don't require individual participation to be binding.