I'm saying from a person in the 60s pov yes. You have been force-fed American exceptionalism and anti-communism from the cradle, of course, you should fight those dirty commies. (although only 1 out of 7 draftees was in combat) But the alternative is if you don't have a family to fall back on you lose everything(job, car, house if you have one), have a criminal record, and have spent a prolonged period of time in an American prison, an institution that is proven to turn 1st-time offenders into repeat and more violent offenders. or you have enough money to go to another country/have a good enough education to get into college (during this time a huge % of people, especially in the midwest did not finish high school)
i think my main point is there is a reason the draft worked in the 60s and early 70s, but we wouldn't dream of it being attempted today; less dissenting news against US imperial interests, a lack of a real existential threat (china/sinophobia is like 1% of what the population thought of Russia. side note for example my father/mother and most everyone they went to school with 100% believed that nuclear war was going to happen, it was a fact of life) and a lack of understanding of how awful the war was until later into the conflict. Today day 1 we would see pictures of soldiers getting blown the fuck up/mass refusal to report if you got drafted also inpart due to a cultural shift towards anti-war among younger people.
like 5 years and a 25k (200k adj. for inflation) fine or have a 6 in 7 shot of never seeing combat for 2 years then returning with GI bill benefits + pay. It is understandable to me why some took the state's offer. That does not mean it is GOOD, or ABSOLVES THEM OF WAR CRIMES, it means i can see why,at the time, draftees did not see themselves as the modern-day wehrmacht
I mean, the same logic works for the Wehrmacht itself. There were a good six years between the Nazis taking power and the invasion of Poland. Plenty of time for propaganda pushing on top of the resentment from losing WWI. Nobody sees themselves as evil.
Like, if you want to go full materialist and say everyone is a product of their times then sure, but that line of thought is really only suited to historical research. It doesn't serve a purpose politically other than to absolve those people of any crimes they committed, and since that doesn't seem to be what you're going for, it's kind of a weird argument to make on a leftist politics website.
Are you saying fighting for imperialists (or less charitably, commiting genocide) is preferable to prison?
I'm saying from a person in the 60s pov yes. You have been force-fed American exceptionalism and anti-communism from the cradle, of course, you should fight those dirty commies. (although only 1 out of 7 draftees was in combat) But the alternative is if you don't have a family to fall back on you lose everything(job, car, house if you have one), have a criminal record, and have spent a prolonged period of time in an American prison, an institution that is proven to turn 1st-time offenders into repeat and more violent offenders. or you have enough money to go to another country/have a good enough education to get into college (during this time a huge % of people, especially in the midwest did not finish high school)
i think my main point is there is a reason the draft worked in the 60s and early 70s, but we wouldn't dream of it being attempted today; less dissenting news against US imperial interests, a lack of a real existential threat (china/sinophobia is like 1% of what the population thought of Russia. side note for example my father/mother and most everyone they went to school with 100% believed that nuclear war was going to happen, it was a fact of life) and a lack of understanding of how awful the war was until later into the conflict. Today day 1 we would see pictures of soldiers getting blown the fuck up/mass refusal to report if you got drafted also inpart due to a cultural shift towards anti-war among younger people.
like 5 years and a 25k (200k adj. for inflation) fine or have a 6 in 7 shot of never seeing combat for 2 years then returning with GI bill benefits + pay. It is understandable to me why some took the state's offer. That does not mean it is GOOD, or ABSOLVES THEM OF WAR CRIMES, it means i can see why,at the time, draftees did not see themselves as the modern-day wehrmacht
I mean, the same logic works for the Wehrmacht itself. There were a good six years between the Nazis taking power and the invasion of Poland. Plenty of time for propaganda pushing on top of the resentment from losing WWI. Nobody sees themselves as evil.
Like, if you want to go full materialist and say everyone is a product of their times then sure, but that line of thought is really only suited to historical research. It doesn't serve a purpose politically other than to absolve those people of any crimes they committed, and since that doesn't seem to be what you're going for, it's kind of a weird argument to make on a leftist politics website.
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