kfl@AI.AI.MIT.EDU (01/20/87)
[ So who's going to defend your country? Everyone's making money
(including those deadbeat kids who haven't turned 30 yet), and you
won't force anyone to serve. ...
Of course I oppose forcing anyone to serve. You criticized me for
saying that voluntary duels should be allowed, now you seem to think
that INVOLUNTARY duels are ok, just so long as they are run by a
government.
We seem to be getting enough recruits with an all-volunteer
military. It seems to me that any war that is unpopular enough that
sufficient troops can only be obtained via a draft is a war that we
should not be fighting.
How do you square your 'of course' with:
"Wrong. Since the most important purpose of defense is
deterrence, a weapon that never needs to be used is the most
successful weapon of all. There is no wrong time to re-arm."
... from your article of 30 August? - CWM]
I don't see any contradiction. Please clarify.
...Keith
[ (my apologies for the length of this):
Just seemed contradictory to me... To recap the original
discussion, you claimed that a contribution-based army would
experience an increase in funding that would exactly coincide with
necessity. My counter was that rearming at the right time is not
easy, and public perception of the danger would NOT coincide with
necessity of lead-time of development, or indeed research for
development. First you say that there is no wrong time to re-arm,
then that you don't advocate making weapons that are obsolete.
Anyway, rearm at the wrong time, and you waste your money on a
non-threat, in essense making obsolete weapons that deter no one. An
example of this is the Maginot line, 'state-of-the-art' fortifications
in 1936 (at vast expense), but in fact obsolete then and 4 years
later. If the French had waited and spent the money on tanks (as many
advocated), they would have had a better chance against the Germans.
(The pitfalls of waiting too long to rearm are obvious.) This is the
fallacy of the 'we can rearm at the proper time' argument - you can't
easily pick the proper time. But we are really running far afeild,
eh?
Take a look at the volunteers we get for our wonderful volunteer
army - the manuals are written for 3d graders and they are buying
trucks with automatic transmissions because the recruits can't deal
with a 4-speed. Please do not confuse my trying to poke holes in your
ideas as espousing the opposite view. -CWM]
-------