Article on the growing divide between Military and Civilians

[Schone23666]

A surprisingly well-written article by the L.A. Times is out, titled "SPECIAL REPORT U.S. MILITARY AND CIVILIANS ARE INCREASINGLY DIVIDED", which can be read here:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...ry.html#page=1

It is an issue worth discussing, about the pros and cons of an "all-volunteer" force as opposed to a conscripted one, and how that might begin to generate a growing gap between military and civilian families. I'd like to know if other countries around the world that have gone from a conscript to volunteer military force have begun to experience any similar issues as well.

And yes, again, kind of eerie how that could play out into a MilGov vs. CivGov scenario in T2K. That is in spite of a lot of conspiracy mongering on both the political Right and Left, that has yet to happen in real life (of course I certainly prefer it wouldn't.)

[StainlessSteelCynic]

In Australia, the divide isn't particularly wide but we are in a very different situation to many countries. Here we never had the garrison towns that you find in the UK for example and we never had the number of families living in areas on military bases specifically set aside for families.

Military housing here was affected by two things: -
1. There was never enough population to have the size of army that most northern hemisphere nations had, so therefore we didn't need to specifically cater to suburb sized housing on military bases.
2. We were far enough away from most potential enemies that the security/readiness/etc. benefits of keeping military families living in base housing was not worth the expense. Most families lived in civilian suburbs near to bases in housing that was owned or controlled by the Defence Housing department. Barracks style housing was provided on base for unmarried personnel but married personnel often lived off base and more so if they had children.

What these two points mean is that defence personnel were already living in the local community. Unlike nations such as India that provide schools specifically for the children of military personnel, we all attended the schools in our local area and mixed with children of non-military families.
The military here does not provide the ability for former service personnel to get free or subsidized medical/pharmaceutical assistance from base medical posts/hospitals because the government doesn't get enough revenue to allow it so again, former military people are mixing with non-military people in almost every avenue of life including going to the doctor!

The other aspect about Australia is that our army in particular has always been a small core of regular personnel (to keep & maintain skills and abilities as current as possible during peace time) filled out with "citizen soldiers" during wartime. Either it was by volunteers or draftees but either way, we have not maintained a large standing army in peacetime (because we simply could not afford it). In this regard, I think there's more connection between military and civilian here than what it seems to be like in the US.

[Schone23666]

Thanks StainlessSteelCynic (Hey, why such a cynic? ). What you wrote would be expected in Australia as you do have a much smaller populace, and with that, a smaller tax base than in the United States.

I think the issue in the United States is that with the all-volunteer force, it seems rather a case of problems with our own success, if you could call it that. Nobody liked the draft (and still don't), with some decrying what they saw as a militarization of the populace and others unhappy with the quality of conscripts who in some cases at least didn't have the same level of professionalism or enthusiasm as a volunteer force.

The problem with a volunteer force is that you draw from a much smaller segment of the overall populace, thus the term "shared sacrifice" becomes hollow. As one servicemember stated in the article "Thank you for your service" sounded to him like "Thanks for volunteering so me and no one else in my family had to go." Add to that where you have an increasing situation where most of the populace in the U.S. only know of what the various servicemen/servicewomen typically do and go through on a regular basis only through movies and TV (with mixed results), thus getting increasingly skewed images of what the U.S. military does ranging from a right-wing hyperbolic form of patriotism to a left-wing condemnation of almost anything related to the U.S. military in general, but I'll avoid getting too much into the typical hot-button political side of things and leave it at that.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Unfortunately it's one of those situations were you can't afford to ignore the political side of it, specifically the socio-political aspect. The "Thank you for your service" thing strikes me as being totally socio-political in nature as we have seen the governments and media encouraging citizens to say it. More so because it helps pacify any potential dissent about whatever war we might be in at the moment than for any true care from the government or media about service personnel. It didn't spring into life from the community as a way to show gratitude, it was very much an orchestrated event.

But this is also the part that really illustrates the divide between former & serving military and civilians. With the "Thank you..." being repeated so often by politicians and media talking heads and others who have rarely (if ever) set foot near a military base, it starts to feel like nothing more than an empty platitude.
I can very much understand any military personnel taking "Thank you for your service" as really meaning "Thanks for doing the shitty things I don't want to do".

On the very few times it's been said to me I found myself doubting the sincerity of the speaker because it very much seemed that they were saying it because they seemed to feel it was expected of them - they didn't really appear to care about whatever I might have done during my time in, but they felt they should say something because it's the politically correct thing to do at the moment.




And here's you doubting my cynicism

[Schone23666]

PAH! My cynicism is bigger than yours!

[Askold]

Conscription might not work for every country but particularly in Finland (with large territory and small population) it does offer several benefits. One of which is that the "military" and the "people" are not divided.

There was an hypothetical conversation about a revolution in Finland and the thing is that IF you get enough people to support your cause to be able to defeat the police and the military then you don't actually have a reason to start a revolution. You already have enough supporters to go into politics and will probably get to be the biggest party. (The major parties each have about 20% of the votes.)