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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

If there was a war and conscription was mandatory would you go?

306 replies

visitingagain · 20/11/2021 16:33

Do people think the government has the right to conscript people? Should people who won't comply get punished?

OP posts:
rrhuth · 20/11/2021 18:24

No.

A government of corrupt liars like the one we have currently has no right to tell anyone what to do anyway.

ZingDramaQueenOfSheeba · 20/11/2021 18:26

@jay55

I'm a bit old but have tech skills that might be useful. I doubt they'd ever have wanted fat women on the front line however dire things are.
@jay55

🤣
unless the aim would be to scare then enemy into thinking they are lunch.

Also, I'd be happy to offer my services in biological & tactical warfare: they could weaponise my farts as tear & nerve gas.
They are so evil that there would be no need for waterboarding and such for example, the mere threat of them would bring the most seasoned spies to their knees.

PicsInRed · 20/11/2021 18:26

Not to put too fine a point on it, but drones will be bringing warfare to our homes anyway.

Lots of people sign up when they see what's happening to, or over the hill from, their own villages. Between that and the propaganda and behaviour science we've seen employed on us in the past 2 years, conscription will probably be largely unnecessary, because people will sign up as it will be the "done thing".

JaniceBattersby · 20/11/2021 18:28

So an evil dictator, with the support of his powerful and brainwashed army is marching through Italy, he sweeps through Spain, Belgium Denmark and is almost in France. His target is to kill all brown-haired girls aged between 8 and 22 because he believes them to be evil. When he catches them he will subject them to the most unimaginable awful rape and death you can imagine. Starving them before murdering them en masse then chucking the bodies in a pit. He’ll also throw in a few experiments in on them because, it may further his cause in the future.

Are we still not bothering to fight to save our daughters or our sisters?

My point is that dictators hell bent on war will not act rationally, fairly or in a way you might expect. In some circumstances the only option may be full military conscription.

Like most here, I believe in peace over war and it should only ever be a last, last resort when all diplomatic avenues have been attempted.

In those circumstances, damn right Id stand and fight before I let anyone take my daughter, and it would be much better to do that as part of organised conscription than with my bare hands when they’re stood on my doorstep.

TotoShetland · 20/11/2021 18:32

There’s no way I would go and fight for this bunch of corrupt arseholes.

I’d be advising my friends and family very strongly not to either.

nothingcanhurtmewithmyeyesshut · 20/11/2021 18:33

I'd fail the medical and the psych evaluation so moot point really but no, I would not want to go.

StrongerOrWeaker · 20/11/2021 18:33

There is a school of thought that says that circonscription makes citizens more involved and vocal about politics. If middle class parents risk seeing their kids sent to fight a war, they are more likely to protest it. If on the other hand only the working classes are going to be used as cannon fodder, why even care? I am generalizing but you get the gist.

Animood · 20/11/2021 18:34

@PicsInRed

Not to put too fine a point on it, but drones will be bringing warfare to our homes anyway.

Lots of people sign up when they see what's happening to, or over the hill from, their own villages. Between that and the propaganda and behaviour science we've seen employed on us in the past 2 years, conscription will probably be largely unnecessary, because people will sign up as it will be the "done thing".

Lol
MaxNormal · 20/11/2021 18:44

People are talking about WWII but generally conscription has been awful - the first world war was just a total slaughter of millions and a waste and for what, really?
Then there was Vietnam in the US and all those poor kids sent off to die for that particular bit of nonsense.

I'd maybe fight if it was something I believed in very strongly and I was also in a completely desperate situation, but there's no way I'd go and fight a rich man's war.

Arethechildreninbedyet · 20/11/2021 18:46

@Octavia174 you are a very ignorant individual who has been grateful enough to experience a lifetime of peace on protected lands.

Let’s strip you of your home, your family, your identity and autonomy, let’s rip your children out of your arms to be gassed, let’s strip you of the very clothes you’re wearing, shave your head, tattoo a number onto you like cattle, dress you in rags, lock you in a camp infected with lice and disease, starve you, best and torture you and proceed to work you to death and then we’ll ask you if it fucking matters if the nazis had won or not.

An absolutely disgraceful thing to say.

mumwon · 20/11/2021 19:04

I was a kid in Australia at the time of the Vietnam War - they had a very strange form (same as the US apparently) where (memory!) it was based on date on birth picked out by some sort of lottery. I think it was the day the young men turned 20 (long time ago) ds's boyfriends were not picked but I know others that were. As in the US some did hide & were found & served prison sentences - in the US there was escape clauses which seemed to favour the rich & the war was fought mainly by poor white & black people - Some escaped to Canada

stairway · 20/11/2021 19:15

My thoughts WW2 could have been prevented and it certainly wouldn’t have happened if WW1 didn’t go ahead. WW1 happened because the aristocracy did do politicians at the time did not value the lives of young men.

BlueFlavour · 20/11/2021 19:20

@Animood

It would depends what the war was for.

If a country decided to bomb the shit out of the UK or invading with a plan to overthrow our way of life, then what choice would we have really? We'd have to do something.

But if it were a shitty pointless war (like Iraq, vietnam etc) not a fucking chance.

I agree. I would fight, though I’m pretty pathetic Grin. Evil dictator only though. I could never have been a double agent. The courage and nerve of the people who were.
SnackSizeRaisin · 20/11/2021 19:21

If you can name one person you knew who was killed by the Romans I'll give you my life savings.

Jesus

Am I the first??

How much are your life savings?

Aphantasia · 20/11/2021 19:28

Nope, no way in hell should anyone be forced to take lives or potentially loose their own. Hell would freeze over before I would let my children be sent off as cannon fodder. But then if conscription was enacted that would suggest that the reasons for the war wouldn’t have the people behind them, or that the chances of being killed or maimed would be extremely high, different thing if people wanted to fight and believed they were fighting to defend their values and loved ones lives and safety, in which case most people I suspect would be in favour of taking up arms. But then war now is a very different beast than it was in the era of WW1 or WW2, it’s equally terrifying to think that with the advancement of technology and mechanisation of war if there ever was another world war the vast majority of the worlds population wouldn’t know anything about it till they were blown up by drone missiles while they were all sat on their sofas round watching strictly some Saturday night….

BeyondMyWits · 20/11/2021 19:35

It will be our teenagers and hackers, and gamers that would be needed to fight the wars that will be fought online... I'm sure I could operate a drone if they told me it was a computer game... Ender's Game comes to mind.

Cos let's face it, no one is going to go to a front line and lay their lives down on the say so of a bunch of white, middle aged, male, public school educated politicos sitting on their fat arses pretending they give a shit.

Maskless · 20/11/2021 19:47

Haha I'd like to see this generation of snowflakes who get triggered at seeing words on a screen join the army.

Lavender24 · 20/11/2021 19:49

I'm quite amused reading these responses because the past two years has shown that most UK citizens will blindly follow what the government tells them to do but also that most are chickenshit and won't stand up for themselves. So what would your average UK. citizen do if their options were oppose the government or go to war?

DismantledKing · 20/11/2021 19:56

@Lavender24

I'm quite amused reading these responses because the past two years has shown that most UK citizens will blindly follow what the government tells them to do but also that most are chickenshit and won't stand up for themselves. So what would your average UK. citizen do if their options were oppose the government or go to war?
Well done for cramming your crappy antivaxx opinion into a conscription thread.
shiningjustforyou · 20/11/2021 19:57

@Lavender24

I'm quite amused reading these responses because the past two years has shown that most UK citizens will blindly follow what the government tells them to do but also that most are chickenshit and won't stand up for themselves. So what would your average UK. citizen do if their options were oppose the government or go to war?
Or maybe, people have just been sensible to keep themselves and people around them safe.

It doesn't compare and the people who think it does are idiots.

CheeseMmmm · 20/11/2021 19:59

We've been through this topic in the world wars haven't we? Discussed in parliament conscientious objectors etc.

As a family with children at home, if both parents conscripted who looks after the kids? I mean you could do like evacuation and send to older relatives, or care homes etc. But in practice costly in money and massive in terms of communities schooling psychological etc. Also carers for others in family who need it.

Plus I suppose in the last two wars the men went and the women stepped into the jobs to keep the country going. So that would need to be considered. How to keep everything going.

Anyway.
As a nearly 50 year old with a lifelong physical disability currently in peri with MH probs due to it I don't think I'd be a great pick for anything active!

I have flown a helicopter before (experience type things) and would be v happy up do that. In places where I didn't need to jump out and run around. Would love to be trained.. And v good under pressure and quick reaction times. I would love that way more than being at home etc.

I also have science degree and would be fine doing anything helping with.. I dunno. Data. Logistics. That sort of stuff.

So yes happy to. War these days seems to be a fair bit remote so that would be fine.

RockNRollMartian · 20/11/2021 20:05

Few want to fight in wars, but sometimes they have to be fought, to preserve our culture/civilisation or to protect people who will otherwise be slaughtered or enslaved.

I don't think I'd be a good candidate for a soldier, but I'd have to do what I could to help the war effort, especially if I felt it was for the good of my country and my people.

RandomLondoner · 20/11/2021 20:05

@SnackSizeRaisin

If you can name one person you knew who was killed by the Romans I'll give you my life savings.

Jesus

Am I the first??

How much are your life savings?

Knowing of someone and knowing them are two different things...
CheeseMmmm · 20/11/2021 20:08

I mean I really hope nothing happens that we need to actively force people again.

The past experiences here are remembered as a terrible thing, huge losses. The war poems of Wilfred Owen and others about the horrors of war.

I learnt one in school and he is v well known and respected.

I just think the feeling about war and being conscripted is socially seen as ok really because their works are so famous and still important.

Yes if we were fighting for our lives and society in an imminent way of course. However they could use me best.

'Dulce et Decorum Est
BY WILFRED OWEN
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.'

CheeseMmmm · 20/11/2021 20:08

Anthem for Doomed Youth
BY WILFRED OWEN
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.