Which of your children would take up arms if need be to defend their country

[Lardychops]

Ive been thinking about this a lot lately in a thought experiment/abstract way since Ukraine invasion and having lived years ago in Israel where young people do national service from 17 as a matter of course with frequent refreshers- obviously now for them being put to the test .
So, my question is -
In terms of the ‘barbarians at the gates scenario which of your children/neices /nephews /siblings parents would drop everything to defend their country/ city/town/ village and family if they needed to ? And do you think their lifestyle/career path impacts on this?

I have 1DD single mother of 3 - she would have been first in the queue pre kids and if I looked after them she would be first to front line

3x DS - all tradesmen- without hesitation- 1 has a child but a partner - he would be first on the front line after his sister. One of them would be terrified but his pride would make him follow his brothers to protect his family rather than any bigger picture

1xDSD - works in retail -No doubt she would pick up arms and fight to the death.

1xDSD- left Uni-just got back from travelling - nothing in hospitality- no chance.

I think maybe they meant if the politicians that were deciding on war if they would "offer up" their kids not if you would.

Any war will be airborn or cyber- very little use for troops on the ground. My kids will be exempt as both on spectrum, but I’d hope they might help with missile design or computing etc. we actually know people in arms research/design/manufacture so that’s actually feasible.

So funny xxx

I think it's very easy to say "I would do x/y/z" in a hypothetical situation but faced with reality it may very well be different.

humans are complex and are very often a mix of "good" and "bad" .

My husband would be first in line. He served 26 years in the Armed Forces and it's in his DNA. My children are all young, but I know my teen daughter wouldn't fight unless we were targeted personally. My son, 12, would be there in a shot. He's been a military cadet for 3 years already, and it's all he wants to do, just like his Dad. At least one of my other sons would probably volunteer too.

I have 4 adult nephews, I think possibly 2 of them would do it.
I don't think my brother would. He's a highly trained martial artist, but something of a pacifist. He would also be too worried about his wife to leave her.

Why would any white working class man fight for this country?

They are at the bottom of the outcomes table, yet back of the queue with DEI initiatives and despised under identity politics.

So why would my son defend a country that castigates him during peacetime and only wants him when there is a war?

I assume the front line of war will be inclusive and diverse; so ensure 50/50 in terms of male/ female and the troops will include 20% from different races. Will all communities living as ‘British’ fight?

No doubt the expectation is the white working class lad will shoulder most of the fighting and diversity and equality goes out the window.

Sorry but goings on in Ukraine and elsewhere shows that despite all the tech a lot of fighting ends up being done by men and women slogging it out on the ground....

A pps comment about living in a field for a week etc probably isn't far off the mark.

@DeathlyGreenAngel

I might choose to fight against a far right regime that was intent on expansion.

Would you fight against a far left regime intent on expansion? Life under communism isn’t a barrel of laughs unless you’re one of the nomenklatura.

It amazes me how people can continue to believe that war these days wouldn't involve much troops on the ground when there is a war currently going on that involves exactly like that. Do people just not pay attention to the news?

Well if its Russia then what's being offered is oppression, rape, random violence, and your children being kidnapped and adopted by Russian families, forced to suppress their own identities and become Russians.

If that's on offer, I suspect most would rather fight.

Like I said depends on who is invading and what the offer is...I wouldn't personally put having to become Russian on par with rape but everyone will have their red lines though.

That's what I mean -there's this weird exceptionalism on this thread "Well, I'd just x, y or z." As if any of those options would remain available.
I often wonder about the sense of collective ownership of our shared security, democracy and nationhood, of a sense of 'the common good' in the UK, an awareness which is much more prevalent in my country of birth. I'd not really encountered what is referred to as an "I'm alright, Jack" attitude until I got to the UK, and it was a bit of a shock to see this kind of individualistic centering. People appear to feel this is an expression of autonomy or free will, but in my experience, we're only as free as the society we jointly contribute and commit to. Collectivism in general can be problematic in the UK with its colonial history and the lasting effects thereof on institutions and societal structures, but most of the 'I'm alright Jack' proponents I've encountered are not 'sitting out' because of any historic beef with Empire.

Being stolen from your family, taken thousands of miles away to live with strangers (and no idea how they might treat the children) isn't so bad then?

i want to say none of them - but you never know what people actually might do until they’re faced with that situation. It is quite hard to imagine them wanting to voluntarily.

I think it suited some interested parties in some countries, certainly the UK - e.g. some politicians, some academic institutions, some in the arms industry to talk up "cyber" and "tech" and ignore the unavoidably grim side of war fighting.

I also don't think many outlets outside of Ukraine really cover the ground war at all well.. I've been reading some grim reports in the last week that have not in the MSM...the MSM seems to concentrate almost entirely on the attacks on the civilian population these days.

That's what I mean -there's this weird exceptionalism on this thread "Well, I'd just x, y or z." As if any of those options would remain available.

Plenty of people have lived under occupation throughout wars though, it's not like it isn't an option.

My parents are immigrants so it's certainly not exceptionalism shaping my opinions 😆

If Stalin was crossing the North Sea then I can confirm I would be motivated to fight that off.

I am not sure why folks seem to think all the under 30’s have a hammer and sickle flag in their bedroom.

Mine is 7 so I have no idea. DH would, if they wanted slightly out of shape 44 year olds.

I am not sure why folks seem to think all the under 30’s have a hammer and sickle flag in their bedroom.

I asked because so far some posters have said they’d fight against the far right but there hasn’t been mention of the far left.
There used to be plenty of pro Soviet opinion right up until the empire ceased in 1991 - I remember a slogan used by those in favour of unilateral disarmament, ‘Better Red than Dead’.

Far right nationalism is alive and thriving in Europe. It is just more topical in our locale.

What about if your children’s lives are under threat? It’s a bloody good thing my dad and his generation thought there were ideals and morals worth fighting for.

Seems that some posters don't think the British way of life is worth defending, and would have been happy learning to speak German (and accept Nazism as a way of life) in the 1930's and 1940's.

Anyway it's more likely that our freedom of way of life would be impacted than people (apart from some minorities) being killed. They'd be given a choice of converting beforehand. Your children growing up being forced to be veiled, no freedom of religion, no music festivals and pubs and clubs and all the things we take for granted. And it won't look like a land invasion, it is more likely to be the slow incremental creep of the Muslim Brotherhood, banned as a terrorist organisation in much of the middle east such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, but thriving in Europe.
And I bet this comment gets reported for being Islamophobic.

For the record, I am not prejudiced against Muslims, people are free to follow whatever religion, or none, that makes them happy as long as they give others the same freedom. I am against any extremism and have legitimate concerns about a political movement that has clear anti-Western aims, is so extreme that Saudi and UAE with their very strict interpretation of Islam have banned it, and it is being allowed to flourish, invest and money launder in the UK. And nobody is allowed to mention it.

We are all busy looking at Russia but that's not as big a threat, in the UK and western Europe at least.

I've been re-reading Ann Frank's diary.

Last night DH & me were talking about if were living in Germany or occupied territories, if we'd have been brave enough to hide Jewish children or supported the Resistance & then to what extent would we have supported them? Would we have carried arms & messages? Would we have blown up railway lines? Helped Allied Airmen get home? Our biggest concern would be that, in taking part in resistance activities, we would put our families at risk - our GC could have been taken into concentration camps & murdered. But then, the fact that their fathers would be fighting would put them at risk.

My late mother worked with and became good friends with someone who worked for the French Resistance. Francis Cammaerts - Wikipedia Apparently Francis was a very unassuming & rather shy man and mum only found out about his career in the resistance after many years of friendship. I'm not so sure that I would be brave enough to do what he did.

@treesfalling Living under occupation could look very differently depending on who's invading where; I've imagined a US 'soft' invasion of Greenland this week, for instance, trying to extrapolate how it would impact the region. But it'll never be anybody's first choice, irrespective of who or where. I'm more thinking of posters who imagine they'll blithely whip out their EU passports and hop overseas, or wait to see which others send their DC before volunteering, or just sit by and expect 'the Forces to deal with it'.
I'm first generation immigrant in the UK, and the child of an immigrant in my country of birth. I really believe that irrespective of our immigrant status, 'buy-in' to nationhood, community and the understanding that the defense of the liberties we enjoy in our adopted homeland is a shared responsibility, irrespective of how much of a stake one feels one has in society. My immigrant parent committed 100% to the upholding and promotion of democracy and collectivism in my birth country, because their own parents' human rights had been under threat in their country of origin.

Of course it's bad, but as far as anybody knows, Putin has no interest in kidnapping your kids to make them into Russians. He's kidnapping Ukrainian kids because he thinks they are already Russians. He's not trying to make Russians out of you and me, provided we're not from former Soviet countries. His atrocities are appalling, but they aren't currently a direct threat to our way of life.