Sorry if this is annoying to someone, but my first post about military
service was only technical note about possible problems I will have to
face in near future. Many people responded to the list, so I will do so
too.
There are some ideas which I believe can be proved to be right:
1) To call service in army, especially if it is not voluntary, a
"honor", is either very idealistic, but it can be called also naive,
and in extreme case a hipocracy It is slightly like in George Orwel:
"war is peace, freedom is slavery, truth is lie". It is something what
definitely restricts personal freedom, while the benefit for single
country is problematic, and benefit for human race as a whole is
definitely negative
2) Not all democratic countries require their citizens to serve in
army, but ALL totalitarian countries (namely Germany in both W.W., Austria
Hungary in 1st W.W., Communist Russia during it's entire history,
nationalist Serbia, Pol-Pot's Kambodza and many, many other) use
conscription to increase strength of their armies. All of such countries
call it big honour to serve in army....
3) In my country, I am allowed to serve "alternative service", but
it is forbidden to have any legal income while serving both in army
and civil service, and additionaly, the civil service has to be
unqualified. It is economical nonsense, because qualified people
are force to do some job for 1.5 years, which could be easily done
by people, who can't find any job due to lack of qualification. So our
country loses not only taxes (eg. I am paying slightly higher taxes than
our average Czech citizen - but so do many other young men who succeded to
find good job or run some business) but also has extra expenses while
supporting unemployed people (unemployment got much worse during last
few years).
4) Existence of national armies in today's Europe is totaly irrational.
We are surrounded by very peacful nations, and usage of army in some
international operations is anyway restricted to professional part
of army anyway.
...
I must definitely agree with Or Botton's point of view (although I think
Israels is maybe located in more dangerous part of world than my
country, but this can change if someone more agressive wins election in
Russia :-( Of course I will try to do it like hime, the problem is that
in my case, the process has gone too far, and I will face more troubles
than this initial
Additionaly, I was suffering quite unpleasant ilness cca 3 years ago
(probably as result of my initial period of extremely-hard, day and
night work on Arachne... which I definitely gave up, now I spend most
of my time answering Arachne related e-mails ;). It is caused "syndrome
of being tired" (proably only in Czech, not in English), and some
doctors believe it is caused by certain known virus, so it is often called
"E.B.virosis". But it is not on list of "accepted ilnesses" to be
excused from military service. Luckily, this ilness is not active now,
but they would probably called me even during the period when it was
active, if I had bad luck.
...
Summmary: I believe, that only very idealistic people isolated from
reality can call compulsory service in army to be useful for anyone or
even call it a "honour". Being pragmatic and realistic, I would like to
not forget about this absurdity when I grow older, and work hard towards
worldwide abolition of these relics of slavery, as I see them from my
point of view of until-recently-completely-free-man. Additionaly,
conscription is sexist - I wonder if I shouldn't declare that I am
going to change my gender to woman ;-)
--
Michael Polak: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Arachne Labs: http://arachne.cz/
My mobile phone - up to 160 characters: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
