Wearing Your Medals With Your Kilt

[wsk]

This thread has taken an interesting turn.

The current question seems to be heading towards: Would you encourage a young man to join the Armed Forces?

Wow - is that a hard question. I feel every young person would benifit from two, three or more years in the service to his country. It teaches many things: self-reliance, dependablilty, accountability, independence and dependence at the same time. It forces a person to be true to his word. It exposes him to work with others he may not like. It shows him that sweat and hard work will not kill him, but that inattention may. It makes him realize that his well being is dependent on the actions of others and himself. It teaches him to be at work on time. These are all attributes that every adult should have, and sadly few do.

Would I encourage every young person to join? No. The service is not for everyone! If a young person is not ready to take the responsibility for his own actions, the service will only make his life worse.

We disagree. Heartily. For all of the excellent reasons you've enumerated, I benefited from my term in the Navy despite the fact that I was in no way ready to take responsibility for my life. If you could read my evals from the first half of my Naval service you'd see that my performance was uniformly less than stellar. But then I got myself squared away and life has been much better ever since. I assert that without the Navy to kick my butt, give me meaningful responsibility, and a sense of belonging, I'd have not done as well in this life as I have done.

Would I encourage a young person to join, who seems to have a yearning to learn and a strong curiosity? Yes.

I won't go into which branch of the service I would recommend, because my answers would be different for each person. Not every young man can be a Marine. But the same is true for the Army, Navy or Coast Guard. The jury is still out on the Air Force.

Other political questions also need to be asked. Should the US bring back the draft? Yes! Should there be any draft deferments? NO! \

What say you?

Political questions are, well, political and you know how the mods feel about political discussions.

[James MacMillan]

We disagree. Heartily. For all of the excellent reasons you've enumerated, I benefited from my term in the Navy despite the fact that I was in no way ready to take responsibility for my life. If you could read my evals from the first half of my Naval service you'd see that my performance was uniformly less than stellar. But then I got myself squared away and life has been much better ever since. I assert that without the Navy to kick my butt, give me meaningful responsibility, and a sense of belonging, I'd have not done as well in this life as I have done.

I'm not sure we really disagree at all. Having had a lot of first termers working for me over the years, some were just unable to make the adjustment. They were just miserable. Sure some, like you, eventually got with the program, and made a life. Others got out as soon as possible, harbored bad feelings and still didn't do very well. To this day, I continue to meet individuals who say that they should have stayed in. But I'm sure you will agree that the service is not for everyone. That's a good thing.

Political questions are, well, political and you know how the mods feel about political discussions.

Yea, you are right. Nuff said.