We had our meeting on Thursday on whether modern society should have compulsory military service for its youth.

Shula said that historically, the Greeks saw war and fighting as an art form that one should train and be good at.  So military service for the ancient Greeks was social participation as well as pursue of a glorious career.

Rafi said that the compulsory draft is a social engineering exercise where youth from all social classes are brought together in one place and put through discipline and routine.  It exposes participants to how the other parts of their society exist. It also shows them how military discipline works in the rapid flow of command and action.

All thought that it is a good idea to put youth out of high school through some form of structure while they contemplate what to do next.  Maybe not training for war but perhaps the national guard for helping battle forest fires, natural disasters, and other situations where local forces need extra help.

Eva is skeptical of authoritarian structures which always seem to be flawed in some way in their directives.  It seems inescapable that authorities misuse their power once they have that power for a while.

It seems that countries that have compulsory military service are either the ones facing existential threats like South Korea, Taiwan, and Israel, or else countries that have a tradition in doing so.

]Therefore, it will be difficult politically to institute a compulsory service for youth as national guard or peace corps as the program cost and lost of a few years of youth is too much for a democratic society to accept.

If the program is not compulsory, it will not attain the social engineering aspects of universal participation or become an option of last resort for unemployed youths.

Rafi also pointed out that nowadays, there are more in the military playing a support role rather than a real combat role.  Therefore the dangers of being in the military service are not as severe as one would think.

Surprisingly, there was not much reaction that the draft will affect how citizens feel about going to war. Perhaps war is always preceded by a built up of local emotions that dominate the decision making process.

Rafi mentioned that part of the justification of having a strong military and the draft in Israel is to back up its negotiation position.  The readiness of the military machine and the draft behind it is as much useful in its psychological effect as its lethal killing effect.

Therein lies the lesson that peace is maintained by force against those who want to take advantage of the pacifists.