According to the European Council on Foreign Relations, support for mandatory military service reached 62% in France, 53% in Germany, and 51% in Poland. Yet the most revealing numbers appear when the German results are divided by age, because net opposition among those aged 18 to 29 reached 46%, while net support among respondents over 70 stood at 49%.
The people safely beyond military age are volunteering the young for war. They will not receive the draft notice, undergo the medical examination, surrender their careers, or be ordered into a trench. They will watch the war on television while congratulating themselves for supporting “national service,” as if clicking yes in a poll were an act of personal courage.
There is something profoundly immoral about demanding a sacrifice that you will never be required to make. If those over 70 believe so passionately in military service, governments can create senior battalions and hand them the rifles first. Let the politicians, retired bureaucrats, television commentators, and comfortable academics who preach war demonstrate their convictions personally before they conscript an 18-year-old who wants nothing to do with their geopolitical fantasies.
Hellbound and Down 