I will begin this post by paying my respects to the tens of thousands of brave men and women who are willingly putting their lives on the line to protect our country. This article is not against you and as a country, we owe you a debt of gratitude for protecting us from threats we will likely never know about or be able to properly appreciate.

This post was inspired by a quite lengthy and in parts heated discussion I was involved in at a Vietnamese pub some years ago. The catalyst for this discussion was the growing and alarming calls around the world including from the United Kingdom that conscription is an almost certainty if a major conflict was to break out, in part due to record low military recruitment and retention affecting most militaries.

This article presents the idea that its the communities obligation to ‘fight those who call for conscription’ and want to send a generation of young adults to a bloody death.

Your life is valuable and important

While society is pushing more and more people to feel like just a nameless number, never forget that you and those you know have fulfilling lives, people who love you, a valuable education and a lifetime of journeys and accomplishments ahead of you. You are more than just a hunk of flesh who can hold a rifle.

There is also the practical economic side to this value, to raise a single newborn to 18 or as our leaders would call ‘prime fighting and tax paying age’, it costs around £200,000-250,000, tens of thousands of hours of professional education and millions of dollars of infrastructure costs.

In WW2, the military and civilian death toll in the United Kingdom alone was over 450,000, the entire war over 70-85 million. What a needless unnecessary waste of valuable life which ultimately accomplished nothing.

No countries people should allow such waste of precious life and destruction.

Personal Freedoms

A controversial point widely debated the last few years is ‘what is freedom’?

• Is it my right to criticise and disagree with the government?
• Are the needs of protecting the vulnerable greater than those of individual freedom?
• Do I have autonomy over my own body, where I can travel and whether to fight and die, or does my government now make this say?

The answer is simple for me, these true liberties of freedom are sacred and non-negotiable. Anyone wishing to take those rights away from me or others are a tyrant are not someone I want to be fighting for. The final choice should always rest with the individual if they wish to go to war.

Don’t believe the propaganda, Insist On Evidence

In an age where the government can whip up an emergency and seize extraordinary powers in a heartbeat, its the peoples duty to question everything and demand indisputable evidence.

This was clearly illustrated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq where a false narrative of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ was orchestrated by Intelligence Agency’s that the then Iraqi Prime Minister Saddam Hussein was actively building and stock pilling weapons of mass destruction. This claim was propagated through the major media networks as fact rallying up support for a false war lasting for 8 years, costing trillions of dollars and claiming between 150,000 to over a million lives, still leaving Iraq a broken country

No weapons of mass destruction or evidence of their existence were ever discovered. The real winners however appear to have been the large foreign oil companies who were granted access to the once closed off Iraq oilfields. A great article on this is Why the war in Iraq was fought for Big Oil written by Antonia Juhasz.

A similar saga currently against Iran with continuous claims Iran is developing and planning to use nuclear weapons on Israel, accusations that Iran bitterly reject.

To date there is no hard evidence of possessing a nuclear weapon, with the International Atomic Energy Agency stating that there was “no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009”.

There is no doubt terrible things are committed by and in every country. But before jumping in supporting or even signing up for a war which will probably take millions of lives, at-least have the decency to know what the justifications for the war are and that the evidence even exists!

You’re ‘enemy’ doesn’t hate you!

While you may not agree with the actions of a foreign country’s government or leader, it is important to distinguish and separate that a particular country’s government and political system does not reflect the views of its ordinary citizens. It would be comical to say everyone from the United States had he same beliefs as Trump, or every British citizen was like Boris Johnson!

One of the first things a faction in the leadup to a conflict is create ‘war hysteria’ and intentionally alienate the population of their rivals and create significant fear and anxiety in an attempt to create strong emotions. A scared fearful population is one that is easily controlled and one that history shows us time and time again will commit unspeakable acts of violence including genocide.

In recent Western history we have countless examples of this:

• ~120,000 America-Japanese (of which Two-thirds of prisoners in the camps were native-born American citizens) were rounded up into incarceration camps after the Perl Harbour attack.
• Mass hysteria of Russians during the Cold War and fear of “Reds Under The Bed” resulting in strong ‘anti-communist’ propaganda
• Vilification of all Muslims post 9/11
• Social divide deliberately created by world governments between those unilaterally supported government policy on covid-19 and those who did not. Much of what ‘science’ we now know was entirely fictional.

Having travelled the world extensively, one thing I am sure of is that most people on this planet are genuinely good people who want nothing other than to live their lives in peace and typically welcome friendships. Despite what Hollywood may show, most are highly educated, well travelled and live good lives.

Conflicts that exist between politicians are rarely even known by the general public and like in the West, the people are often very much critical of governments foreign policy!

This was demonstrated while I was discussing this topic in Vietnam between a pair of Ukrainian and Russians men in their 30’s who had fled their respective countries, both treated each other as almost brothers with no hostility despite their neighboring countries being at war and both despised the ongoing conflict.

Below is an interesting video of the responses from Russians interviewed on if they ‘hate the US’.

If there is a take away its don’t fight or consider the countries wider population as your enemy. They likely have no issue with you and are just as dis-interested in fighting as anyone.

Insist on diplomacy and a peaceful resolution

Politicians are overpaid bullshit artists, but one thing I expect them to do is use all that fancy talk to get us out of unnecessary bloodshed.

The last thing I want is to be sent to a war because some geriatric president can’t form a coherent sentence and won’t pick up the phone, or another hot headed world leader is trying to prove themselves and won’t come to the negotiation table.

People need to demand more from their elected officials when it comes to avoiding conflict and creating strong bonds between countries. Should a war break out, the first people on the front line should be the politicians and their families. Blindly ordering citizens to their death without fear of their repercussions should never be tolerated.

War should always be considered as a failure and not something to be supportive of.

Are you fighting on the right side?

The world is not absolutes with America Good, and Russia Bad. There is two sides to every conflict and more and more many are questioning the actual circumstances that lead to certain events.

I’ll stick with the Russian conflict as realistically this is the one that me as UK citizen is likely to get involved in! On 26 September 2022 the Nord Stream gas pipelines connecting Russia and mainland was sabotaged leading to an environmental disaster and gas prices to skyrocket in Europe.

This attack ‘provoked the Russian bear’, diminished living conditions in Europe with many freezing unable to afford heating and further push the world into conflict. Most evidence points towards substantial US/NATO involvement in the attacks with a prior indication from US President Biden that the pipeline was a target.

One of the greatest quotes of a Villain, written by Bill Finger for Batman character Harvey Dent “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”.

The West has been in an almost perpetual state of war with entire industries geared around creating endless forever wars and dis-stabilizing entire regions for corporate gain. Some wars have been going on for so long that people don’t even know why or what they are fighting for anymore!

This is further troubled by the West loving to fight by proxy and covertly arming radical terrorist groups such as the Mujahideen in Operation Cyclone against the USSR. Similar such events are believed to have occurred during the Libyan and Syrian revolutions where Islamic State reigned terror on the region.

As someone who has lived most of their adult life with conflict in Afghanistan, one of the most troubling videos I’ve watched is Afghans not knowing why the Americans had invaded their country, nor even know about 9/11. No wonder it was so easy to make enemy’s and ultimately became a pointless war!

Sadly if asked ‘Are we the good guys’ in reference to the West, I wouldn’t have a clear answer. While I have absolutely no hesitation the individuals in the forces are good people, its the leaders on top giving the orders I have major reservations with.

Don’t die for someone else’s bullshit conflict or shareholder profit?

Defending your country and loved ones against a foreign invaders into your home land is a no brainer. Conflict should always have a purpose and that purpose should make you want to fight for the country

There is no shame in asking yourself “What’s in it for me and why are we fighting this war?”. If your leaders cannot provide a good answer for this valid question, you really have to ask yourself is this a war you want to be a part of.

Don’t sacrifice your life for a government and population that doesn’t care for you or will look after you afterwards?

Going to war in the past was seen as heroic and a patriotic duty, however those days are far from over.

In the West we have over 70 years worth of evidence that the government does not properly look after Veterans when/if they return home and since the Vietnam War, public sentiment has been very critical of war.

In the current age, the poster for the army is the thousands of homeless veterans and record suicide levels from those the war machine spat out.

Do you really want to die for a country whose values have become unrecognisable and hates you?

Wrap Up

Well if I wasn’t on a watchlist now, I certainly will be after this post!

I’m not a pacifist calling for world peace, war is shit and I stand against unnecessary death. The core message I am trying to reinforce is that should you wish to join the military and go to war, it should be for a cause you truly believe in and will die for.

There will be future wars and it will be your responsibility on if you want to fight them. Fighting a war should be something that is done voluntarily and not under duress of conscription.