Lee, you're one of my favorite posters here, and you demonstrate why above.

But I would say this:

The world's conscripts might turn their bayonets and bullets against their masters; this will end war more surely than turning these deadly instruments against their working, starving brothers on the "other" side. (Really, the same side: the German vet Deejay mentions above had more in common with the US vets who welcomed him than those who sent him into war!)

Let those who wish to wage war pay for that privilege with their lives, and the lives of those they love.

It's too easy to send the young to fight (youth another huge disadvantage to the prospective soldier - as everyone over 30 knows: no one under 30 knows much of anything!) Wink

If World War II were fought by those who TRULY chose to freely fight it, and with no devastation to civilian lives, what could be said against it?

But it was not - no war is.

It was a war engineered by the ruling class, and which used the working and starving classes as fodder; far more so than even its predecessor, where - at least in Europe - the nobles had some tradition of fighting/dying in battle, if in much smaller number as officers.

To freely choose (unfettered by the ignorance of youth or poverty or oligarchic rule; unpressed by conscription; unmoved by propaganda; with many other options for career and livelihood) to fight for a just cause, and to do so while bringing no harm to the innocent?

That is an extraordinary thing.

But I think also extraordinarily rare.

And this is what the warlords count on; this is why the young, the starving and the working; the minority struggling for greater acceptance in his nation; this is why these vulnerable groups are targeted.

Or simply left defenseless to the draft. (They ain't no senator's son/s, alas: the bringers of war bring not death to their own houses, but to yours and mine.)

Let men choose freely which causes they deem noble, and let them pay whatever price for these choices.

That is to me a noble aim.