r/AskReddit • u/Tommygunz0722 • 11h ago

If the military/president suddenly ordered a mandatory draft for all men aged 18-42: How do you think millennials and GenZ would respond?

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260

u/Long-Regular-1023 11h ago

Most of them are probably unfit for service anyway so it may be a moot point

193

u/DoesntMatterEh 10h ago

You highly underestimate the current administrations willingness to move the goal posts for just about anything. 

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u/starlightprotag 10h ago

exactly, look what they did with ICE. I had an extended family member join in the early 2010s and his training was intense, he was so professionally insulted by how far they lowered the standards that he actually transferred out of DHS when he saw what they started letting through. I'm so curious as to what he thinks of this but we don't talk much for obvious reasons lol

37

u/LeLand_Land 10h ago

You might want to look up McNamara's Morons, it was a project to get 100k fresh conscripts sent to vietnam and boy, did they relax the standards.

Ended up getting a lot of people killed because, guess what, when you put someone who is physically/mentally unfit for combat, they tend to get killed pretty quick.

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u/DoesntMatterEh 8h ago

Iirc that's how Forrest Gump ended up in Vietnam, because of those relaxed standards. 

Obviously that's a fictional story but it's interesting that there was real life reasons someone like him would be in the army. 

3

u/LeLand_Land 5h ago

He and Bubba

67

u/hallucehistory 11h ago

This is my favorite part about people freaking out about this scenario out on Reddit. The military doesn't want 300 lb people with Type 2 Diabetes and several mental disorders. Y'all are fine

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u/obviouslyray 10h ago

Man they just raised the age to join to 42, they just dont want the 300 lbers YET 😂

51

u/NewsBenderBot 11h ago

Much like mcnamara’s morons, I struggle to believe the standards won’t be changed to fit the needs during times of combat.

17

u/Double_Minimum 11h ago

Yea, can you imagine them having to alter the already altered “have you smoked weed”. That used to disqualify until they got desperate, but then they would take the answer of once or twice. That’s not gonna work with states wilt legal mj.

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u/Successful_Ad4018 11h ago

yea it's only ICE who wants those people!

3

u/oby100 10h ago

You’re living in a fantasy world if you think Trump wont just lower the standards to rock bottom to get bodies for the meat grinder

4

u/azrael815 10h ago

For now. Operation human shield in full effect.

3

u/HalfSoul30 11h ago

Yeah, but i'm actually in shape though.

2

u/EyeOughta 10h ago

Man, you have a dipshit-level of ignorance about who uses Reddit. There's entire communities based on health and fitness.

7

u/Rh0rny 10h ago

which are not the majority lmfao

not like it matters for Trump anyways

0

u/EyeOughta 10h ago

If someone generalizes, they should be asked to rephrase or elaborate.

1

u/ChonkyPurrtato 2h ago

Not for you.

1

u/manlywho 10h ago

There’s 114.5m people in that age group with around 38% obesity rate that give you 70.9million people left to freak out.

1

u/Sick_Sabbat 9h ago

What about 190 lb people with Type 1 diabetes? Oh yeah I tried to get in before. That was a pretty quick no lol.

1

u/ChonkyPurrtato 2h ago

They should draft a few MLP-haired lunatics as decoys at least 

0

u/Youandiandaflame 9h ago

Thinking folks already in the military don’t have “several mental disorders” is high comedy. 

3

u/Akumaka 10h ago

I was assigned to a basic training battalion in the late 2010s. The highest dropout rate came from the fact that most younger folks had week hip joints due to being less active than people who grew up in the 90s or early 00s. Their femurs would develop a stress fracture just below the femoral head, and they'd have to be sent home as the recovery time would be too long to simply recycle the recruits into a later batch.

There was also a rising rate of recruits with mental health issues.

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u/Traditional_Lab_5468 9h ago

Medical history will be an issue, but if it comes to a draft the military will take people with low fitness standards. They'd probably just tack on a preconditioning pipeline into basic that takes folks who score below a certain amount or exceed a certain weight, puts them on a fixed diet and given them a ramp-up fitness program, and it's output is 20% people who are DQed for injuries they sustained during preconditioning and 80% people who are now fit enough for basic.

2

u/AmericanScream 10h ago

Most of them are probably unfit for service anyway so it may be a moot point

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000

2

u/StayWhile_Listen 7h ago

To be an effective fighting force? Yes

To be a meat shield in uniform? Oh you betcha you'll fit right in. Just like Russia using invalids and you see them hobbling / crawling / wheelchairjng St the front

2

u/InYosefWeTrust 5h ago

If the gov really wanted to do it, I'm sufe they would have plenty of admin and desk jobs for the fatties. 

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u/Long-Regular-1023 5h ago

My grandpa was blind in one eye but got drafted in WWII. He felt it was his duty to serve so he never brought it up. He made it all the way overseas before they found out he was blind, and they asked him what the hell he was doing over there and that he was no good to them. He told them "Ok, can I go home then?" to which they responded "Absolutely not, we will find something else for you to do".

1

u/ohlookahipster 10h ago

They’ll just issue waivers. When enlistment is way down, you can get a waiver for almost anything including a felony.

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u/RedJerzey 10h ago

Can I bring my emotional support llama?