I mean with Portugal, I remember reading a book about conscripts being used to defend colonies and putting down rebellions of locals in Africa and such. For that sort of bullshit I agree, conscription is not the way to go. But for purely defensive purposes, I do not see anything bad about conscription. But thats me with my Finnish background, we havent gone to other lands trying to conquer places. We’ve fought mostly defensive wars, in which the survival of the nation was at stake. The only time we went on a offensive, was to get back areas we lost a few years before. So obviously there is a difference in thinking there and I completely understand the reluctance of places, that used their military to go out and about, to have conscription back. So perhaps the way to do it is to make the laws so that it would be illegal to use conscripts in a non-defensive operations. Like, if Portugal wants to take part in bombing some militants in a ex-colony, that has to be done by volunteers etc. Even russia does (or pretends to do) it like that, I don’t know if they changed it yet, but at least it used to be so that conscripts were not allowed to be sent outside russian borders.

And back to US, what I meant is that once a weapons program is done, its done. Of course they go on for years, even decades, but sometimes they don’t. I wasn’t really arguing that they are not a waste of money, most of them are, mostly, a waste of money. But once they end, they end. Paying pensions and stuff only ends when the person dies. But of course, people live longer than weapons R&D programs, some R&D programs live longer than people. But I think we agree that both are a huge cost and both are kind of unnecessary in different ways. Weapons programs are unnecessary because most of them are completely useless or dead ends, paying soldiers is unnecessary because the US doesn’t have to go and start bombing Iran, they choose to do so and it costs a stupid amount for a long time.

And a final point on the conscription, I’m not saying that its good. I’m saying it MIGHT be necessary. At least in some capacity. Maybe having a purely defensive force is the way to go, like I said, make it illegal for the government to send soldiers to fight, unless they were attacked first. But of course the politicians will find a way around that. Its a complicated subject and I tend to not get into it too much, because I don’t live in these other countries, I don’t know the history, I don’t know the culture. All I know is that our defensive conscription model works for us and it works extremely well for us and nobody wants to get rid of it. But like I said, I completely understand that other places are a bit suspicious about it and I won’t blame them.