Phil,

You were way too easy on that guy. I was disappointed to say the least. I listening to the entire show and all your guest could say was “it is a human rights violation”, but put nothing into context. I was hoping you would ask him what was so inhumane about civil service and the fact that the civil service is an option just for objectors like himself.

I’ve got no sympathy for these people. The options are avaliable and fleeing to Belgium rather than performing his 13 months of service shows why the welfare state is doomed. People like this are never going to affect any change when they show themselves to be irresponsible citizens. If Mr. Hermaja wants to effect change, he should have done his civil service and started a political movement in Finland.

I don’t like the idea of consription either, but their are alternatives that young men in other countries do not have. I’m sure when Mr. Hermaja does return to Finland, he’ll be quick to apply for welfare benefits and leach the system he so resents.

I listening to the entire show and all your guest could say was “it is a human rights violation”, but put nothing into context.

Well he did say that the civil service was backed by jailtime, I think that’s why he opposes it. Plus it’s longer (13 months) than military (6 months), which isn’t fair. But you’re right, I’ve even had my guests after the show say, “You were too easy on me!” I promise I’ll try and toughen up.

The options are avaliable and fleeing to Belgium rather than performing his 13 months of service shows why the welfare state is doomed.

What good does civil service do? And why should Finns do it but not the rest of the EU?

People like this are never going to affect any change when they show themselves to be irresponsible citizens.

I think Jussi took the biggest sacrifice of them all, he’s fleeing his family and friends and home for 5 (I think he said 5?) years. That’s a looong time.

I’m sure when Mr. Hermaja does return to Finland, he’ll be quick to apply for welfare benefits and leach the system he so resents.

Welfare state benefits and conscription have nothing to do with one another.

Hmm. 5 years is all too relative, the older you get.

I do think that Hermaja was in his rights to do as he saw best. Conscription is just a bad idea: a professional army is all the more effective if one believes that a state has to have an effective, credible force, when needed.

Conscript armies have evolved to become the welfare states’ insurance that no one will support taking up arms for anything at all, even though your neighboring state might be in the process of being massacred, and you might have the power to do something about it. That’s exactly what happened in Yugoslavia.

Conscription is one of those ideas that needs to junked, along with the Geneva Conventions, “legal” definitions of war, and state-based ideas of conflict.

If states do not heed the necessity for change, the rise of corporate mercenaries, more so than terrorists, thankfully, will push them to do so.

[i]Well he did say that the civil service was backed by jailtime, I think that’s why he opposes it. Plus it’s longer (13 months) than military (6 months), which isn’t fair. But you’re right, I’ve even had my guests after the show say, “You were too easy on me!” I promise I’ll try and toughen up.[/i]
Even in the 6 month minimum scenario you’re “on the job” 24/7, where as in the civil service option you do 7-8 hours per day and go home afterwards.

[i]What good does civil service do? And why should Finns do it but not the rest of the EU?[/i]
Until EU has a common defence Finland has to handle defence on it’s own, and simply put we can’t afford a credible* professional army on our own. If we were to pool our money with the rest of EU that’s another story, but I think it’s going to take a while until we get there though.
*Not sure how credible the current army is anyway

[i]I think Jussi took the biggest sacrifice of them all, he’s fleeing his family and friends and home for 5 (I think he said 5?) years. That’s a looong time.[/i]
What organization did you say was representing him? “Mother Earth”.. . and he happened to flee to Belgium where there’s easily accessible weed and a soft drug policy… Yeah, I’m sure it’s a loooong time.

I hope we move towards a professional army, or semi-compulsory conscription in the near future. But as long as the current arrangement stands, you choose between army and civil service or you’re a leaching bum.

**edit. You’re “on the job” 24/5

And also, how do you do italic?

And also, how do you do italic?

Like that. (use < i > these thingys instead of [ i ])

He probably fled to Belgium because it’s the only EU country that doesn’t automatically refuse asylum requests from other eu nations. Every other EU nation refuses it point blank as a part of some EU agreement or general concensus that there can’t be political asylum seekers within the EU.. Something to that affect, saw it on tv once.

But it’s not a clear cut situation to switch to a professional army.. that’d be more expensive than the current system and probably too small.. can a 20,000 strong professional army really defend us? Because you need to be ready for a war say 10 years from now.. and to build a new “company” it’d take some 7 years just to get the Captains, Lieutenants etc all trained up for this new company.

Serving my time in hell â„¢. I was often loudly thinking about those darn Russian missiles, planes, bombers and helicopters.

In case of war they would pretty much own the sky..

Lets say you have heavy concentrations of Finnish men standing in forests in Karelia, then Russians start dropping daisy cutter style bombs from their supersonic bombers: (after having first used cruise missilies on our airfields / air defense sites)

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-82.htm

The end.

In my view joining nato and having a small professional army is the only way to go. Anything else is foolishness.

When it comes to Jussi. I feel for the guy. I would like to see all armies converted into nurses and doctors. Attacking their enemies with antibiotics and bandages. Too bad it is probably never going to happen.

When it comes to his view of being able to resist a attack by simply telling people to do nothing in case of war (and thus taking away the economic incentive to attack in the first place). Well, it is pretty easy to just truck 5 million finns away and bring Russians in their place.

Having said the above. I would like to think Russians are not as big of a threat as we Finns make them out to be.

I hope Russians will get really rich.. Then one day.. When the cars in St Petersburg seem newer than in Finland.. They are going to be thinking.. Why would we attack that shithole? (we could hide our porches and ferraris)

Kudos to both Jussi and Phil. Peace.

“Because you need to be ready for a war say 10 years from now.. and to build a new “company” it’d take some 7 years just to get the Captains, Lieutenants etc all trained up for this new company.”

Obviously the change isn’t going to happen overnight, and it shouldn’t either. I’m strongly against slavery, but I still think we should have a smooth transition from conscription to a completely professional army: start by freeing more and more b-class men, make civilian service a bit shorter each year, etc. And we already have a lot of professional officers, so their training shouldn’t be the problem.

Lets say you have heavy concentrations of Finnish men standing in forests in Karelia, then Russians start dropping daisy cutter style bombs from their supersonic bombers: (after having first used cruise missilies on our airfields / air defense sites)

Whereas those 20,000 mercs we could theoretically afford would be immortal Rambos, completely impervious to bullets and in particular airborne attacks.

AFAIK, one aspect of the Finnish defence doctrine is not to have huge concentrations of infantry troops anywhere.

And yes, there are other branches of the military besides infantry. The way these anti-conscription folks are talking, you’d get the idea that Finland’s defense forces consist of grunts armed with wooden clubs sitting in the forest by the Russian border.

The key question here is: Would those 20,000 mercs present a more credible military deterrent than, say, 8,700 professional soldiers and 300,000 conscripts and reservists?

Ofcourse with small army we would HAVE TO be part of Nato.

Then we would not be speaking about army of 20 000, but about all of nato coming to help us. Which would probably keep the war from happening in the first place.

I agree, Finland should join the Nato as soon as possible. I think Finnish military experts also support joining, but it’s a politics decision – dome likes of Tarja Halonen (shivering).

Finland has many “taboos”, and the system of general conscripts is one. IMO there’s some kind of emotional-patriotic clishe, stemming from WWII experiences, which prevents looking things in intelligent way. It’s like a religion.

Hard military service with guns is not for every and each one, and creating a new system with highly professional end effective main force, and in addition also large voluntary based Finnish defence force training, would be the way to go. After joining the Nato. I think that would be good in many ways, and could better the general atmosphere of Finland towards more positive and humane.

I find this discussion always a bit tedious. It should be obvious that one facet of the “independent defence” is the ability to make a deal with reasonable Russia. (Even Stalin was reasonable after 5 years of hostilities, and did not want to risk an occupation and both sides got a fairly good deal.) In NATO our hands would be tied, and with these trend, we really don’t yet know where we should invest in security politic: North Atlantic or Europe? What is obvious is that the professional army alone would not make sense, so one reason we cling to conscription is because we have not yet made up our minds for the strategic solution. Which to me seems to a sensible attitude as Russia is still fairly civilized and the Western Alliance has not yet found the necessary new formats of co-operation. Of course this being Finland, we can’t expect an open and honest discussion about these matters…

at #10: Finland fighting alone against Russia it doesn’t matter if we have 500 rambo’s or 300.000 kids who don’t want to be there in the first place. As long as Finland keeps up with this hide-your-head-in-the-sand policy -AKA. military neutrality or non-alignment- Russia could invade us with spoons and forks if they wanted to. Nothing we can muster on our own will ever be “credible” enough.

In the future I think we will see a European federation with a common professional defence force.

i’m all for joining nato. however, i’m also all for keeping a large conscript army.

being an reservist, and having commanded an extended infantry company on two different occasions on reserve training, i can assure you that resrvist can be very effective and “professional” when they are motivated. remeber that this group is ordinary, bright and not so bright people. having a professional army means usually, that a large part of the troops have taken the job, since they do not have many other options. do we ant to put weapons only in the hands of those people?

btw, is the israeli army weak and incompetent since its bulk is reservists?

and as a last comment, the material and training of the russian army is presently, and for the next ten years so bad, that it really doen’t want to take on a large force. they can fight chechen guerillas with heavy artillery, assault helicopters and mechanized infantry, but to take on a regular well trained and equipped diciplined and initiatived force, would be totally another ballgame.

“btw, is israeli army weak and incompetent since its bulk is reservists?”

Hey, they used that line, only replacing country to Finnish, in Israel 50 years ago, when they built up their army!

In other words, we don’t need to look very far for examples how miraculously effective a motivated conscipt army can be. Having said that; times, societies, and requirements change.

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