[ronb]

I don't often comment in political threads (or reallly all that many others), esp due to the partisan stuff that comes up, but this one thankfully is a bit more even.

Mandatory service - absolutely - but why not include the Peace Corps, inner city teaching, inner city rebuilding, rural medical corps, reservation (ie native american) medical corps, 3rd world building projects, etc. This is the way to make responsible national and global citizens out of young adults who will then understand why war and what war really is.

Because to see the rest of the world, the real world, and not the televsion version or the partisan hack version or the version "taught" in most deficient public schools that have had the budgets stripped out of them over the last 30 years, is an eyeopener, and makes one understand that there is a lot more to it than just the red state/blue state, axis of evil, white knights on white horses (in white satin?) divide

A national service requirement is great, but only the military creates yet another class of citizens who believe that the only solution is a military solution. That said...sometimes the only solution IS a military solution...but not lately.