[aphelion]

(06-10-2015 10:57 AM)Celtic_Austrian Wrote:  

What a joke.

Conscription was reintroduced two months ago under Lithuania´s female president Dalia Grybauskaitė. What do we know about her? From wikipedia:
She is 59 years old without children, never married. (Also strong supporter of LGBT rights, likely a lesbian.)
Studied political economy at the Leningrad State University. After that, taught political economy of socialism and finance at the Vilnius Party High School. Was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and later the Communist Party of Lithuania. Did her PhD in Moscow. In 1990 she flip-flopped and went to Washington DC to study at Georgetown University´s School of Foreign Service. ().
She then returned to Lithuania and after some work in the Foreign Ministry, where she led negotiations ending in the country´s participation in the EU free trade agreements, and a few years working in the US embassy in Vilnius, she became Minister of Fincance. When the country joined the EU in 2004, she was named as EU commissioner the same day. In 2009 she ran for president of Lithuania and won. Reelected in 2014.

Quite the career, isn´t it? That´s her official CV. There is also an unofficial biography written by a Lithuanian journalist about her: Red Dalia.
And if only half of it is true, she was very red.

She has a blackbelt in karate. Nicknamed the Iron Lady and Steel Magnolia. Political rolemodels are Margaret Thatcher and Gandhi of course.
Boyotted the Winter Olympics in Sochi, mainly because of Russia´s stance on LGBT rights, as she is involvd in NGOs that promote this cause in Russia and Lithuania. (Human rights violations didn´t seem too important to Lithuania though when they allowed the US to operate secret CIA prison camps, torture and everything included, on their territory.)

Her comments on Russia:
"[Putin] uses nationality as a pretext to conquer territory with military means. That's exactly what Stalin and Hitler did."
Russia and Putin were "characterised by aggressiveness, violence, and a willingness to overstep boundaries."
She also called the Russian Federation "...a terrorist nation that should be stopped...".
Which apparently received widespread support from the Lithuanian parliament and media.

Now, to conscription.
She said, the reason conscription was reintroduced is "as a response to threats in the region", and that the country (member of EU and NATO!) is "already under attack".
The country needed to be able to protect itself as it was in the "frontier". She said her country bordered Russia and there were "threats and exercises practically every day".

How does Lithuania´s mighty army look like? About 15,000 soldiers, no military aircraft or tanks. So why are these young men forced to serve in the army? With conscription, it will grow to an impressive 20,000 soldiers. That will scare the Russians away, for sure. On a more realistic note, in case of conflict, the Lithuanian armed forces will be annihilated without the slightest chance.

So what´s the point of reintroducing conscription then?
Demonstrating what a tough, unyielding hardliner Grybauskaitė is. As good a president as any man. Compensatory behaviour.
It´s nothing more than a populist measure to contribute to her image as the Iron Lady and increase her popularity.
And for this, thousands of innocent young men have to be stripped of their rights and freedom.
She doesn´t have a problem with that. She´s not a man. She has no sons. Why would she.

I´m not a radical libertarian, but I want to end with a quote from Ayn Rand:
"Of all the statist violations of individual rights in a mixed economy, the military draft is the worst. It is an abrogation of rights. It negates man’s fundamental right—the right to life—and establishes the fundamental principle of statism: that a man’s life belongs to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it in battle." (An attitude that certainly seems natural to a former cadre of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.)

Conscription is slavery.

This is the most cogent post in this thread. Very insightful.