Calling Up, Calling Out

At best ignorantly assuming a no-fly zone to be some sort of canopy, the liberal bourgeoisie is calling for yet another of its wars. The liberal bourgeoisie, that is, that practically never joins the Armed Forces voluntarily, and which is adept at arranging cushy numbers for itself even in periods of conscription.

People are remarking that the young Russian soldiers, sailors and airmen are conscripts. Well, if there is not a strong enough case for conscription, then there is not a strong enough case for the war in question. If a country is not under such threat that it needs to mobilise its entire healthy and able-bodied male population of fighting age, then it is not under enough of a threat to justify going to war at all.

Would many Conservative, most Labour, all Liberal Democrat, and apparently all Scottish Nationalist MPs welcome the conscription of their sons, their brothers, their husbands, their nephews, or themselves? Would the columnists and leader writers on The Times and The Guardian?

But of course they would know how to get themselves and their families out of any real fighting. Operationally, that would be just as well. Give yourself a good laugh by trying to imagine them on the battlefield. Yet they are wild-eyed in their zeal to inflict that very fate on other people.