Word: conscripts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...truth of that observation is apparent to Noel Rodriguez Sanchez, 19, a conscript in the Sandinista army who has spent nearly two years based in and around Pantasma. During that time, he says, he has been involved in more than 50 skirmishes or battles with the contras and seen more than a dozen friends die. "In Managua they don't know what the real war is like," he says. "It is tough and it is dirty, and people get killed every day." As Rodriguez sits in the shade of a store's veranda, his AK-47 gripped between his knees...
Yitzhak, 20, a conscript serving in the Israeli army's elite Givati brigade, has been stationed in the occupied Gaza Strip for nearly seven weeks. Late one night, he recalls, his patrol was directed to "make our presence felt" in a refugee camp by entering houses, dragging all the male occupants outside and beating them severely. "The men screamed in pain," said Yitzhak of the victims. Some soldiers, repelled by their mission, maneuvered to act as cover outside the houses. "No one refused the orders," Yitzhak is quick to point out. But when the mission was over, arguments and even...
...violence continues, Israeli soldiers are growing hostile and frustrated. Beset by fatigue, rain and midwinter cold, many say they are fed up with their mission in the territories. "It's a horrible routine," complained one young conscript as he plodded through the daily ritual of forcing striking merchants to open their shops. Slamming up the shutters and using crowbars to crack flimsy padlocks, the soldiers move wearily down the main street of Ramallah every morning through a silent crowd of grinning Arabs. As soon as the unit passes, the shops are quickly shuttered again. The process goes...
...outcome of civil wars is hard to fathom. The contras have more than twice the recruits the Sandinistas had when they overthrew Somoza. Which side is today more popular? It is hard to find out in a dictatorship. But it is worth noting that the Sandinistas have a conscript army, while the contras are a volunteer force...
...could have a magic wand, I would be for a compulsory system," says Moskos. That would raise serious questions. Congress has the right to raise armies, but the Constitution does not give it the right to conscript people to work in civilian occupations. The White House, along with many conservatives and libertarians as well as liberals, opposes national service on the ground that it would be an unnecessary intervention by the Government into people's lives. Some wonder how a program could be enforced. "What are you going to have?" asks Alan Weisberg, a youth-employment consultant in Oakland. "Criminal...