If Only Everybody was Rich

National Service is not a “Burden” (25 August 2011)

MR TAN Kin Lian suggested ‘giving full-time national servicemen an allowance similar to that paid to a regular soldier in the Singapore Armed Forces’ (‘Kin Lian: Make NS a privilege, not a burden’; last Saturday).

I have four sons. Two have completed their two years of national service and two are currently serving. Long before their enlistments, I told them it was imperative for them to be trained through national service.

I served national service and attended my four sons’ enlistment exercises. I was confident that they were being turned from ‘boys to men’.

It is regrettable that after so many years of national service and education on its necessity, Mr Tan still regards it as a burden. National service is indispensable; it is a responsibility of citizenship.

Mr Tan called for national servicemen to be paid the same allowance as regulars. We should not belittle the contributions of professional soldiers. The demands on national servicemen are different from those on our soldiers.

 

I agree. National Service is not a burden – if your family is comfortably well-off or rich. That is, obviously, an enormous IF. And of course, our writer here has never thought about it. Instead he would prefer to spout cliches like the abominably-overused “boys to men” horseshit. I guess he has a point – maturity involves skiving, bootlicking and being able to tell barefaced lies with a straight face. All these are essential life skills one picks up during NS.

That “responsibility of citizenship” crap, however, is transparently indefensible. Only males in Singapore serve NS. So, what, all the girls except those who sign on, are not citizens? They definitely are. However, they mysteriously do not have this responsibility to carry out. Why is that? Dear writer, have you got a good explanation for me?

Lastly, “professional soldiers” in the SAF are, in my experience, anything but. I’ve met an unbelievable number of regulars who were incompetent, thieving, unmotivated or straight-up psychotic. I’ll have to say that in my experience, the NSFs were a lot more competent than the so-called “professionals”. We got stuff done and we didn’t do stupid shit like steal outrations to bring home for our families. We were not tinpot dictators. We were not so incompetent that we needed unbelievable hours of overtime just to complete simple tasks. All of the above, I have seen “professional” soldiers do, even while they suck up tremendous amounts of taxpayer dollars as salary. It was, and probably is, fucking ridiculous.

I can accept that Singapore needs a conscript military. However, I can’t accept the piss-poor way it’s currently organized. The very least one can do is pay the conscripts better than the current pitiful remuneration, and some people won’t even have that happen. Completely outrageous.