...in America, at least. It is a missnomer and only idiots use it. The correct word is PROFESSIONAL army. Once you get paid for doing a service, it is called a JOB and not a volunteer action. Working for McDonalds is not voluntering. (although not really professional either). To be in the PTA is voluntering, donating blood for free is voluntering, being an organ donor is a volunteer. Being a professional soldier is deceiding on a CARRIER. Another term is mercenary,(professional soldier) like it or not. It doesn't matter if the State employs you or a private organization, by definition you are a mercenary. Just so you know. So stop using it...
You've managed to get this hopelessly muddled and your conclusion is incorrect. Including the conclusion that the hundreds of millions of English-speakers who call America's armed forces "volunteers" are idiots, and you owe us all an apology.
I'm not quite sure where to start to unravel this mess. How about the fact that drafted soldiers are paid salaries, so they are just as much "professionals" as those who volunteer? The U.S. armed forces have used the word "volunteer" clear back into my grandfather's days in the 19th century, and I'm sure long before that. A volunteer was a guy who walked into a recruiting office and
volunteered to join the service. The term was used to distinguish that guy from one they had to track down and conscript
involuntarily in order to raise a big enough force to fight a war. Those guys were "conscripts" in the old days, but going back at least to WWII, they've been just "draftees."
They both get paid, so they're both professional soldiers. This terminology distinguishes the formal army, which is organized, funded and equipped by the government, from a militia or irregular force, which although
voluntary, is ad hoc, provides much or all of its own gear, is not paid, and does not report to the same chain of command as the national army. These people are not considered professional soldiers and do not go through the basic training that both volunteer and conscripted members of the armed forces are required to take.
There are other types of professional soldiers, for example mercenaries. The American colonies hired mercenary soldiers to help fight the Revolutionary War. They were paid out of General Washington's budget and they reported to him. There are quite a few mercenary soldiers fighting in various battles in modern times, and they are all being paid by one side or the other.
The United States currently employs a large number of mercenaries in its unconstitutional debacle in Iraq, most notorious of which are those from Blackwater International. The government vehemently objects to calling them mercenaries and insists that they are just providing "security." However, they behave like mercenaries, inflicting more collateral damage on non-combatants than true soldiers are comfortable with, and they are treated like mercenaries, exempt from prosecution for their war crimes. Therefore, they are mercenaries: professional soldiers fighting voluntarily, but only for money rather than for a cause.
If you cannot leave it when you want to, its not a volunteer position.
Well that's not exactly correct. When you volunteer for a position you're free to question the terms of the employment and you choose whether or not to accept them. The laws of my country outlaw genuine, voluntary slavery: No one has the right to sell their freedom for any price. It even goes a little beyond that into the concept of indentured servitude. But if a person signs a contract and forfeits the right to cancel it before a specified period of time has lapsed, that's not quite the same thing. In the private sector he could probably get away with breaching the contract and simply paying monetary damages. But in the military he'd be prevented from breaching. This is not exactly hair-splitting. Still I think it's fair to call these
idiots (hey I can throw that word around in anger too) who love our traitorous, brain-dead president so much that they're willing to kill and die to support his criminal adventures,
volunteers. Our country has no draft.
