Pat. I just found this article re: your friend's daughter's devastating and horrid situation. BTW, our Rep Peter DeFazio wrote a bill that would give these combatants extra money. THe rightwing will, of course, vote it down as they don't care about these brave men and women.
Slyly Reviving the Draft
04/08/2004 @ 6:11pm [permalink]
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"Even in Vietnam, as difficult as it was there, you knew from the time you hit the ground to the time you returned it was one year -- whereas with this [Iraq war] it's really up in the air." -- an American soldier discussing Pentagon decisions that keep soldiers in the field against their will even after they've served their tours of duty.
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Donald Rumsfeld has said that US troops scheduled to leave Iraq in the next few weeks might instead be forbidden to leave. So soldiers who have no doubt been counting down the days to when they can go home are now in limbo. The Army, meanwhile, has prepared new so-called "stop-loss" orders that forbid thousands from leaving the service even after they've put in their agreed time.
Britain's The Guardian newspaper also reports that the Pentagon, desperate for warm bodies, "is sending unfit soldiers back to Iraq long before they are ready to serve again." The Guardian cites many examples.
This amounts to an unannounced military draft: You have men who haven't volunteered to serve and who don't want to serve being ordered to a war zone. That's a draft. In some ways, it's even a less fair draft than if Rumsfeld came for, say, me: Why should men who have already served voluntarily in highly dangerous duty be singled out as the only victims for conscription? (Especially when, to hear The Guardian tell it, some of them are even wounded!)
Now, many of these soldiers would re-enlist if asked and if offered real incentives. But see, we've frittered away all of the public's money on politically-connected war-profiteering, and on repulsive Republican gluttony in feeding our wealthiest.
So, not only is the Bush Administration unwilling to pony up for attractive re-enlistment bonuses -- so much easier just to enslave people than to pay them! -- it's also left us running short on other promises to men in uniform. For example, The Associated Press reports from Oregon, "National Guardsmen returning from duty in Iraq are finding that the funds promised them for tuition reimbursement are in short supply. The federal program that is supposed to defray up to 75 percent of their college expenses is short of funds ..."
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One Staff Sergeant, discussing the injustice of a stop-loss order, laid it out this way to The Washington Post, "An enlistment contract has two parties, yet only the government is allowed to violate the contract; I am not."
Funny.
I wonder why he didn't just "work it out with the military" to leave.
He must have missed "Meet the Press" in February, when George W. Bush discussed his own Vietnam-era days serving, or not, with the National Guard:
Russert: You did -- were allowed to leave eight months before your term expired. Was there a reason?
President Bush: Right. Well, I was going to Harvard Business School and worked it out with the military.
* * *
Progressive Democrat Peter DeFazio has introduced a bill in the House that would give an extra $500 a month to soldiers who are forced to stay in uniform by "stop-loss."
"The federal government is failing to honor the contracts it has signed with tens of thousands of men and women serving in the U.S. military," says DeFazio. "This amounts to an involuntary draft. It hurts troop morale. And it borders on breach of contract. ... While there may be military rationale, I believe that the federal government should compensate our men and women in uniform when the Pentagon ignores the terms of a contract it signs."
A humble prediction: This bill, introduced and supported by progressives, will be smacked aside by Washington Republicans on grounds that you should never spend a dollar on a working stiff when you can spend it instead on Halliburton. (After all, we've had this argument once before).
thenation.com |
