The draft that dares not speak its name

They don’t want to call it a draft but it sure ain’t your father’s “all-volunteer military” any more…
The WaPo ran a big front-page piece today about the various stop-loss programs that have been implemented by the US armed forces. The idea is that people who have already in the past contracted to enter military duty in either the regular forces, the reserves, or the National Guard can have the termination dates of those contracts summarily postponed by the service in question if it feels a pressing need to “stop the loss” from various units.
In the piece, Lee Hockstader writes about Staff Sgt. Peter G. Costas, a Texan and an Army Reserve interrogator in an intelligence unit who was due to retire from the reserves last May. Hockstader writes:

    “An enlistment contract has two parties, yet only the government is allowed to violate the contract; I am not,” said Costas, 42… He has now been told that he will be home late next June, more than a year after his contractual departure date. “Unfair. I would not say it’s a draft per se, but it’s clearly a breach of contract. I will not reenlist.”

Hockstader writes about a number of other service members who feel similarly violated by the “stop-loss” orders. He (she?) should have talked to Marine’s Girl, whose blog was the first place that I learned about this eery new phenomenon.
MG wrote about stop-loss here and here.
The second of those posts was written Dec 20, a few days after her Marine got back to the US on an unexpected leave. In it, she relayed part of an IM session she and he had just held. He was still held “captive” at that point on an un-named Marines base where he had to go through around two weeks of mandatory “counseling”. In the course of it, his “counselor” had reportedly urged him to give up any emotional entanglements he had back home…
So here’s a portion of the IM session, as posted by MG:

    Me: I’m very glad you are back home. I have to worry about you much less, it is like a huge weight has been lifted from me. I’ve missed you terribly.
    Marine: The thing I needed to tell you is this…my contract was extended during war time, which is a common occurance. It is looking like I am going to have to return to battle whether I want to or not.
    Me: Stop loss got you?
    Marine: My fate, at least for now, is sealed. I have to do my duty…but I refuse to bring anyone else with me. I do not want to continue to drag you along.

That thing about “refusing to continue to drag you along” was what the Counselor From Hell had urged him to say to her…
Once they were able to talk on the phone rather than merely thru cyberspace, plucky, persistent old MG was apparently able to talk a bit more loving sense into him… And later posts on her blog reported that he made it to her place by Christmas Eve and they had a grand ol’ Christmas together…
Anyway, check out the whole blog, and leave her a big hug on one of her Comments pages!
So, back for a last moment to the WaPo story, Hockstader reports that by using stop-loss orders, “the Army alone has blocked the possible retirements and departures of more than 40,000 soldiers, about 16,000 of them National Guard and reserve members who were eligible to leave the service this year. Hundreds more in the Air Force, Navy and Marines were briefly blocked from retiring or departing the military at some point this year.”
He (?she) quotes military sociologist Charles Moskos as saying that this widespread use of stop-loss orders, “reflects the fact that the military is too small, which nobody wants to admit.”
The stop-loss seems hard on ALL the service members involved. But it seems it has been used disproprotionately against members of the Guard and reserve. This places huge burdens on them and their families– especially since they usually don’t get even the same level of health benefits etc that the regular military get.
Let’s hope all these people and their families start urgently contacting their representatives in Congress. Blatantly involuntary service should be ended NOW. Bring ALL the troops home!

7 thoughts on “The draft that dares not speak its name”

  1. Do you have any information as to how this is affecting recruitment to the US armed forces? It can’t be doing it any good.
    Here in Britain there are similar problems: no direct equivalent of “stop loss” but because large numbers of British units are deployed abroad at any one time, many soldiers are unhappy that they are away from their families for extended periods, which is afecting re-enlistment rates. Also, soldiers are reluctant to do training that will take them away from their families.

  2. My (USAF) husband spent almost a year on stop loss, beyond his planned retirement date…and it sucks. First of all, he lost the civilian job he had lined up. (Yes, I know people have suffered a lot worse, but it still sucks if it happens to you). Second, he couldn’t make any new plans, because they don’t give you any idea how long they are going to hold you, and you can hardly apply for jobs if you have no idea when you are going to be available. Your whole life is on hold. Every 30 days or so, they send out an email saying, “no you’re not released this month”, till finally out of the blue one arrives saying “OK you can go”. And just like that you are retired: no job lined up, and nowhere to live. But you get out immediately anyway, because you don’t know how long the window will remain open.
    The really annoying thing is that he was a Russian linguist, and there was absolutely zero chance that he was going to be deployed in support of Operation Invade Iraq. So he just sat out the year kicking his heels at his last regular assignment.
    Our next door neighbor, an Army linguist who was scheduled to retire the same month as us, got out on time because the Army didn’t put stop loss in place until after long all the other services. And he was AN ARABIC LINGUIST, of which the US military is desperately short! Today, he is in Baghdad – one of those civilian “security personnel” that the US government pays big bucks to companies like Bechtel to provide, because we don’t have enough soldiers, especially Arabic-speaking ones, left in the US Army.
    So the USAF stuck stop loss on just about everyone, and paid my husband an extra year’s salary even though there was no conceivable job for him in Iraq. The Army, on the other hand, let everyone go, even the Arabic linguists, and now the government is having to pay them six-figure salaries as government contractors doing the job that they could have been paying them Army wages for if they had had a coherent plan for stop loss in the first place.
    If stop loss had been applied rationally, and everyone who was retained could see that it served a useful purpose, or at least had an end date in sight, the disruption to people’s lives might be easier to take. But the disruption of lives, and the waste of taxpayer money, wasn’t caused by military necessity, but by a lack of coherent advance planning. In that respect, the way stop loss has been implemented reflects the same ad hoc make-it-up-as-we-go-along kind of planning that so much of our post-invasion policy seems to have relied on.
    / finish venting!

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