Stop Loss program

In My Humble Opinion
1

Over in the PIT I asked a question of** tomndebb** and of the board in general. My post got ignored in the pile on about “the troops atr criminals vs GWB is a crimial” or whatever, but I’d like some enlightenment.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tomndebb
You seem to have missed a key element of my post. As far as I can tell, every combat grunt in Iraq has to have either enlisted ro re-enlisted subsequent to March, 2003, so we should no longer have anyone over there who signed up to “defend our country” (or “to pay for college”) who did not know at the time they signed their papers that they were going to go to either Iraq of Afghanistan.

I am open to correction on that point.

In 2002, we had an entire military filled with people who had signed up to defend the countru or for whatever reason. They could not have known that the fools in Washington were going to deliberately lie their way into a wasteful and immoral war in March 2003. However, the terms of enlistment for those personnel, even the ones who have been backstabbed by the current Stop Loss program, should have, by now, had at least one opportunity to look at the world news and decide “that is not defending my country” and decline to sign the papers.
Well, I personally know a lot of Reservists and Guardsmen who signed up a long time before 2002 who were called back to serve in Iraq. One is around my age, and is a Lt. Col. I think he joined up around the end of 'Nam. Yes, he has a “cushy office job”, but that isn’t all that safe in Iraq.

I am not sure if many Active military have been semi-“forced” into staying beyond their terms from 2002 into 2007, this wiki article is not clear.

I’d like to find out more on that myself.

This artilce is of course biased, but interesting none the less.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...n_of_the_draft/

"…is one of 40,000 troops in Iraq who have been informed that their enlistment has been extended until December 24th, 2031. “I’ve served five months past my one-year obligation,” says Qualls, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the military with breach of contract. “It’s time to let me go back to my life. It’s a question of fairness, and not only for myself. This is for the thousands of other people that are involuntarily extended in Iraq. Let us go home.”

The Army insists that most “stop-lossed” soldiers will be held on the front lines for no longer than eighteen months. But Jules Lobel, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights who is representing eight National Guardsmen in a lawsuit challenging the extensions, says the 2031 date is being used to strong-arm volunteers into re-enlisting. According to Lobel, the military is telling soldiers, “We’re giving you a chance to voluntarily re-enlist – and if you don’t do it, we’ll screw you. And the first way we’ll screw you is to put you in until 2031.”

2

You should know that officers with a commission, have to have resigned that commission, to not worry about being recalled. Many did not do that before the Iraqi War, and were recalled. I mention this so people realize there is a difference between officers and regular enlisted troops, being recalled.

My brother worked with a solder that was sent back with less than a month on his enlistment. he was not happy, because he doesn’t expect to be home when that time is done. He doesn’t plan on staying in the service either.

3

A lieutenant colonel is pretty far from an enlisted combat grunt. Commissions work quite differently from enlistments, and officers can be recalled to active duty at pretty much any time. I believe there’s even a rule that flag officers can be recalled even after they’ve resigned their commissions.

4

I’m so used to tomndebb being right that I didn’t notice that enormous error.
Yes, there are four-year enlistments. There are also five- and six-year enlistments. There may even be eight-year enlistments, for all I know. Whichever one you sign up, for you enlist for a total eight year commitment. In the old, pre-war days, for most people that meant four years on active duty and four years in the Individual Ready Reserve with a minimal chance of ever having to come back to active duty.

As far as reenlistments go, right around the time I got out of the Army they instituted a new policy where all NCOs, when it came to to reenlist, had to reenlist indefinitely and then negotiate the end of their service when they wanted to get out. I don’t know the ins and outs of this policy because I was already out and I had never reenlisted, having signed up for six years.

Now some other dopers will come along and explain all the parts that I didn’t mention.

With the advent of the war, there most certainly are all kinds of people who signed up before the war was dreamed of (except by those people who were dreaming it up) who are stuck in it. And a whole bunch of others who thought they were out free and clear who were called back into it.

So, no, it is absolutely incorrect to say that every American in the armed forces in September of 2007 either deliberately enlisted or reenlisted to participate in the ongoing war.

5

Thanks for all the corrections. (I will note that my “combat grunts on the ground”) was intended to indicate only guys with five stripes or fewer and no guys with hardware on their collars–although I will not claim that that was clear–but I was clearly in error on the overall point.)