Like many other soldiers, reservist Tanya Towne learned about this clause in her contract when deployed to Iraq; her husband divorced her and took custody of her son. Now she pays $500 per month in child support on her puny reservist salary.
Since the invasion, spring 2002, some 160,000 soldiers occupy Iraq. Bush ordered a stop loss on more than 60,000 soldiers to remain in combat beyond the normal end of their enlistment. Some 180,000 private contractors, mostly Blackwater mercenaries, also supplement the US military. As incentive, the Bush Admin pays ‘mercs’ four or five times what enlisted soldiers earn.
"The use of stop loss is often an indication of a shortfall of available personnel," says Loren Thompson, a think-tank analyst in Arlington. Meaning: fewer and fewer citizens are willing to engage in the Iraqi morass.
Cases of chronic post-traumatic stress syndrome—PTSS—drastically increase as extended missions multiply. Hundreds of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have recently lapsed into violence as they attempt to readjust to the civilian world. Consider one of hundreds of cases: Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood with an assault rifle under his jacket. Two armed gang-bangers wound up dead. Sepi now serves time.
The law reads like this:
"The President may suspend any provision of law relating to promotion, retirement, or separation applicable to any member of the armed forces…"
Stop loss became law after the Vietnam War when the Pentagon grappled to retain departing combat soldiers. Once experienced in combat, a soldier gains value. Vietnam taught the government a lesson. When engaged in an unpopular war that shows no benefit for anyone, soldiers lose all motivation to stay on the job. Stop loss straps them to combat. So much for the all volunteer military.
Like Vietnam, the endless trudge in Iraq has lost whatever patriotic appeal. ‘Fighting them over there to avoid fighting them here,’ no longer inspires. Motivated by high pay, mercenaries fill in the lack of enlisted soldiers who more and more see that Operation Iraqi Freedom benefits no one, though it has helped terrorist groups to recruit large numbers of young Iraqis who now despise the US for destroying most of the country’s infrastructure and countless innocent civilians. Soldiers’ refusal to reenlist voluntarily speaks volumes about what they think of the occupation.
Soldiers: Overworked, Underpaid
Under a Pentagon contract, retired Army officer Andrew Krepinevich wrote a recent report about human resources; he concluded that the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency (MSNBC). He wrote that the Army is “in a race against time” to adjust to the demands of war “or risk breaking the force in the form of a catastrophic decline” in recruitment and re-enlistment.
Enlisted soldiers like Sgt. John Savage, an Army reservist, seldom realize that the term of their combat missions can continue indefinitely. When a brave soul signs up to serve our country, there’s a clause in the fine print that ties him or her into the service for as long as a war continues. It goes like this:
In the event of war, my enlistment in the Armed Forces continues until six (6) months after the war ends, unless the enlistment is ended sooner by the President of the United States.
Although General Petaeraus claims that the surge (30,000 extra US soldiers, as of summer 2007) has yielded results, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, assistant to the president for Iraq and Afghanistan, said last summer [2007] that he is concerned about the toll extended missions are taking on US soldiers…
“Come the spring [2008], some variables will have to change — either the degree to which the American ground forces, the Marines and the Army in particular, are deployed around the world to include Iraq, or the length of time they're deployed in one tour, or the length of time they enjoy at home. Those are, essentially, the three variables,” (NPR).
Maybe the good General forgot another variable: we turn Iraq over to the Iraqis…as many of them request. Iraqis will just have to take over the burden of managing all 115 billion barrels of oil in their reserves despite Exxon’s eager offers to help.
Lute added,
“we're interested in attracting to the all-volunteer force, that we're actually competing in the marketplace—in the labor marketplace—for a very narrow slice of high school graduates without records with the law who come to us with a clean bill of health and the potential to serve this country in some very demanding missions.”
Disposable Poor—Who Cares?
Lute’s comment translates: the military recruits mainly men just out of high school, healthy, and without a criminal record…uneducated, unskilled, minimum wage workers…the disposable poor. Like many officials, he uses the word ‘force’ or ‘troops’…abstract terms for real people with names and faces…soldiers like Sgt. John Savage, Tanya Towne, and Matthew Sepi.
As these workers go to war, their repeated and extended combat missions greatly increase their chances of becoming killed in action or wounded physically and psychologically. Does the Bush Admin really give a damn?
Occasionally public outrage prompts media coverage about the appalling conditions at veterans’ hospitals, notably Walter Reed, and the horrible care for wounded and traumatized soldiers. Only in response to these moments does the Bush Admin release a press announcement about how shocked the theocons are about this surprising situation. We see Pres. Bush out for photo ops, jogging with a couple of amputees as he did last summer when news broke out about despicable military healthcare. The images make us feel warm inside, as if Dubya were just one of the guys. The New York Times shows how W’s PR crew sooths public outrage.
Public healthcare is not one of W’s fortes, military healthcare no less. Last summer Dubya put together a panel of bureaucrats ‘to look into this issue.’ The panel, which included Republican Senator Bob Dole and Donna Shalala, delivered a report last March 2007 on ways and means to fix the dilapidated military healthcare system.
A year ago, with the panel’s report in hand full of recommendations, Bush had directed Gates the defense secretary, and Nicholson, secretary of veterans affairs, “to take them seriously, and to implement them, so that we can say with certainty that any soldier who has been hurt will get the best possible care…”
Asked if Shalala thought Dubya would follow through on his pledge, she said, “Senator Dole and I are going to keep an eye on him.” That was a year ago.
It appears, though, that Bush and his theocon buddies have implemented these recommendations much like they did the Iraq War Report commissioned in spring 2006…which recommended troop withdrawal— Iraq Study Group Report.
...Return to Author's Website: www.markbiskeborn.com
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