{"id":530,"date":"2004-01-12T18:13:18","date_gmt":"2004-01-13T02:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/01\/12\/the-new-draft-soldiers-forced-to-serve-beyond-their-time\/"},"modified":"2004-01-12T18:13:18","modified_gmt":"2004-01-13T02:13:18","slug":"the-new-draft-soldiers-forced-to-serve-beyond-their-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=530","title":{"rendered":"The new draft: Soldiers forced to serve beyond their time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Light of Reason<\/a>, this article describes the way Bush has been forcing members of the U.S. military to serve <\/a>far beyond what they thought they’d agreed to:<\/p>\n

There is no congressional debate, and no new law is passed for the President to sign. Nonetheless, people are being forced into military service against their will. In other words, they are being drafted, conscripted, or whatever you care to call it. The government chooses to call it “Stop Loss,” and it applies to members of the armed forces. After all, what better way is there to initiate a sneaky draft than to start with the group of people least likely to object to a draft, and at the same time, with the least legal rights to fight one?<\/p>\n

Prior to September 2001, the armed forces last used stop loss in 1990, during Operation Desert Shield\/Desert Storm, under then President George H. Bush. President George W. Bush authorized a new Stop Loss policy on September 14, 2001, in Executive Order 13223. Since then, the Army has announced 11 stop-loss orders.<\/p>\n

On 4 November 2002, a new stop loss policy affected over 60,000 soldiers. With this policy, a typical Ready Reserve soldier could be affected up to 30 months: 3 months during alert, 12\u201324 months while actually mobilized, and 3 months for demobilization. Ready Reserve soldiers who also possessed a certain skill or specialty could be affected until the later of 90 days after demobilization or the completion of an additional 12 months active duty.<\/p>\n

Over the past year, the Army alone has blocked the possible retirements and departures of more than 40,000 soldiers. Hundreds more in the Air Force, Navy and Marines were blocked from retiring or departing the military. Under the latest Stop Loss iteration, announced in January 2004, seven thousand additional soldiers will be required to stay in the theater for the duration of their unit’s deployment and up to a maximum of 90 days afterward, said Col. Elton Manske. Because the stop-loss order begins 90 days before deployment and lasts for 90 days after a return home, those troops will be prohibited from retiring or leaving the Army at the expiration of their contracts until the spring of 2005, at the earliest.<\/p>\n

Some Guard troops and reservists complain their release dates have been extended several times and they no longer know when they will be allowed to leave. On their Army paychecks, the expiration date of their military service is now listed sometime after 2030 \u2013 the payroll computer’s way of saying, “Who knows?”<\/p><\/div>\n

The article<\/a> argues that this is one of a number of steps which are quietly being taken to reinstate the draft. I’m not that convinced; I don’t think we have to worry about the draft being reinstated secretly. (Some things just can’t be kept secret – sooner or later, someone has to say “you are ordered to report…,” and then the cat’s out of the bag). Nonetheless, the article is interesting, and reports on a lot of stuff that’s escaped the mainstream presses scrutiny.<\/p>\n

Myself, I’m struck by yet another example of how much contempt this president exhibits for members of the armed forces. He tries to cut their pay, he cuts their benefits, he takes away their overtime<\/a>, and now he’s keeping them against their will. I’ve asked it before<\/a>: When Bush meets a U.S. soldier, does he struggle to keep himself from openly sneering and spitting in the G.I.’s face?<\/p>\n

A lot of conservatives have been critical of the “chickenhawk<\/a>” thing, because they misinterpret it as saying “if you haven’t served in the armed forces, you’re not qualified to have an opinion on military matters.” But that’s not the point at all. It’s about character, not qualifications.<\/p>\n

A chickenhawk is “a person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it; particularly when that enthusiasm is undimmed by personal experience with war; most emphatically when that lack of experience came in spite of ample opportunity in that person\u2019s youth.” Being a chickenhawk doesn’t make anyone wrong or right in their opinions about war; it just makes them a person of low character..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Light of Reason, this article describes the way Bush has been forcing members of the U.S. military to serve far beyond what they thought they’d agreed to: There is no congressional debate, and no new law is passed for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-site-and-admin-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}