Military Families, Iraq Veterans Protest Pentagon's Plan to Rush Reserve Call-Ups
By Stacy Bannerman
t r u t h o u t | Report
Tuesday 07 November 2006
The Pentagon revealed in September that it may change the policy limiting National Guard deployments in order to send more weekend warriors to Iraq after the elections. While most of the media and the American public slept through the news, the family members of more than 400,000 National Guard and Reservists did not. Some of them have spent the past six weeks collecting thousands of signatures on petitions protesting the Pentagon's plans and demanding an end to the "backdoor draft," cited in the document as "troop extensions, stop-loss orders, [and] involuntary recalls."
The petitions will be delivered to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday, just seventy-two hours after all four versions of the Military Times published an editorial calling for his removal. The contingent, which includes Iraq War veterans, retired National Guard and Reserve soldiers, military families, and citizen supporters, is led by Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), a national organization of more than 3,000 military families opposed to the war in Iraq, with members in all 50 states and at military installations around the world. Hundreds of MFSO members have had sons and daughters, husbands and wives forced to stay in the military, and in Iraq, long after their contract expired.
Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, the Defense Department issued a "stop loss" order that has since compelled more than 70,000 of the country's volunteer armed forces to remain in service beyond their contractually agreed-upon term. The stop-loss measure prevents soldiers from collecting the sign-on bonuses and extra compensation that is offered to new recruits or soldiers that choose to renew their contracts.
"Thank God for stop-loss orders," said Vice President Dick Cheney in an October interview with Rush Limbaugh.
Haeley, the wife of a New York National Guardsman, feels differently:
"My husband, Luke, is currently serving in Iraq under stop-loss orders. He was supposed to be able to leave the military in December of this year, [but he] was put on stop-loss orders and his enlistment was involuntarily extended for 30 years. He left for Iraq a little over a month ago. He will now miss out on the first year of his first child's life. I don't agree with the use of the National Guard in this way. I also don't like that the military is involuntarily extending the contracts of the troops - it is underhanded and desperate, and they should take into account that people do not want to serve in this war as a sign of just how mishandled it's been."
In the past four months, 7,500 soldiers have had their tours extended in Iraq, including members of the 172nd Stryker Brigade in Iraq, some of whom were forced to get back on a plane after having already returned home from a year-long deployment. In August, the Marines announced a call-back of their Individual Ready Reserve force, which was intended for use only in times of national emergency. But stop-losses and extensions are proving insufficient to meet the constant demand for troops in an increasingly violent Iraq, and "most US Army units are right now not ready for combat," according to NBC Nightly News (September 22, 2006).
In order for the Army to carry out its plan to maintain troop levels of 120,000 in Iraq through 2010, the Pentagon will have to lift the restraints on Guard deployments, which now limit Guard combat tours to two out of every five years.
Almost 300,000 Guard soldiers - 60 percent of the force - have hit their threshold for overseas combat, but National Guard Lieutenant General Steven Blum expects his soldiers to get the call again. The Pentagon has postponed announcing the likelihood of additional mobilizations and accelerated call-ups for Reservists until after the November elections because it's such a politically explosive issue. For the military families and veterans who will be at the Pentagon this Thursday seeking to stop the stop-loss and prevent the Pentagon from redeploying Reservists months, if not years, before the current policy allows, it's a matter of life and death.
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Stacy Bannerman is the author of When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Reservists and the Families They Leave Behind (Continuum Publishing, 2006). She is a member of Military Families Speak Out. Her husband served one year in Iraq with the Washington Army National Guard 81st Brigade. Stacy can be contacted at her web site www.stacybannerman.com.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110706D.shtml