Posted on 03/17/2004 4:17:06 AM PST by T-Bird45
Janine Suppes put it plainly.
"My own husband will not be re-enlisting," she said.
Glen Suppes, a Hotchkiss high school teacher, father of three and a Colorado National Guardsman, has been gone for 14 months, in Iraq for 10, with two more months to go.
When he comes home, he will join a growing number of military reservists and National Guard soldiers who will leave the service when their enlistments are up.
"Mass exodus. That's the term that keeps going around," said Janine Suppes.
So far, at least, an exodus is not reflected in the numbers. Nationally, officials say that recruiting and retention of troops exceed the Pentagon's quotas. In Colorado, however, National Guard and Army Reserve enlistments and re-enlistments are lagging.
The concern, however, is with the future. Many citizen-soldiers deployed to Iraq are just now returning and thousands more are headed there to replace full-time troops who are coming home after a year of duty. Whether Guard and Reserve troops who have been or will be away for a year or more stick with the military is the issue.
Officials are worried. In January, the commander of the Army Reserve, Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, warned of a "recruiting-retention crisis" in the Guard and Reserve.
Helmly is not alone.
"I really worry that there is a looming problem," said Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy analyst for the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
"Some people are fed up already. But I think it's actually going to be cumulative as deployments increase. The real issue is going to be what happens when people have to go back for a second time. We're not anywhere near the end of this Iraq deployment yet."
Many of the departing reservists and Guard members are simply tired of being called away from families and civilian jobs for prolonged or repeated military duty - not the short-term assignments they were accustomed to before 9/11.
In the view of some, the Pentagon has broken faith, pulling them out of civilian careers and businesses and turning their part-time military obligation into full-time duty. More and more, they say, the Pentagon is using them not as emergency or temporary forces, but as permanent substitutes - in Iraq and elsewhere - to avoid expanding the active-duty ranks.
More than 40 percent of the 105,000 troops now headed to Iraq for a year to replace regular troops are National Guard and Reserve forces.
William Foster's 40-member Marine intelligence unit from Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora was sent to Kuwait for six months last January, returned home in June and was reactivated last month. Half are back in the Middle East and the other half are expecting new deployment orders.
And when their duty is over? "I don't know anyone in my unit that's going to re-enlist, as far as my close friends go," Foster said.
Glen Suppes left Hotchkiss last January with C Company, 109th Medical Battalion of the Colorado National Guard. They waited at Fort McCoy, Wis., until April before going to Iraq, and are not expected home until late April.
"My husband was in the regular Army for three years and in the Guard for 11," said Janine Suppes. "He said if he wanted to be gone for this many months, for this kind of duty, he would have stayed in the Army."
Such assignments are a misuse of the Guard and Reserve, said Steve Robinson, director of a veterans group, the National Gulf War Resource Committee.
"The whole idea is they are not active-duty soldiers. They're citizen-soldiers and this is not their full-time job," said Robinson.
Still, the Army is beating both its active-duty and Reserve recruiting and retention goals nationally. The Pentagon needed 26,900 enlistments in regular Army and 5,475 in the Reserve through the quarter that ended in January. It got 27,119 in the regulars and 5,664 in the Reserve.
"The overall picture is OK," said Army spokesman Sgt. Maj. James Vales.
In Colorado, though, there is some slippage.
The Colorado Army National Guard was supposed to have 3,150 troops at the end of September, but had 3,062. The Army was supposed to recruit 49 new soldiers for the Reserve and 206 for the regular Army in Colorado for the four-month period through the end of January. It recruited 39 for the Reserve and 176 for the Army.
"We are really down on our USAR (Army Reserve). Usually we fill those faster and are over our percentage," said LaWanda York of the U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion in Denver.
More will be leaving as soon as they can, some Guard and Reserve members predict.
"You're not seeing a drop (in membership) now because there's a stop-loss and nobody can get out," said Jonathan Davis, a Marine reservist in Foster's intelligence unit facing his second callup since January 2003.
"What's gonna happen in 2005 and 2006 when these people's enlistment contracts are up, you're gonna see a drop in reservists."
Davis, a sales manager with a six-figure salary in civilian life, has been a Marine reservist for seven years, but plans to leave when his enlistment is up next year.
The Pentagon's "stop-loss" orders prevent troops in key occupations from leaving, even when their enlistments are up.
Michael Adams, a physician's assistant from Norwood and a captain in Suppes' Colorado National Guard medical company, was held on active duty and sent to Iraq for a year, even though his enlistment ended last April.
"Because of the stop-loss order, he couldn't get out," said his wife Sharon, a registered nurse at the Uncompahgre Medical Center in Norwood, where her husband works in civilian life.
Adams' absence left the clinic without its primary care provider, other than a doctor who visits two days a week. When Adams returns in April, his wife said, "he will more than likely get out" of the Guard.
They're not being unpatriotic by leaving, reservists and Guard members insist. Some endured the rigors of Marine boot camp to serve. Many, like Adams, express firm support for the U.S. action in Iraq.
They also are the first to admit that, yes, they did sign enlistment contracts stating they could be called up in times of national emergency.
Patrick Berner, a member of Davis' and Foster's Marine Reserve unit, lost the one-man marketing business he had founded and built when he had to deploy to Kuwait for six months January 2003.
"It's too costly," said Berner, whose enlistment ends next March. "It cost me everything my wife and I have worked for for the last 10 years."
Now, as he tries to rebuild his financial life and support his pregnant wife and 21-month-old son, the Marines have again activated his unit and he faces a second Middle East deployment.
Suppes has willingly left home many summers with the Guard to assist on wildfires in Mesa Verde and around western Colorado. He joined hundreds of Guard members who served for months on airport security duty after 9/11, his wife said.
Those more traditional callups were for shorter periods and in specialized roles, allowing Guard members to maintain their civilian lives, careers and businesses.
"There's an old saying about having the goose that lays the golden egg," said Davis. "If you keep squeezing it's neck, it's not gonna lay the golden egg for you anymore."
This is a Clinton legacy coming home to roost -- peace dividend, my foot.
I hate to say it, but another 9/11 attack here (because we eased up the war on terror) would take care of any future recruiting problems.
How so? Is Bush beholden to Clinton in some fashion?
There's a reason you have to be an adult to sign the contract to enlist . . . if they signed up for more than they can handle, they have no one to blame but themselves.
Thank God we didn't have such whiners serving in World War II. We'd be speaking German and eating sushi for breakfast.
And for those who think the War On Terror is not comparable to World War II . . . I say "you're right. The War on Terror will be far worse and last much longer." We had identifiable enemies during WWII. We're battling religious, fanatic zealots who don't think twice about murdering women and children now.
There is no room for whiners in this war.
So we should never deploy our reserves? Then why have them?
I had a college friend enlist in the reserves his junior year in college. Senior year he was called up for Gulf deployment ('91). Thanks to the swift ass kicking, he only spent six weeks in San Diego getting ready to go; he came back to school without going over. He never complained, though, because he knew what he was doing when he signed up.
9/11 was not done by Iraq and Saddam Hussein was a staunch leftist secularist (that is why he was supported by US in war against Iran). Would you attack Korea after Pearl Harbour just because Koreans look similar and have similar religion to the Japanese?
American troops are stationed in more than 100 countries and the number is growing, when will it end - with the ultimate victory or with the collapse?
My nephew has, was, and is still serving in Afghanistan/Iraq and stories like this really piss him off when I email them to him. He's not pissed off at the whiners, he's pissed off at me for believing such BS.
He always, always tells me to look at the name of the newspaper and/or the area of the country from where the story emanates. He's in the Special Forces so they've interacted with all branches of the military from the cook to the generals and he swears the whiners are a DISCTINCT minority . . . even in the Reserves.
"Dammit to hell," he wrote in his last comment about this subject, "9-11 is my generation's Pearl Harbor. We won't . . . WILL NOT . . . lose this war. Some candy-ass citizens in Eugene, Oregon or Washington, D.C. might . . . just like they did during Vietnam . . . but no one will be pointing any fingers our way. We see on a daily basis how we're helping the folks in this turd-infested part of the world have a brighter tomorrow than they have today.
"Dad," he calls me Dad I explain as I start to tear up, "These folks live in 1st Century conditions, they've cooked bugs and rats over open fires, then eaten them with their fingers, they have nothing, absolutely nothing. But you know what? The lowliest of the low here has never failed to offer us food, water, and shelter. Their last grain of food, their last cup of water, their best blanket at night . . . they know what we're trying to do for them.
"I've lost seven friends here, seven brothers . . . We will not let their deaths be in vain. Now, if you're going to read the bullshit stories from the Eugene scumbags, first of all, don't believe them. I know for a fact they're lying. And for those who do believe the whining assholes, tell them from me that . . . 'Both them and the whiners can kiss my ass. We're going to do our duties in spite of them.'"
He sent me this in October, 2003. I won't be forwarding this story to him. He's just in his early 20's . . . but that boy already has more courage and maturity and dignity than I'll ever have. I think I'll take his advice.
The official purpose of the mission was to fight terrorism and to dismantle the weapons of mass destruction. "Liberating millions of people from a psycho" is a reason added after the fact.
1. A system that is set up without regard to the problems of reservists serving on active duty for extended periods. For instance, our leave accrued was not tracked on our LES's for 8 months after we were activated. We are told that that issue is "being tracked" by our battalion, but it would be nice to see those numbers on paper.
2. The feeling that we have been jerked around by being told one thing and then seeing another thing happen. When we were activated our orders said that we would be on active duty for "not more than 365 days." But, after we had been in theater for several months a new policy that said we would now be in theater for not more than 365 days was put into effect (and new orders were cut). I, personally, don't mind staying longer, but many people made long term plans based on the one year activation orders we were originally placed under.
3. The general concensus that regulars treat us like second class soldiers. In many cases (in the medical field for instance) reservists may have better skills than their active duty counterparts (reserve doctors may see seriously ill or injured people every day, while an active duty doc, will perhaps see a healthier segment of the population). But we are still looked down on by many regulars. And then,
4. We are being asked to preform the same duties as active duty soldiers without getting the same benefits. If a reservist is activated and sent to a stateside post for duty he can't PCS and bring his family. He can't enroll his kids in a DODDS school and he can't take advantage of other benefits, because he "isn't really active duty".
Now, you may say that that reservist may have known all that when he signed up and that may or may not be so. but he knows it now, and it seems to him like a raw deal, so he is getting out. Call it whining if you like, but to some reservists it seems like: fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
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