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."
You have a short memory. The war against Iraq was an URGENT mission to protect USA and world from the IMMINENT threat from weapons of mass destruction. Same way as attack on Serbia was to stop the ongoing extermination of Albanian Muslims in Kosovo. (Kosovo is still occupied)
That Saddam Hussien was a nasty dictator was not important. Bush Sr. adminstration (including Rumsfeld) had no problem in supporting and arming him in 1980's when he waged aggressive war against Iran. US sent even nave to help him (it was when the Iranian airliner was shot down, do you remember?!).
And that ridiculous fact is key to this mis-use of the reserves and national guard. Why are we in Germany, for example?
When I signed up for active duty, I knew exactly what the deal was. Combat operations should be staffed by RA unless we're really pressed. This isn't to say the guardsmen and reserves haven't done a fantastic job, just that we've active duty garrison troops in many places we shouldn't be, and are putting these reserve troops in duties they shouldn't have.
I would exert the pressure on Saudies and cut all support for Muslim insurgents including KLA and Chechen "freedom fighers". I would help France in its strugle against Islamist in Algeria (not very well reported in media) and help Russia in Caucasus area and help Serbs in Kosovo and Bosnia and China against Muslim separatists and India in Kashmir.
You would be amazed how many allies would come forward! Hundreds of billions $$$ would be saved and few troops would be needed.
I'm archiving every email he sends me. It totally amazes me that he grew up in my household. LOL.
We fought tooth and toe-nail during his high school years. He was a rebellious little sucker. I tried being patient because him and his brothers and sisters only ended up with me because of some family problems . . . so he had a reason to be a bit rebellious. But, Lord, was it a struggle.
Then . . . I see the man he's turned into and I swell up with so much pride I'm about to burst. I don't know how he did it . . . but he's become a young man anyone would be proud of to have as a son. Or a nephew.
Unbeknownst to him, I'm also communicating with his enlisted superior. My nephew will tell me nothing about any particulars . . . but this other fellow is a bit more open. I hope to one day put all this correspondence up on a website somewhere . . . so that those of us who sleep comfortable at night in our safe, warm beds can truly appreciate the efforts of our fighting men and women.
Their selflessness inspires me every day.
If the goal is the greatness and glory then it is better to emulate the ancient Rome which took risks in order to become a world empire. If one wants to preserve the republican order and stability over the long time one should emulate the Swiss Confederation or ancient Sparta which preserved their constitutions for several centuries.
You made the choice already. But the risk in the path of empire is considerable as Athenian republic has learned.
But they'll still write an article about this.
Every one of these reserve and guard soldiers knew that they could get sent overseas -- that's part of the job description.
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