Some military reservists will risk jail to resist Iraq duty

Sun-Sentinel ^ | March 6 2003 | Prashant Gopal

[FlaFreedom]

Some military reservists will risk jail to resist Iraq duty

By Prashant Gopal March 6 2003

National Guard reservist Bryan Alarcon said "no" when his sergeant called looking for volunteers to go to Turkey as part of the U.S. military ramp-up to war. If he's ordered to go, Alarcon says, he'll refuse -- even if his decision lands him in jail.

The 25-year-old West Palm Beach resident is among a small group of military personnel who have joined another fight -- the one building locally and across the country against war.

Alarcon said he'd rather risk going to jail than participate in a conflict he considers immoral. He said he didn't apply for money from the military to pay for his Palm Beach Community College tuition this semester and joined thousands of other Americans for the Jan. 18 peace rally in Washington, D.C.

[thinktwice]

"Outed" -- one way or another, it's good he's gone.

[Tin-Legions]

This is my first post-so forgive mistakes:

As a current serving officer in the Army, I will tell you he will not suffer any adverse actions. We have a few active soldiers that attempt to claim C.O. status, and generally they fail and end up getting sent on deployment where they serve well, and forget about the whole thing.

Quite simply, there is little willpower amongst senior leaders to "stick it to them" and actually follow through with adverse actions. Much along the same vein, pregnancies have skyrocketed in our unit lately, but imagine what would happen if some true to standard leader tried to prosecute them for attempting to avoid deployment: his or her career would be over.

Every adverse action has to go through a series of lawyers, which demand more evidence of wrongdoing than any civilian court would ever dream-hence trying to prove a soldier is attempting to shirk duty by claiming C.O. status is nearly impossible, hence few, if any leaders try to stop Joe and Jane from taking such a course.

[xzins]

They can use collection powers AFTER he's out to recover any bonus or education money.

Just use Administrative Chapters of Reg's to get him out with a dishonorable. The easiest way is "missing movement."

Quick, efficient, no press.

[TADSLOS]

He can apply for CO status but that doesn't mean he'll get it. Fortunately, these cases are far and few between because our force is voluntary and not made up of draftees as Congresscritter Rangel would dearly like to see happen. A draft would open the flood gates on CO wannabes and desertions would skyrocket - just what the libs want.

[martin_fierro]

I've been meaning to show you this graphic. <|:)~

[Ajnin]

I guess Rush was right yesterday, there is a stupid gene and these morons have obviously gotten them from both sides of the family.

[DensaMensa]

Where's General Patton when we need him?

[RobRoy]

The entire event is explained in this one line: "...West Palm Beach resident..."

This little corner of the country is in the news almost as much as our nations capitol. There seems to be a contest on for which of the two is the center of the lunacy universe.

[American Soldier]

As a former member of the National Guard, I do not find this at all surprising. There were lots of punk kids in the National Guard who were not particularly patriotic. To give you an idea of what I mean, my local National Guard recruiter mailed out a flyer that said "If being on Active Duty is so great, why is everybody always trying to get out?

Try the military on for size first...Join the National Guard for just one weekend a month, and wear the uniform!" Totally trashy.

Many of the people in the unit were dyed hair punkers who smoked pot immmediately after drills (believing/knowing it would be out of thier piss stream before any piss test the next month). For the most part, people at the rank of corporal and above were fairly squared away. However, depressingly enough, more than 50% of our NCOs at the rank E-5 and up never passed the P.T. test in the year I was in the unit. What's more, there was even one officer (a very old 2LT) who never passed the P.T. test or made weight during that year! Talk about a demoralizing example for the enlisted troops!

When I told people I wanted to be an officer on active duty, the typical response was "Why the f*** do you want to be in the Army full-time? Oh well at least you won't be as stupid as the National Guard officers."

That said, I have esteem for the GOOD Guardsmen and the more selective Guard units (which mine was not). I do have every intention of serving a career in the Guard after I ETS in 3-4 years. However we do need to thin out the ranks and spend more money on having fewer units, but ones that are more elite and better-trained. In particular, aviation units are often at or above active duty standards...They are truly minutemen without which the military could not fight wars.

Regretabbly however, most of the National Guard ground maneuver units would require about 90-120 days of active duty training to be able to even think about going onto a battlefield -- And realistically they wouldn't be able to make that date as they would find that all the jerks who "only joined for the college money" would all of a sudden discover that their families were Amish and they therefore could not take part in any war. So basically the maneuver brigades would be turned into rank-heavy batallions. I hate to agree with Gary Hart about anything, but we'd be better off cutting the National Guard in half, increasing the funding a tad, and having a more elite and enthusiastic Army National Guard that would actually be able to take part in ground combat on short notice instead of being capable only of security guard type missions.

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

Excellent first post. Welcome to Free Republic. Good luck and may God bless you in your military career!

[RogueIsland]

Wow, that's depressing.

[homeschool mama]

Immediate Dishonorable discharge, imo.

[niteowl77]

I know a couple of young men who VOLUNTEERED to go with activated Guard units, but haven't heard anything about them in the local papers (let alone anywhere else). It does tire one to read about all the losers, but then, that's what American journalism is all about now.

[TomServo]

Just fire him, give him a dishonorable, be quick and efficient about it, and move on.

Screw that - shoot the cowardly bastard.

[Feckless]

As a 1SG in a training unit at Ft. Dix during Desert Shield (until I volunteered and went to Saudi as an adviser in a Saudi Motorized Rifle Bde at Al Khafji) I put as many of these scum sucking cowards in jail as I possibly could and threw the rest out, both prior to my deployment and after my return.

I hope there are enough good officers and NCO's out there to weed out these vermin. If it were up to me they'd get the firing squad (and that's too good for them).

[Junior]

Naval Reservists were given the word that, if you want to cop out and not go when called up, you will be given, at the least, a dishonorable discharge. Of course, they also threatened us with the Big Chicken Dinner, too.

[Our man in washington]

I joined the Navy Reserves last year. During my interview to get into a special program, I was asked "are you ready to activated if necessary?" I said yes. Two weeks after my first weekend drill, our team leader put out an e-mail reminding us all that we needed to work hard so that we could be ready in case of activation. The team leaders would remind us of the possibility of activation almost every month. At boot camp, the topic would come up every few days. I don't think my unit is untypical. How can this bozo claim with a straight face that he didn't know activation was a possibility?

[Core_Conservative]

Sign him up as a trator and send him to Levinworth - for the rest of his enlistment - plus 10 years!

[Tin-Legions]

As a soldier, it is the duty of said to stick to their post irregardless of just or unjust war theory (a pure Western thought). Some older Japanese writers around the turn of the 20th Cent. (along with some ancient philosophers) believed that one existed to serve the state, since the state existed before they.

We are not asking them to become overnight pacifists, as our guard member is claiming (if he is willing to quit his nation during easy times, he will not stand up for it in the hard times, like he claims he would), just sit this one out.