Get Pregnant, Or Get Sent To Iraq

As a Brit, I wasn't aware that military recruiters target high school children in the US & I have to say that I'm a little surprised.

Since when are 18-year-olds children? Some of them sign their contracts when they're 17, but those require parental consent and they aren't allowed to deploy until they're 18 (in accordance with international treaty).

What age are these kids approached by recruiters and if they sign up, how long are they obliged to serve and how long are they on the reserve list afterwards?

The length of their service depends on the contract they sign. They can sign for as little as two years and as long as six. If they qualify for a shortage specialty and sign a long contract they're likely to recieve a sizable bonus -- sometimes big enough to buy a rather nice car outright. Their length of IRR service varies with the time they spend on active duty collecting bonuses and paychecks. They aren't victims. They're soldiers. Deal with it.

BTW, as a 'Brit' why do you care how we recruit and pay the soldiers that make you safer?

As ridiculous as they may be. The military is overextended as it is. It cannot function without female personnel. Your scheme would strip anywhere from 15 to 20 percent of the total force. How would you replace them?

Thank god the Infantry doesn't have a category of soldiers that makes up 15-20% of its force that it can't rely on to be there when the going gets tough.

Ask the commander of any combat service support unit that has a high percentage of women how bad his/her readiness numbers were the last time they were sent on a training deployment of any length, let alone to Iraq.

Did it ever occur to you that this unequal treatment that leads to a lack of cohesiveness is why the men in such units reenlist at lower rates?

Here's to hoping a second term brings a serious look at expanding the Active Duty force permanently.

Having to rely on trying to force someone who willfully tried to fail out of Basic (twice!)to spend a 2 year stint in Iraq, well...that's pathetic.

I'd rather see tens of thousands of new, Active slots created for which people who want to serve can enlist to fill.

Oh, and improve combat duty pay while you're at it to help attract the best quality people you can.

"She told the recruiter "no." Why did he keep coming back? Let's take no for an answer and sign up people who are enthusiastic not reluctant. Wasn't the best time to "get her the hell out of the service" before she even got in? If it takes a hard sell, that's not exactly an ideal recruit and potentially more trouble than useful as it turned out to be here".

Ah, yes. Let's shift the blame to someone else. It would definitely be the recruiter's fault for her signing the dotted line. While we're at it, maybe we should put the blame on her parents as well. They should have been living in a completely different country when she was born. That way, she would never have been forced by a recruiter to sign up for a job that she didn't want in the first place!

Don't get me wrong; I know that the recruiters can be good at doing a pressure sell, but in order for someone to sign 4 years of their life away, plus another two inactive, they're either extremely naive, or they are interested. I don't think we should put the blame on the recruiter. Besides, at least the recruiter wasn't afraid to do his or her duty!!

And your solution is?

Women have contributed greatly to our successe in the recent past, but the place for them isn't deployed forward. As our technology makes it possible to 'reach back' to areas well behind the combat zone for various combat multipliers, such as intelligence analysis, USAF BASOPS, etc, we ought to leverage that capability to keep women out of combet.

A woman sitting in a stateside vault in the basement of a building in Langley sending intelligence analysis to the general in Iraq via the network is not a whole lot different from the same woman sitting in a basement in a palace in Baghdad sending the same analysis upstairs via the network to the same general.

That's where women who want to support the war effort ought to be, IMHO.

I think we can use stateside women to solve certain other problems, too. For instance, sorting mail in theater is stupid as hell. When I lived at one of the larger installations there, we had a captured theater that was turned into a postal sorting facility. They couldn't keep up with the mail coming in, so they took volunteers from units living around them to help sort it all, until some dumbass figured out that was probably against postal regulations. After that we lost several weeks in delivery time for care packages.

The DoD should have bought the postal sorting facility that was closed by the '91 Anthrax scare and used it to pre-sort mail headed to Iraq and other countries before it ever left this country instead of sending it in connexes that then get sorted on the other end. That facility could have been manned by some of the hundreds of postal unit personnel sucking up logistics in theater. Once the mail is sorted, the mailbags get sent to theater through the existing supply system right to each company's supply sergeant. Presorting would be a good job for stateside female support.

Since you asked.

And that is the key difference - men with pregnant wives can deploy. Pregnant women can't.

Very well put! I was in the Navy from 1984 to 1993. My wife was pregnant during the first war in 1991, but that didn't stop me from being deployed.

I can imagine the conversation between myself and my CO:

Me: I'm sorry sir. I cannot deploy at this time.

CO: Why not?

Me: Because my wife is pregnant.

CO: Get your a$$ to your station!!!!!

This whole situation reminds me of dialog from the movie "Under Siege" with Steven Siegel:

Blonde Girl: "Why do I have to carry everything"?

Steven: "I support womens lib, don't you"?

Blonde Girl: "Only when it works in my favor"!

The child needs a set of parents that can teach the child that life isn't fair, and there are many willing parents that would do a fine job of making this child realize that life is what one makes it, and not what others make it.

True. I think she should also teach Asia about how there are dedicated men and women in the service who actually honor their commitment to fight for our country so that Asia can be in a building without the fear of a plane crashing into it.

At least she did a good job working the system on another person's suggestion.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.