Soldier's ticket out of Iraq may backfire

Re-enlistment officers told him re-upping would allow him to transfer to a job at Fort Lewis, he said.

His commanders with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell in Kentucky told him his battalion is short of medics, and they've balked at signing his transfer to Fort Lewis.

Source

Stop-Loss is nothing new in the war in Iraq, but this seems to be a new low. They got him to reinlist for three years by promising a transfer out of his Iraq-bound unit knowing full well this would never happen. That has to be extremely bad for morale.

What's even worse is that they have already exceeded reenlistment goals. I guess that's not real hard to do when you can promise the moon.

I'm sorry, but you've really gotta be an idiot to join the military these days. That, or have no good alternative.

American military, I mean.

And he believed the military because...? I think he was a bit slow to trust in them but still, the US military should not treat its own soldiers like that

"What's even worse is that they have already exceeded reenlistment goals."

Yeah, by taking criminals and high school dropouts by the truckload.

Originally posted by uberarcanist
I'm sorry, but you've really gotta be an idiot to join the military these days. That, or have no good alternative.

So, you're saying that all military members are idiots? If it wasn't for us idiots, you would have the possibility of getting drafted. I had many alternatives I could have done, but working at your average dead end job just wouldn't cut it for me.

Originally posted by uberarcanist
I'm sorry, but you've really gotta be an idiot to join the military these days. That, or have no good alternative.

That's not very fair. Sometimes there may be a lack of alternatives that "forces" people to join the military. Other times people may feel strongly that it is the right thing to do, ala Pat Tillman.

Originally posted by ImpliedChaos
And he believed the military because...?

Because that is what the military trains people to do. You trust your buddies to be there when you need them and you trust that your superiors are not going to intentionally mislead you, thereby endangering your life. (Yes, another 3 years in Iraq will endanger his life.)

Edit for Clarity

[edit on 3/29/2007 by WellSee]

[edit on 3/29/2007 by WellSee]

I see where you are coming from. Sure it tough sometimes, but people in the military are trained to be adapt to change. Things change all the time in the military.

Don't blame the military for this if that's what you want to do. Blame the commander because it is in his powers to keep him where he is at. Along with that you have to understand where the commander is coming from. Stop loss is there for a reason. It's not just hey your you coming with us there is reasoning behind it. It's to keep your fighting force at full strength. Because the people you train with are the people you are going to want fighting with you.

Do you know how many medics are in a battalion? Im not going to give out numbers but medics are kind of important and to lose a medic you have been training with is a huge loss. In this situation if they were to give up a medic they were most likely going to get one straight from basic if they are close enough to deploying to want to keep him. I cannot tell you how important experince is when someone has gone down.

People can read a story and say look how evil the US military is. What about the people who are going overseas with this guy. Would you rather someone stop your bleeding who has just come out of training or someone who knows what they are doing?

That's what this commander had going through their mind when they were thinking about if this guy should go or not. Is a new guy going to make a mistake and one of my soldiers lose their life or should I make this guy who knows what he is doing stay? What would you do? People in the military can't just leave because they don't want to go to Iraq, they have jobs that peoples lives depend on.

I used to be vary anti war, im not pro war now I just kind of see the other side of things. See on that level the commander can't just look at one person, they have to look at their fighting force as a whole. This one guy wants to leave but your going to be putting about 900 other people at risk. What would you do?

Styki