When is conscription not conscription? When its called "Stop Loss etc."

[jeffreyab]

An observation of the American armed forces:

Stop Loss and recall of Inactive Reserves seem to be being used as a form of back door draft. Soldiers out of the Army and inactive for years are being called back. Officers are particularly vulnerable to this if they never resigned their commissions properly.

It seems that the Army is trying to haul back anyone they could conceivably get their hands on. I think the extreme example on 60 minutes was the 55 year old CWO who is 4'8" and has not seen active service since the 1960's and the chopper pilot with the bum leg. They both reported when called though.

Comments

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

I can think of one exception.

The 507th Maintenance Battlion deployed Spec Lori Pietswa even though she was injured.

Lori went on to be the first Native American woman killed in action.

[dekarch.livejournal.com]

She was not deployed injured. She may have been kept rolling with the unit, but I guarantee she did not leave the US in bad shape.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

She was recovering from a noncombat injury at the time of deployment and could have opted out based on the fact she had not healed completely.

[dekarch.livejournal.com]

Well, that's different. No one in their right mind opts out of a deployment if given the choice. Sometimes you havn't got a choice--we had an E5 break his leg less than a month before we deployed. He didn't join us for six months.