back-door draft story

I'm a professional musician. Last night, I guest-hosted an open mike for a good friend of mine who is on vacation. I don't do that often, but it's fun once in awhile. The basic gig is I come in , set up the sound system, get the show rolling and then other people who want to perform each play four or five songs. So unlike most of my shows, other than minor emceeing duty or the occasional sound issues every twenty or thirty minutes, I'm mostly just hanging out in this bar talking to folks, instead of actually on stage performing.

This guy comes in. 49 years old. Only a little older than me. Army Ranger. Did 12 years and got out nearly 7 years ago. Moved to the state where I live. Wife, family, construction business. Proud of his service, but figured it was over. Wrong. He's been recalled and ships out to Iraq in a couple of weeks. He's home on leave. His unit, one of the elite units in the US Army, was one of the spearhead units of the invasion and ended up over there far longer than the originally planned six months. They are supposed to be an elite mobile strike force. Now, after only a few months stateside, they're going back, with a bunch of recalled officers and soldiers and reservists filling out the ranks. He's obviously always been a very gung-ho guy. Definitely the kind of guy you can picture jumping out of airplanes with an M-16. He obviously wanted someone to talk to and wanted to vent.

He drank a few beers and I drank a few whiskeys and he said he and "everyone in his unit," mostly active Army, plus a bunch of guys who have been recalled, in his words "hate Bush." He said, "Bush has really screwed himself and has really pissed off the military. They send us over there for six months and it turns into a year and then into sixteen months and then they call up a bunch of guys like me, pushing 50. Now I'm supposed to go back over there and lead a bunch of kids getting shot at? The unit is really being torn up by this. No one knows what the fuck we are doing over there. There's no point to it."

They didn't forcibly recall 50-year-old guys in WWII, people.

He doesn't know how long he'll be in. Apparently, they can keep him for up to another three years and he assumes he'll be in that whole time. He said his unit is one of the finest military forces in the world and they will do their job, but it is nowhere near 100%, isn't ready to go back into theater, and was never trained or intended to be used as an occupying force.

He also talked about how Bush has cut support for veterans, so no one believes they will be taken care of "if they ever do come home."

Man, I am proud of our service people and our veterans. I was an Air Force brat. One of my best friends is a Viet Nam vet. Another friend of mine is a Reservist who has been, in effect, enslaved for over a year now with no end in sight (although he's at least in the States, not in Iraq). My oldest friend was career Navy and just retired. I'm WAY anti-war, but I'm not a "blame-the-military" antiwar guy. This really tore me up. The look that kept creeping into this guys' eyes--mingled anger, sorrow, dread, uncertainty . . .

Think about all the 19 year-old kids who are being sent over there like hunks of meat into a sausage grinder. And then think of this guy--obviously a formerly lifelong Republican, gung-ho ex-military professional who now doubts everything he's ever believed in.

Madness. Evil, monstrous, madness.

I know it is a different war, a different place, a different time, but this is becoming so much like Viet Nam I just can't believe it.

What is the matter with Shrub. I do believe it is the beginning of the end. WE have to unite someway to stop all of this madness. Someone show me the way.

stories have much more of an impact as far as I'm concerned. My heart breaks for this guy, his comrades, and all the youth that are pointlessly being sent into harms' way.

on his business and the jobs he's providing.

People who thought they were done with the military are losing everything because of this punk and his stupid, illegal, unwinnable war.

with an income less than a third of what he made before being called up.

His civilian employer is really pissed he says, holding an empty job for over a year now and using expensive contractors to fill the gap.

He and his wife may lose their home. Their savings are about shot.

every time Bush won a state. A small MINORITY of troops do not like Bush but most voted for him.

into mindlessness.

This guys unit has been stateside and weren't in Iraq to be seen not jumping for joy.

By "unit," BTW, he was talking about a regiment. They are almost all professional soldiers, with a bit more perspective than the large formations filled with 19-year-old recent recruits who have relatively little perspective and a huge dose of intensive orientation to get them ready to kill.

I don't envision the cannon fodder remaining that devoted to Bush for much longer. But when the mature, professional core of the military starts to hate the little bushturd and openly questions the purpose of our invasion and occupation, things are not going well. Even in Viet Nam, the professional core didn't much like the (Democratic) politicians, but most of them didn't doubt the mission.

"I don't envision the cannon fodder remaining that devoted to Bush for much longer."

did he go to Iraq this Thanksgiving. No. He got the votes he wanted from them and they freely gave them. I just do not have any pity for any Bush voters.

My sincere wish is that every person who voted for Bush would die an agonizing horrible death in Iraq and their entire families would starve to death, homeless sleeping on a grate somewhere. I can't help it. I have no compassion for fascists or their supporters. I hope they all get a full measure of what they voted for.

A draftee or a back-door draftee will not represent the same population as the 19-year-old Murkan bushturd-loving, Ay-rab-hating volunteer.

Where did you get your info? from the Military vote totals they won't release?

I was in navy intelligence, linguistics. I won't bother mentioning what languages... :cry:

in a number of ways.

However, it's stuff like this:

who now doubts everything he's ever believed in

that give me hope. If it's chaos and destruction and utter insanity that's needed to wake people up, so be it.

I do feel sorry for your friend, and in fact everyone who is being caught up in this. But at LEAST he's awake now.

Communism. It was real and had a country you knew about. This is just an Oil War but the 19 yo do not understand it.

My number didn't come up the two years I might have been drafted for Viet Nam.

I think the gung-ho Murkan teenagers who volunteer (still!) to be cannon fodder units for the neocons are tragically ignorant, misled and in increasingly short supply.

It has nothing to do with America though

most people in the US.

I've mentioned the call up of retired soldiers to many people -- and no one has heard about it.

There are a few newspaper articles and stories like yours posted on DU.

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Air Force (Air Farce) brat??

I'm a Navy Brat (Navy Air) -- in Hawaii the bases are in such close proximity that when the Air Force Jets took off in the middle of the night during the Cuban Missile Crisis -- they crossed over Navy housing -- and EVERYONE was outside watching these huge planes taking off. We knew the situation was serious -- these planes had never taken off in the dead of night before.

What a difference in leadership the military has seen -- from JFK who was a true hero -- to AWOL bush.

military supporter of every hawk politician who came down the pike

He was a victim of the cold war and died long ago. Even he would have been a Kerry supporter, I have no doubt at all.

With each passing day and each new person I meet, I am more convinced than ever tha thte "election" was fraudulent. No way the little bushturd won. The exit polls were right.

and responding to it accordingly.

and the new tool that this government will use to enlist the young uns is economic starvation in the private sector.....via program cuts; cutting pell school grants, keeping the minimum wage low, providing no health benefits for civilians....etc....

What this climate will do is force many young people no choice but to enter into the Armed Forces....because there will not be any alternatives for those who's parents can not afford to pay for college.

That is why the GOP continues to say, they will be no draft. There won't need to be one after they are trough....

his story with us. I hope God is watching over him and those boys being forced into this terrible war.

I'm not quite sure who "he" and "him" is?

Was my point too sophisticated for ya? If so....a "thinking cap" should help.

What I said is that the Bushistas have found the perfect way to avoid a draft....and keep the rich kids out of harm's way.

If this society reduces the option available to young people by cuts in various areas of education (Pell Grants--happening now), many will have no choice but to enter into the Armed Forces. If the pay and the benefits for joining are increased....and private pay and benefits and options in attending college are minimized....young people from families in the lower economic scale of our society will not have a choice.

Hell, why do you think the military is filled with young people that come from poorer families now? Duh......

of this "war"

"Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man's war." (Steve Earle)

I think your post is out of sequence though.

I can't imagine being ripped out of my life like that

all for halliburton profits

Beating the Back-Door Draft
BY LEE NICHOLS


Texas Army National Guard member Carl Webb made headlines recently when he got caught up in the Pentagon's "stop-loss" policy, which forces national guardsmen and reservists to extend their enlistments in times of "national emergency." Webb opposes the Iraq War and hardly views the current situation as a national emergency, so he went AWOL and is currently missing.

Webb's plight caught Naked City's eye mainly because he is also active in Austin's peace movement, but according to husband-and-wife team Luke and Marti Hiken of the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild, Webb's situation is just "the tip of the iceberg." The San Francisco-based Hikens visited the UT Law School last Friday and Saturday to conduct a workshop for Central Texas counselors and lawyers on how to advise clients wishing to avoid what critics call "the back-door draft," or just how to stay the hell out of Iraq in general. They want to teach others, they say, because they can't possibly do it all themselves. "The Hotline right now is getting about 2,900 to 3,000 calls a month, and that's clearly too many for any kind of support system to be able to really meet the ," said Luke Hiken on campus last Friday. "A lot of those people are just trying to find out what their rights are. A lot of people are right at the point of resistance." He said about 30,000 calls came in the early stages of the war.

One of the MLTF's current activities is a lawsuit on behalf of a guardsman challenging the legality of the current stop-loss mobilization. Among its arguments, the MLTF plans to show that stop-loss is only allowable in national emergency, and the current Iraq situation has more to do with poor planning by the Bush administration than any real threat to national security. "Since the coup in Iraq, since the United States put in its own government there, to suggest that we're there to protect ourselves is now nonsense," Hiken said. (Details of the suit may be found at www.sorgen.net.) A very interesting thing about that suit, Marti Hiken said, "was the support of a large number of people inside the military, and we're talking brass, officers, not just the GIs themselves. The military is divided in terms of what's going on right now."

"The reserves are people who go in expecting to be in for a short period of time, being called up for floods or fires or earthquakes or serious and significant emergencies, or war if we were being attacked," said Luke Hiken. "But to say to these people, 'We've gotcha, and now you're in indefinitely, and you signed up voluntarily,' they know that's outrageous."

...

To be advised of legal options in avoiding compulsory military service, call the hotline at 800/394-9544.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-10-08/pols_naked9.html

www.sorgen.net