October 22, 2007
by Robert Fantina

It was reported on October 18, 2007 that the army will continue to utilize the stop-loss policy in order to provide sufficient human cannon fodder for President Bush's immoral and unnecessary wars.

The stop-loss policy is defined as a 'short-term policy that stabilizes military personnel in their current assignment by preventing them from leaving at the end of their service.'

The U.S. government is famous for its cumbersome semantics, and the so-called 'stop-loss' policy must have won some bureaucrat a major award.

It may be helpful to put this statement in common English, rather than in bureaucratic lingo: the stop-loss policy is 'the forced labor of U.S. citizens in conditions of mortal danger.'

Soldiers enlist for a wide variety of reasons, and either knowingly or unknowingly accept certain risks as a result. For example, each man or woman who joins the military knows, even in those rare periods when the U.S. is not at war, that his or her life is potentially at risk; a war could begin at any time. The soldier knows that the period of his or her enlistment will mean separation from family and friends, and possible relocation anywhere in the world.

What many soldiers don't know is that once they enlist, they cease to have the rights that other American citizens up until very recently took for granted. Their right to free speech is curtailed, as is their right to assembly, and to make the common decisions most people feel free to make.

But, one might say, the soldier has enlisted for a specific period of time, usually two years. Whatever unexpected deprivations he or she may experience will end; a contract has been signed and will expire on a specified, mutually-agreed upon date.

Not so: the stop-loss policy nullifies that expectation. In Iraq, for instance, soldiers who have been in line waiting to board a helicopter for the first leg of their trip out of Mr. Bush's hell have been pulled from the line and told that their 'tours' of duty were being extended. Family members at home - spouses, sibling, parents and children - who thought that their long nightmare was finally coming to a close, are hastily called by their tearful soldier and told not to go to the airport: he or she will not be coming home as planned and promised. The long hours of anxiety will continue, because the U.S. government is not obligated to keep its side of the enlistment contract.

One might think that if one party in a contract can freely violate it, so could the other. This, however, is not how the powerful U.S. government sees things. Soldiers who attempt to leave prior to the end of their enlistment period are arrested, prosecuted, and usually given prison sentences and less-than-honorable discharges. With the stop-loss policy the government goes even a step further: soldiers who attempt to leave the military after fulfilling their obligation as agreed upon at enlistment are also be arrested, prosecuted, and given prison sentences and less-than-honorable discharges.

It is no coincidence that 'stop-loss' has been utilized more since Mr. Bush's much-vaunted 'augmentation' (one must recall that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained most eloquently that the addition of 30,000 troops to the war zone was not an 'escalation,' but an 'augmentation.' Please refer to the above comment about the government's cumbersome semantics). About 9,000 soldiers have been victimized by this policy since Mr. Bush announced his 'new way forward' (cumbersome semantics, once again) in Iraq. That is an increase of about 2,000.

Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, deputy chief of staff for personnel said that "until there is some reduction in the demand, we're going to have to rely, unfortunately ... on stop-loss."

What, one might ask, would constitute a 'reduction in the demand?' There appear to be four possible scenarios:

1) The U.S. decides it made a huge mistake by invading Iraq, and departs. When pigs fly.

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2) Sufficient men and women flock to their local recruiting stations to enlist. This seems unlikely, since Mr. Rochelle stated that current recruitment goals would remain the same for 2008 and 2009, reflecting the "realistic view on how challenging it is at this point in time" to increase the size of the military.

And why, one wonders, might it be so challenging right now to do so? Would an unnecessary war, in which the brave soldiers forced to fight it aren't even provided with the armor required to protect themselves, perhaps factor in somehow? Would the realization that an enlistment agreement is open-ended have anything to do with this difficulty?

And there is really no reason to increase recruitment goals, since the soldiers currently enlisted will have to remain in the military at the pleasure of Mr. Bush and his war-mongering cohorts.

3) The U.S., utilizing the stop-loss policy and possibly an actual draft, finally kills enough Iraqis to declare victory, somehow avoiding engulfing the entire region in a disastrous war. As Iran and Turkey now appear to be increasing their involvement in Iraq, this too is unlikely to occur, regardless of the U.S. military manpower Mr. Bush and his successor, along with an all-to-willing Congress, decide to send to this Middle East meat grinder.

4) After years, and possibly decades, the people of Iraq are able to defeat their American oppressors, and the U.S. finally concedes defeat, following the Vietnam model. As the peace movement in the U.S. grows, this becomes the most likely scenario. Before this milestone is reached, it is likely that hundreds of thousands of U.S. men, and possibly women, will have been conscripted (the polite word for 'forced into slavery'), tens of thousands will have died, and the death toll for Iraqis will be too staggering to contemplate.

Not a pretty picture, regardless of which scenario one selects (with the exception of number one, which is a fairy tale that even the most gullible of children would not believe).

So what can one expect? The stop-loss program will continue to be utilized, and the desertion rate will grow correspondingly. Soldiers who enlisted to defend the country against terrorism will serve courageously in Iraq and there learn the truth, and then return home and courageously speak out against Mr. Bush's imperial atrocity in that nation. Recruitment levels will drop and more soldiers will be forced to remain past their enlistment periods. Eventually Mr. Bush, or possibly his successor, will convince Congress that with dwindling numbers of troops to 'support' by having a war for them, a draft is necessary so they have someone to support. The peace movement will grow, along with the death toll in Iraq, and this travesty will continue for years.

One cannot help being pessimistic about the future of U.S. involvement in Iraq, especially when the U.S. government provides itself with the means to continue that involvement indefinitely. One looks for a leading presidential candidate who speaks forthrightly about ending the war, but they are all too busy trying to balance between ending U.S. involvement in Iraq, and continuing the bizarre charade of equating supporting the troops with funding the war.

A study of the Vietnam War and its eventual conclusion indicates that once the people of the U.S. finally decided that that tragic endeavor could not continue, it still took years for the government 'of the people' to act. The faster a major groundswell of opposition to the Iraq war occurs, the faster Congress, and possibly some future president, will be forced to act. Such a groundswell is already too late for the nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers and at least 1,000,000 Iraqis who have died since Mr. Bush's 'shock and awe' invasion and subsequent occupation of that country. For the sake of those still alive, that groundswell of opposition cannot happen soon enough.

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Robert Fantina [send him email] is a long-time activist for peace and social justice. He has worked with the Coalition for Peace Action in New Jersey. Following the 2004 presidential election, he moved to Canada, where he now resides. Robert is the author of Desertion and the American Solder: 1776-2006.

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