ProgressOhio

He would have been home in Vermont on Monday. After three tours of duty in Iraq – three - Sgt. 1st Class Jason Dene of Castleton, Vermont, died late last month of non-combat injuries. Left behind are a wife and three children – two daughters and a son.

Pending an investigation, Dene died of sleep apnea on May 28 in Baghdad.

Dene would have been out of the Army if not for a provision called Stop-Loss – a kind of back-door draft in which the Defense Department can compel longer service. His family said he wanted to retire after his second tour of duty because he felt rundown and stressed before being forced to return to Baghdad.

Dene’s uncle, Patrick Farrow, told WCAX-TV in Vermont, “It’s like a kick in the stomach. It’s like we were hoping Jason would get clear of this. Tisa, my sister, was thinking it was almost clear. He was out a month from now, you know, and suddenly they told her he’s dead. Dene’s aunt is actress Mia Farrow.

“The anger is what’s tough to live with, you know, it’s like I can live with tragedy but the anger is tough,” Patrick Farrow told the news crew.

Since 2002, more than 70,000 soldiers have been stop-lossed. Since the “surge” of troops in Iraq in early 2007, 12,235 troops have served under stop-loss and been forced into longer tours of duty. Currently, the Ohio National Guard has 373 members serving under the back-door draft.

Draft – what draft? Well … call it stop-loss if you will but compelling soldiers to extended military duty – well it sure looks, smells and feels like a draft.

And Ohio Representative Betty Sutton thinks that policy is wrong-headed. She has proposed legislation to at least compensate soldiers for what amounts to a back-door draft. “This is unjust and it undermines the voluntary nature of the military, said Sutton earlier this month.

So how does the back-door draft work? Well, Pentagon policy allows the military to retain soldiers involuntarily, beyond the length of their contract, 90-days before their unit is scheduled to be deployed or 90-days after returning to their home base. On average, soldiers who are stop-lossed serve an extra 6.6 months.

As Bobby Muller wrote for Veterans For America, “Of all the abuses borne by our service members since the beginning of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, excessive reliance on stop-loss is one of the most egregious. Involuntary service negates the promise of our all-volunteer military. By forcing tens of thousands of troops to stay in the military, we have broken the contract that our service members willingly entered into with their country.”

NBC news producer John Rutherford in MSNBC’s Field notes reported at the end of May that the Army alone reported 115 suicides in 2007 – and an additional 38 this year.

“There’s a lot of strain because probably a lot of people are ready to come home,” Staff Sgt. Bennie Lamb of Macon, Georgia, told Rutherford. Lamb was on his third tour. “You don’t know when you are leaving,” he said. “With this 15-month, 12-month tour thing, you know, that’s a lot of stress.”

And relief will not come soon.

The Associated Press reported last week that Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told soldiers at Fort Stewart that he understands the strain stop-loss creates.

“I would like to see an end to the stop-loss policy, but I don’t see it happening in the near future,” Mullen told them. “I see a slight growth in the next couple of years based on predications next year.”

In fact, on January 19, 2007, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates sent a memorandum to all secretaries of military departments making February 28, 2007, the deadline for the submission of plans to minimize stop-loss.

But as in most bureaucracies it seems as if this memo was filed in a circular recyclable basket.

Rep. Sutton’s office reports that in the last year, stop-loss orders rose 43 percent.

U.S. Military Struggles with Demand on Soldiers

The Pentagon admits that “the persistent use of stop-loss underscores the fact that the war-fighting burden is being carried by a handful of soldiers” and that these back-door drafts “risk breaking the force as recruitment and retention problems mount.’’

But the Pentagon is still one of the world’s largest office buildings and sometimes the left-hand doesn’t get the message from the right-hand.

Elsewhere in the marbled halls of the military, central policy-makers are drumming opposition to a new GI Bill for fear that the incentives could entice folks to leave the military earlier – instead of entice new recruits.

It seems between stop-loss and opposition to the GI Bill that military leaders have given up on recruitment for an unpopular war and instead have opted to lean on those they already have in their clutches.

Last week, David Sarasohn of Newhouse News Service reported that the Bush Administration opposed increasing college aid for veterans for fear that they might actually leave the military and take the government up on the offer.

Congress had proposed increasing eligibility for veterans to qualify for college aid to two years of service. The Bush Administration pushed for a six-year eligibility provision in the GI Bill Amendment being written by Senator Jim Webb. “The last thing we want to do is create a situation which we are losing our men and women whom we have worked so hard to train,’’ a Pentagon spokesman told Sarasohn.

All of which may explain why the Bush White House and veteran luminaries like Sen. John McCain are opposed to the proposed changes in the GI Bill.

Sarasohn reported that the Military Officers Association of America backed Webb in the debate over college eligibility, saying that they were “concerned about the serious potential for a retention downturn among today’s forces, but believe strongly that any such downturn will be due to too-frequent extended combat tours and family separation that have been imposed on a too-small force.”

The conundrum here is that for a voluntary force to succeed, the military needs recruits. But lacking incentives, they seemed to be closing circles, taking away recruitment incentives just to survive current day-to-day needs.

Admiral Mullen acknowledged at Fort Stewart that there was concern about burnout in the ranks and that the Army is working to grow by 22,000 to 547,000 on active duty. Mullen said that this would make it easier to cease with stop-loss and extend troop time at home – but there is a catch – it won’t happen for at least three years.

But let’s face it – being a military recruiter these days is a tough sell with these types of short-sighted incentives. “Be all you can be – and when you can’t anymore – well, be compelled to be more than you can be.” Not the catchiest offer out there.

Then when you consider that one in five service members return from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD or major depression (a statistic that rose 50% between 2006 and 2007 when the “surge” occurred) and that 19 percent of those returning have experienced possible traumatic brain injury this is hardly a quick sell.

AP reported Mullen told the soldiers at Fort Stewart, “What I worry about is … you come up to the end of your obligation and you go. And we can’t afford to lose you. There’s a finite amount of gas left in this tank. And in my view, we’ve used at least half the tank.”

Sutton says at least compensate families for back-door draft

For Betty Sutton, the no nonsense Congresswomen from northern Ohio, enough is enough. She introduced the Stop-Loss Compensation Act earlier this month that would require the Pentagon to pay affected troops an additional $1500 for each month their service is extended. Sen. Frank Lautenberg introduced similar legislation in the U.S. Senate.

“Too many of our brave service men and women are being told they cannot return home to their families,” Sutton said. “The lasting result of this policy will be to deter young men and women from joining the Armed Forces.”

Sutton is concerned that the Pentagon is losing the forest through the trees, pointing out that “instead of forcing soldiers to serve, the army should work to increase recruitment by supporting policies such as the new GI Bill which will improve educational benefits for service members, helping them transition back to civilian life and begin successful careers.’’

The legislation has been supported by the Veterans for America, Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Sutton and Lautenberg’s bill (Lautenberg’s is more likely to be the passage vehicle) at least make an effort to deal with troop morale for stop-loss and ease the negative pressure on recruitment that stop-loss creates.

But fundamentally, the larger issue for the Bush White House and the Pentagon has got to be the longer view of just what issues like the back-door draft and opposition to earlier eligibility for college aid due to recruitment efforts long-term.

After all, stop-loss can only last so long before even those soldiers leave the military.

The short-term view of the Pentagon seems to be a focus on immediacy without regard to the long-term implications of these policies on new recruits.

In January, the National Priorities Project reported that the number of high school graduates in the Army had dropped to a low of 70.7 percent of all forces, down from 83.5 percent in 2005. The Washington Post reported that the Army has met its high recruitment goals for the past two years by lowering acceptance standards, offering signing bonuses and loosening age restrictions.

The Washington Post reported on January 23 that the Pentagon admits, “It's really an indication of the difficult recruiting environment we're in, both with the impact of the ongoing wars, an economy competing for high school graduates, and a decline in the percentage of students who graduate from high school," said Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the recruiting command. "But we're not putting anyone in the Army that we don't feel is qualified to serve as a soldier."

But then again, what we’re offering is uncertainty, at least two likely tours of duty in combat for your signature, a likely extended stay draft beyond your contract of at least 6 months compelled duty (and a third combat round), and very few benefits for fighting for your country because we’re afraid to give them to you because you just might catch on and realize what a raw deal this can be.

Because it sure sounds to me as if recruiters have a new “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” If a potential recruit doesn’t ask before signing the dotted line – surely you wouldn’t want to tell these grim realities – which makes a recruits decision to serve all the more patriotic.

Little do they know of the Vet Trap that waits. But then again – people talk – maybe, just maybe, that’s why recruitment is such a struggle.

No draft in America. Hardly. Jason Dene should have been home.