The Advocate op/ed
The volunteer military isn't so voluntary anymore.
Decades after the draft ended, tens of thousands of troops are being involutarily retained in the U.S. military past their scheduled departures.
The latest forced extensions of service apply to about 7,000 troops in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan who were scheduled to leave the service early this year.
These forced retentions are a consequence of the nation not having enough people in uniform to handle globe-girdling military commitments on multiple fronts that have stretched our forces terribly thin.
If the draft was involuntary servitude, as some opponents of conscription argued during the Vietnam War era, so is forced retention under "stop loss" orders.
The Army has used such orders to keep more than 40,000 troops in uniform, including about 16,000 reservists and members of the National Guard who otherwise could have left the service in 2003. Hundreds more were temporarily prevented from leaving the Navy, Air Force and Marines.
Congress has limited the size of the Army to 480,000 troops, but the number of active-duty personnel has topped 500,000 troops, thanks to stop-loss orders. Some people question the legality of that.
The latest order involves all Army units scheduled to return from Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan during the next few months, requiring soldiers to stay with their units until they reach their home base and for up to three months after that. A similar order already applies to units scheduled to go to those countries as replacements for units there now.
Unscheduled and unexpected extensions of service obviously intrude into and disrupt the plans and the lives of troops and their families. As deplorable as it is to inflict such unfairness and uncertainty on troops and their families, there is also the possibility of unfavorable consequences for the military.
While involuntary extensions of service can help remedy troop shortages in the short run, they also can contribute to long-run shortages in the future.
Some troops already are grumbling and vowing not to re-enlist.
The prospect of involuntary extension of military service also could discourage some potential volunteers from entering military service, thus further worsening the problem.
The Army, in effect, is trying to buy re-enlistments of three years or more with bonuses of as much as $10,000 for troops who already are in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. Maybe that money will persuade some troops to sign on for another tour, but others might figure their time and their lives are worth a lot more.
Forced retention of military personnel scheduled to retire or muster out is strong evidence that today's stretched military is too small to handle all we have bitten off in the world from Europe to Asia and the Mideast, including ongoing missions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Either we must find ways to reduce our military commitments abroad or we must find ways to build a military large enough to handle them.
