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Topic Review (Newest First)
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| Jun 18th, 2004 05:20 PM | ||||||||||
| GAsux |
Yeah Sorry I'm not all about quoting and what not because then posts become 20 times longer than necessary. I know what I said. People who read what I said know it also so you don't need to state it back to me. I'm not sure why you started by explaining how stop loss works to me. I'm well aware of it. I'm still active duty. I know how the process works. And I agreed. Stop loss sucks donkey dicks. It has a negative impact on morale and recruiting and retention in the long run. Agreed. That's done. My point was, the blame here does not necessarily rest solely on the shoulders of the administration. Your assertion that those in command who did request more troops were merely stifled by the service chiefs is heresey that you cannot defend in my opinion. It may or may not be the case but proving it is impossible. As for end strength, how can you say that's not a factor? If Congress approved higher end strength numbers, forces would not be subject to such long deployments because they could better rotate units in and out. If I'm not mistaken there are currently roughly int he nieghborhood of about 250,000 in the region now, which is not far from the GW1 number. Regardless, you cannot add anouther 100,000 to the region without significantly boosting end strength numbers. Those bodies have to come from somewhere. That's my point. Without an authorization of a larger military force overall. Stop loss is not happening because there aren't enough troops on the ground in Iraq. It's happening because there aren't enough troops across the board to distribute the load. The President has made the decision to commit troops in more places. Congress needs to make the decision to fund more troops. Its that simple. |
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| Jun 18th, 2004 03:20 PM | ||||||||||
| kellychaos |
Re: Fun! Quote:
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| Jun 18th, 2004 03:03 PM | ||||||||||
| AChimp |
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I've gone into this in other threads. When you enlist as a soldier, you know what you are getting into to begin with. It's not a "hey! let's have fun and shoot stuff and blow shit up!" club. An army is meant to fight wars. How do you not realize that if there's a war, and you're in the army, you're gonna be fighting? I have no sympathy for soldiers who whine about how they didn't know what they were getting into after the fact. |
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| Jun 18th, 2004 02:51 PM | ||||||||||
| punkgrrrlie10 | If they let everyone go home, who's left? Does that not increase the chances of lives lost for the ones who remain? It's not exactly a food service job, where if a waitress is done with her shift they can just stress and pick up the slack when she goes home. | |||||||||
| Jun 18th, 2004 02:45 PM | ||||||||||
| kellychaos |
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| Jun 17th, 2004 05:02 PM | ||||||||||
| GAsux |
Fun! First, stop loss is not new. So let's not pretend like it's a big new thing. It's not so much. They did it during Gulf War I and they did it after 9/11. All four branches have various versions of it. Second, by who's estimate was the force used to obtain military objectives in Iraq undermanned? Who determines the amount of soldiers required for a particular operation? Why aren't ground commanders all over Iraq complaining that they just don't have enough people to do the job? Why aren't the service Chiefs fighting for more manpower? Congress authorizes overall end strength figures for each branch. How come the Marines aren't complaining about being undermanned? The Air Force has implemented plans to CUT 11,000 airmen during this fiscal year because they are OVER end strength projections. As a person who has personal relationships with quite a few people negatively impacted by stop loss both this go around and the previous one two years ago, I'll be the first to say that it sucks doneky nuts. No doubt about it. But point the finger where it needs to be pointed. None of the other three branches is implementing stop loss to the degree the Army has. The Army IS NOT any more committed than the Marines. The first issue is primarily one of internal imbalance. Clearly the Army doesn't have enough people in the career fields that are being heavily deployed. Second, if there is now, or ever was a shortage of troops, Congress bears the brunt of that burden. I disagree with the fact that there needs to be more troops on the ground in Iraq, or that there ever needed to be more. Again war planners had their numbers and haven't deviated from them. The case could be made that each branch may have needed more end strength to rotate those people more effectively to share the burden, and again that's determined by Congress. |
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| Jun 17th, 2004 04:45 PM | ||||||||||
| AChimp | I think it's fair. Those soldiers knew what they were getting into when they enlisted. | |||||||||
| Jun 17th, 2004 04:06 PM | ||||||||||
| kellychaos | Actually, at the start, they didn't have enough people to carry out the mission they eventually undertook. In other words, the plan was undermanned from the start and that is part of the current problem. They are trying to insist that the keeping the current soldiers is not only more cost effective than training and deploying replacements but it also gives you an already-present population of soldiers that are experienced with the country's culture, terrain, ect. It's a quick cure to solve earlier miscalculation and poor planning. | |||||||||
| Jun 17th, 2004 03:58 PM | ||||||||||
| ranxer |
really fucked! especially since the people that ordered the war have lied about it and were told that we didn't have enough soldiers to cover the conflict .. this, as many other things was predicted by many in the anti-war movement. also, it's not fair that the war/'chicken hawks' don't have their family members in the service for the most part. the soldiers should be given a choice about staying past their discharge date. the soldiers should be brought home and our no-bid contracts relinquished to the iraqis. |
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| Jun 17th, 2004 03:44 PM | ||||||||||
| kellychaos |
Stop Loss Is it fair that soldiers whose term of service has ended, even those who have reached their retirement date or who have no more inactive reserve commitments to give, are forced to serve beyond what they had signed up for, are constantly given revised redeployment dates and are basically being held hostage at the mercy of the U.S. government? I know that this is a volunteer army but fair is fair. They did the time they were legally bound to do according to what was in their contract. True, there are those patriotic few who are willing to go above and beyond what they signed for and good for them. At the same time, there are those who had plans for what they wanted to do with the rest of their live and are, honestly, hoping that they have a "rest of their lives" to contiue with upon their arrival back here ... i.e. they don't arrive feet first onto the tarmac. This is just ... ummmm ... fucked. |
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