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WASHINGTON - The Bush Administration's decision to recall 2,500 Marine Corps veterans is not only unfair, it continues a policy of involuntary deployments in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.
While the Administration has repeatedly rejected the need for a military draft, its practice of extending deployments beyond the contracted discharge date and involuntarily activating of soldiers and Marines is nothing short of a "backdoor draft."
Since the early days of the Iraq war, the Army has called back 14,000 soldiers and 2,700 Marines who are members of the so-called Individual Ready Reserves (IRR), a segment of the reserve component that consists mainly of troops who have left active duty but still have time remaining on their military obligations. The current recall of 2,500 Marine reserves will raise the total to 5,200 by next year.
Forcing the reactivation of veterans who have already put their lives on the line for their country and reunited with their families with no expectation of further service is a cruel hoax. In many cases these troops have already served more than one deployment in the war zone. Now they will risk their lives up to another two years, almost certainly in Iraq. With the President building up rather than reducing troop levels, no one can guess how many more times they'll be asked to beat the odds to make it home alive.
Equally disheartening is the condition of approximately 12,500 troops currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan who have been held over beyond their discharge dates under so-called stop-loss orders. In the three and a half years since the invasion of Iraq, approximately 50,000 troops have been forced to remain in the war zone under this command, a practice which may be legal, but devastating, to troop morale and to the families waiting at home.
The forced deployment of nominally volunteer troops not only violates the spirit of the agreement with these soldiers, it is further rejection of the principle of shared sacrifice which has been totally absent in the conduct of this war. The cost of the conflict has been borne totally by the troops and their families, people from the poor and lower-middle classes for whom the military is an avenue for economic and academic advancement. Enlistment bonuses even as high as $40,000 in the Army and Marines are not enough to attract more privileged Americans for whom military service is an unnecessary option.
Outside of the Armed forces, for most Americans the war is little more than a momentary distraction on the news, having never been called upon to sacrifice in any way on behalf of the conflict. I have repeatedly called on the President to make a public appeal to the American people--not to defend the righteousness of his policy--but to demonstrate their support of the war by making a personal sacrifice of their own.
My heart goes out to those families who have made that sacrifice. In my Congressional district, I have sent off hundreds of Reserves and National Guardsmen--some of them grandparents--to service in Iraq. Some of them are among the 47,000 reserves currently deployed in the Middle East.
In this war, Army and Marine reserves have carried a disproportionate share of the burden, accounting for more than 275,000 of the 700,000 troops deployed so far. Many of these troops were "weekend soldiers," trained to deal with natural disasters and other emergencies on the home front, not for war. They, too, have been caught up in the "backdoor draft."
My legislation to reinstate the military draft was not meant to feed a war that I did not support. As a Purple Heart veteran of the Korean War, I wanted to mandate a measure of fairness by requiring all Americans to share the burden. I also believed, and still do, that if all Americans--especially Members of Congress and other decision makers--were subject to military service, the war would never have started in the first place.
If the President persists in staying the course in Iraq, I appeal to him, once again, to abide by principles of fairness. He should accept the political cost of legalizing conscription rather than avoiding responsibility with a "backdoor draft."
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