Who is in the Army now?
So,
(So, I seem to be starting a lot of my blog entries with ‘So’ lately. My friend Ian says that word a lot. Maybe I use ‘So” so much now, cause I miss him. Maybe it’s my way of paying homage to a yearlong sacrifice he’s made. Yeah, sacrifice. He should be home from Iraq in six or seven weeks. He gave up a year of this life to --well, bring democracy (we hope) and freedom to a land that probably will be better with it eventually. He’s in the Army Reserves, so this isn’t the first time he’s done this sort of thing. He spent a stint in Kosovo doing the same thing for them. Wherever nut case foreign leaders like to kill their citizens and neighbors, both Democratic and Republican Administrations send Ian.
Course, Ian’s not like sending the Secretary of State to Israel with a message of “Hey, can’t you guys be nice to the Palestinians. –And if they do that, will you Palestinians stop trying to blow everyone up?” Instead they send him, a Captain in an Army Reserves Psychological Operations unit, to pass out literature, run newspapers, and the occasional radio station. With those tools his unit broadcasts messages like: “Hey, you Iraqis. Could you stop trying to blow each other and us, for that matter, up?” Well those are his primary duties. Secondary duties include trying to keep from getting shot or blown up. Then there is the issue of finding decent food, water to bathe in, and a hoard of other things. Items that would cause the average suburban voter to demand “Throw the bastards out of office!” if they had to survive without. But Ian signed up for the Army right? So, he can't demand that. He has to just put up with being dirty and find some one to translate ألق أمريريكانز الجدًّا خارج العراق into English. He speaks Russian, so he could translate this: Бросьте damn американцов из Ирака into English, but not the Arabic.
Now I bring this up, because, I was on the phone with his wife last night. She’s kind of looking forward to seeing him again. As I’ve mentioned before they got married last year. A few weeks later: Ian was in Iraq.
I won’t go into the details of her and my conversation about the meaning of Ian’s return. But it did occur to me, talking to her, that Ian is doing quite a bit of work for a part time job. --A job that supposes to be two weeks in the summer and one weekend a month. In the last four years Ian’s spent 21 months on active duty. (Nine months in Kosovo and now a year in Iraq.) He also spent nine months at the Defense Language institute in Monterey to learn Russian, which is real handy in Iraq at times. They have Russian weapons around. If we ever let the UN in full time, the Russians could send a large contingent and Ian could discuss where to find clean bath water and electricity with them. But anyway, the point is, he’s really done 30 months out of 48 on active duty. But guess what? He’s still a reservist. As soon as we are done with him and we think the need for production in our war factory is dropping off, we’ll cut his hours. He’ll be back to part time on less than subsistence wages. Kind of laid off. If he were a factory worker, there would at least be a new story about it, maybe a 60 Minutes special.
This situation is somewhat peculiar I think. Ian was a ROTC student in college with full intent on being a career army officer. But Bush 1 decided the army needed to be smaller. So he was rifted out of the Army into the Reserves with the promise he’d spend eight years there doing reserve time. You know, the time where you get to have a career outside the military, cause you are only giving up like 36 days a year, 22 of which are weekends. But since 1990 or so the U.S. seems to be giving our part time army workers a lot of overtime. We’ve sent troops to five battle zones. (Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq again.) It makes being married, raising a family, and maintaining a home a little difficult. People don’t like to hire you if there is an imminent chance of you being asked to defend and promote democracy. The Presidential campaign is on, so in this really weird set of wars we are in, everyone is talking about commitment to the troops. But I don’t think we are so committed to our Army if we can’t even hire enough full time soldiers to do the stuff we want. In occurs to me in my liberal left wing social thinking way, that defending and promoting democracy is not something we want hire part timers to do. We should commit to them, as much as they commit to us, and stop asking them for full time sacrifice while employing them when its convenient to our needs like occasional cleaning lady or gardener.
(So, I seem to be starting a lot of my blog entries with ‘So’ lately. My friend Ian says that word a lot. Maybe I use ‘So” so much now, cause I miss him. Maybe it’s my way of paying homage to a yearlong sacrifice he’s made. Yeah, sacrifice. He should be home from Iraq in six or seven weeks. He gave up a year of this life to --well, bring democracy (we hope) and freedom to a land that probably will be better with it eventually. He’s in the Army Reserves, so this isn’t the first time he’s done this sort of thing. He spent a stint in Kosovo doing the same thing for them. Wherever nut case foreign leaders like to kill their citizens and neighbors, both Democratic and Republican Administrations send Ian.
Course, Ian’s not like sending the Secretary of State to Israel with a message of “Hey, can’t you guys be nice to the Palestinians. –And if they do that, will you Palestinians stop trying to blow everyone up?” Instead they send him, a Captain in an Army Reserves Psychological Operations unit, to pass out literature, run newspapers, and the occasional radio station. With those tools his unit broadcasts messages like: “Hey, you Iraqis. Could you stop trying to blow each other and us, for that matter, up?” Well those are his primary duties. Secondary duties include trying to keep from getting shot or blown up. Then there is the issue of finding decent food, water to bathe in, and a hoard of other things. Items that would cause the average suburban voter to demand “Throw the bastards out of office!” if they had to survive without. But Ian signed up for the Army right? So, he can't demand that. He has to just put up with being dirty and find some one to translate ألق أمريريكانز الجدًّا خارج العراق into English. He speaks Russian, so he could translate this: Бросьте damn американцов из Ирака into English, but not the Arabic.
Now I bring this up, because, I was on the phone with his wife last night. She’s kind of looking forward to seeing him again. As I’ve mentioned before they got married last year. A few weeks later: Ian was in Iraq.
I won’t go into the details of her and my conversation about the meaning of Ian’s return. But it did occur to me, talking to her, that Ian is doing quite a bit of work for a part time job. --A job that supposes to be two weeks in the summer and one weekend a month. In the last four years Ian’s spent 21 months on active duty. (Nine months in Kosovo and now a year in Iraq.) He also spent nine months at the Defense Language institute in Monterey to learn Russian, which is real handy in Iraq at times. They have Russian weapons around. If we ever let the UN in full time, the Russians could send a large contingent and Ian could discuss where to find clean bath water and electricity with them. But anyway, the point is, he’s really done 30 months out of 48 on active duty. But guess what? He’s still a reservist. As soon as we are done with him and we think the need for production in our war factory is dropping off, we’ll cut his hours. He’ll be back to part time on less than subsistence wages. Kind of laid off. If he were a factory worker, there would at least be a new story about it, maybe a 60 Minutes special.
This situation is somewhat peculiar I think. Ian was a ROTC student in college with full intent on being a career army officer. But Bush 1 decided the army needed to be smaller. So he was rifted out of the Army into the Reserves with the promise he’d spend eight years there doing reserve time. You know, the time where you get to have a career outside the military, cause you are only giving up like 36 days a year, 22 of which are weekends. But since 1990 or so the U.S. seems to be giving our part time army workers a lot of overtime. We’ve sent troops to five battle zones. (Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq again.) It makes being married, raising a family, and maintaining a home a little difficult. People don’t like to hire you if there is an imminent chance of you being asked to defend and promote democracy. The Presidential campaign is on, so in this really weird set of wars we are in, everyone is talking about commitment to the troops. But I don’t think we are so committed to our Army if we can’t even hire enough full time soldiers to do the stuff we want. In occurs to me in my liberal left wing social thinking way, that defending and promoting democracy is not something we want hire part timers to do. We should commit to them, as much as they commit to us, and stop asking them for full time sacrifice while employing them when its convenient to our needs like occasional cleaning lady or gardener.
posted by Stan at 11:47 PM
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