What union is this?? My wife is a full time reservist, and I know of no military union.

I agree that family members can speak up with no fear of retribution to them or the soldier. Unfortunately, many spouses and family are no beter informed about the military than the rest of the civilian populace.


I can't agree with that as a blanket statement. Just like in any other segment of society, you have supervisors who take care of soldiers, and you have turds who don't.

On edit: Here is a link from today's Washington Post.

BTW, CR Thank you for you and your familys' service.

Utter hogwash. Family members are not 'afraid' to speak out.

Hmm, I have six or seven family members that are certainly afraid of a backlash, methinks thou arst to close to the problem?

I think you would have to live under a rock to not see the public lynching you would get as a family member by the right for criticising the war as "unpatriotic" and "not supporting the troops"- do you think that is utter hogwash?

Sorry, had to edit for DTOMs post about the union- I am not sure of the local name, my brother was full time guard (ARNG) for 26 years, they are not allowed to strike, have binding arbitration, not allowed to deny an order, but the CO can be disciplined for purposeful ingoring of rules, similar to other countries that have military unions, or for that matter, public safety unions such as police officers. Some parts of the ARNG are not unionized, similar setup to public employee unions, such as management or personel, if your wife is not in a "skilled" area, such as mechanic or plumber, she is probably not required. All full time ARNG jobs are simply weekday support for weekend duty, so there are no full time foot soldiers.

And what about it? The 1st Amendment protects you from government interference on free speech. It does not guarantee your speech will not be condemned or ridiculed by others. Those who oppose your viewpoints have free speech too.

You make a lot of blanket generalizations about the military. I think your past experience would be valuable if you would back it up with actual fact, or even an anecdotal instance or two. For example, the statement, "Rape was acceptable in the past, but not now" (which you said on another thread) followed by tailhook as substantiation (an episode which was most definitely not an example of accepted conduct), followed by "well, I've known cases in the past" isn't really helpful.

HOW, specifically, are your relatives afraid to speak out, and why? I speak out all of the time. I write to my congressmen and I post here. I write letters to my newpaper and the AF Times. I would not picket, because that would be downright rude, in my opinion. Otherwise, I'm fairly vocal. Could you offer a direct example of how times have changed in this regard recently please?

I will adress the question in a couple of stages.

First, right now it is considered acceptable by much of America to use violence against those that protest the war. We had a very prominent case here of a man that threw water on protestors 2 times in 10 below weather so that they would "get it"- he did lose the assault case, but the outpouring of sympathy and poeple rushing to pay his legal bills highlights the situation. One of the protestors was an 80year old quaker woman, whose religion condems all war, the other had a daughter in the war, and protested the reason to put her in harms way. Consider one of the posts I have seen on numerious sites that exhort poeple to "punch the protestor in the face, and keep punching till he doesn't get up, and see if he then understands that pacifism doesn't work"- I am sure you have seen this post. I stand by the comment that family members of service men/women are afraid to speak out thinking that it will be construed as "Not supporting our troops"- my own posts on numerous other sites decrying the reason for putting my family in harms way is ALWAYS called "unpatriotic" and "not supporting our troops"- most of those sites aren't strictly debate sites, but Bill posts on many of these same sites, and he will back me up I think. The Bush and military propaganda machine has done thier job quiet well on this one. No dissent allowed, no dissent listened too.

I personally know of three girls that were sexually assaulted in the military. All were in combat MOSs. All were hushed up. Only one occured while I was in and I had personal first hand knowledge of the situation, the other two are fellow employees today at my hospital, and I have no doubt they are telling the truth. In each case, the charge was against an officer, and each case was hushed up, and in the case I knew about, she was placed in for "psych eval"- pretty much the end of her career.

Criminality almost always has a pattern, and if you find several cases, you are nearly always scrapping the iceberg. Take the basic training incidents and the Air force academy incidents. These are not isolated incidents, but a culture of acceptance of behavior. Are you going to tell me that these are just little pockets that got out of control? I don't buy that for a second. There needs to be a large scale corporate culture for this to happen time and time again and go on for so long, just like sexual harrasement in the workplace went on for ever before it was addressed.

I understand your pride in the military and your husband, I too have that pride. But that doesn't mean I am going to hide my head in the sand to the militaries short comings either.

For civilians, I think it is just fine to condemn protesters as anti-American for opposing decisions that promote our values/protect our country, and for anti-war protesters to cry out about being condemned, thats what the 1st Amendment is all about. But our VOLUNTEER military knows full and well that such insubordination (as those soldiers calling on Rummy to step down) is a very punishable, and not easily forgiven offense to the military.

"We are here to preserve democracy, not to practice it." Gene Hackman-Crimson Tide.

When one joins the military they voluntarily give up some rights that civilians have. The military may be serving a Republic, but it is a totalitarian institution. Imagine if soldiers were allowed to quit the military like a civilian can quit his job. I think it would be hard to field an army capable of fighting wars. Likewise those joining the military in some ways forfeit their right to free speech. The Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States are in the chain of command. Openly criticizing anyone in the chain of command is verboten, whether it is a LT. or the Secretary of Defense. It undermines good order and discipline, which is a necessity for any unit in combat.

I totally disagree with this statement. If you had used the objective word SOME, I may have agreed. But MOST of America does not condone violence against any protester.

In every case I have witnessed over the past year, it was the anti-war protesters who were violent. I am sure you can bring me cases of anti-war protesters who have been accosted, but I can almost guarantee I can match every one with a story of violence perpetrated BY anti-war protesters.



How did you have personal first hand knowledge? Where you there while she was assaulted?

One thing surprised me while reading through this thread is that nobody - not even you vets/current military-types - has brought up stop-loss.

While it's true that none of the folks in Iraq were literally drafted, both the Army and the USMC have had stop-loss policies in effect since early last summer. What this means is that many soldiers are NOT being released from active duty, as their contracts state, but have been INVOLUNTARILY retained; many of the soldiers who are in the middle east right now signed contracts that ended months or even a full year ago.

OK, so they should have read the "fine print" in their contracts that states that their service can be involuntarily extended "in the event of war" for up to 6 months after the conflict has ended... but who could conceive of this clause being abused for a potentially endless war on a **concept**?

There are also plenty of soldiers (I can't speak for the USMC, Air Force, of Navy, but would wager they have done the same to varying degrees) who were REactivated after completing their active duty contracts (some several years after leaving the service). Again, this is all in the fine print of the contract, but it sure leaves a margin of grey when you start arguing that they should silently take whatever comes their way in deployments like Afghanistan and Iraq because "they volunteered."

Just my 2 cents (late in the game...)

True, stop-loss is a player, but most everyone can petition out of it today.
I don't know of anyone who was unable to leave if they really wanted to. My opinion remains the same for non voluntary service. I don't place more value on one soldier's life over another, although some here apparently do.

If there is something specifically in the contract signed between and solider and the US military that states they are denied their right to free speech, I agree that these soliders should suffer from dishonorable discharge accordingly.

That being said, if no contract was ever signed, it is within their full rights to say whatever they want (except something that would ultimately reveal a secret of the military ie: "Yeah, we're going to make a raid on Saddam because we found his location ).

To be fair, soliders have been expressing they're freedom of speech since the being of this war, saying that the war was so great etc. So why are they punished when they say bad things about the war when no one objected to them saying good things? Seems like a double standard to me...

Actually, allowing the military to quit may be a good idea, this may stop unjust wars by the US- there were huge lines to sign up in WW2- perhaps a democracy does not deserve to exist if it cannot have armies fielded voluntarily. Really, would we have had the vietnam fiasco if there would have been no draft and the right to quit, say, every six months? Perhaps it is time for an important check and balance like this, this way guys who don't give a damn about how many soldier they throw at thier political ambitions won't have a choice but to make a real case to the reason for mobilizing, and if they simply can't field the army to do it. If a country has lost the moral authority to have a completely and truly voluntary force, perhaps it is time to let it die and something else to take it's place.

Just a kind of "supposing" here, not really advocating this, but it is a good point. Though I stand by my first comment, the guys should be given an AR-15, summary, for flapping thier gums and losing thier military bearing. That involves some screwed up duty and no pass etc, no loss of rank or money and nothing in thier record.

I've never thought of it this way before. It sounds like there is something fundamentally right about what you're saying. Especially if we live in a country that is supposed to be run by the people and for the people...it should be the people's decision to fight and not left completely up to the ruling class. If the threat against us is so great and so real we wouldn't have a problem recruiting soldiers. After all, Al Quaeda and other terrorist groups don't have a problem recruiting people. Nor do freedom fighters in other countries. We shouldn't either and in WW2, like you said, we didn't. It's only in wars hatched for purely political purposes that we run into problems and there should be some kind of way to avoid those anyway.

I haven't thought it all the way through, either. I'm just responding to the basic premise and I think it makes sense.

They haven't been saying bad things about the war, but they have said things like "Mr. Rumsfeld should resign". That's what i used to start this debate

Simplistically, that idea sounds perfect. You are correct that allowing 'voluntary' military to quit whenever they wanted would eliminate 'unjust' wars. However, the definition of 'just war' is speculative. Very few would volunteer to go to any third world country to dodge bullets and be 'peacekeepers'.

There are very few military members who are not called to duty at extremely inopportune times. My husband had to leave (for Kosovo) right after a long deployment and I had just recently had a baby. Many soldiers had to leave their wives right before delivery dates. Some mothers had to leave two month old infants..It’s never easy, and if our military were at the mercy of the marketplace, our force would be hollow to say the least. Everyone would leave during economic booms.

In addition, there would be a tremendous amount of money lost in training these people. The AF spent an unGodly amount on training my husband alone...should he be able to opt out and quit anytime, and go on to much greener, privatized pasteurs? The type of expertise needed for leadership positions and many military fields requires increasing commitment. Increasing experience and responsibility is not only valuable but crucial. We would be lost and extremely vulnerable otherwise.

Edited to add: Of course, none of the above even touches on the inevitability that things will go badly on the warfront. Should soldiers then be able to opt out and go home? Clearly that would never work out, simply on the basis of combat effectiveness.

Err, alright. I orginally thought they said things like "I used to care about these people, but now it doesn't matter to me anymore" (I know I read that somewhere.)

Very well, I change my quote to say "If the soliders are not aloud to say bad things, they shouldn't be aloud to say anything at all."

Well now that the Pentagon has quickly backed off the idea of cutting the pay of American troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, (see first link) what new way will the brass find to screw over the troops?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...aq_usa_pay_dc_2

Well, how about this, sports fans?

WASHINGTON: After several troops made some highly publicized negative comments to the media about the war effort in Iraq, the Pentagon has taken steps to keep the frustrations of both soldiers and their families out of reports.

According to a story in the July 25 edition of Stars and Stripes, the military appears to be curtailing its much-touted embedded-journalist program, which has allowed reporters almost unfettered access to military units throughout the war and occupation.

The 3rd Infantry Division, from where many complaints have arisen, has expelled many of its embedded reporters, and its troops are no longer allowed to talk to the media outside of pre-approved news features.

http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?...D=186846&site=3

How dare those dumb grunts deviate from the official story about our glorious victory in Iraq and how well we're doing in bringing democracy to those liberated from Saddam's tyranny. Don't they know they're subverting morale? OUR morale.

I'm glad to see the pay cuts for hazardous duty are not going to take place. Yep, you can tell an election is coming up by the way the politicians are distancing themselves from the appearance of miserliness toward the troops.

It's also pretty predictable that the embedded journalists are being let go considering the "rebuilding" (read occupation) of Iraq is not the public relations coup it was intended to be.