Generals are complaining that they do not have enough troops to execute their missions; volunteers are being forced to endure extended tours of duty; and recruitment is so anemic that the military is lowering its (physical and educational) standards for enlistment to fill its ranks – trying to make lean, mean fighting machines of 42-year-old mothers. [Anthony Hall at the Georgetown University Public Policy Review]
This was the foreboding I sounded almost a year ago (on 28 November 2006) about unprecedented desertions from the ranks of the US military. Therefore, I was not at all surprised last week when the Army reported that the number of deserters this year showed an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.
The reason I was being called back was to go to another tour in Iraq, and I didn’t agree with that…. [Sgt. Phil McDowell – a deserter now living in Canada]
Of course, most deserters hide out in America and eventually receive dishonorable discharges. However, a few of them have highlighted this problem by fleeing to Canada and making a cause celebre of their AWOL status.
But, unfortunately for deserters like Sgt McDowell, Canada just rolled up the welcome mat. Because last week its Supreme Court affirmed the 2005 ruling of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board, which held that American deserters do not qualify as refugees in need of protection and, moreover, that they faced no risk of persecution back home.
Therefore, all of those hiding out in Canada now face deportation and possible court-martial when they return, which, frankly, serves them right.
After all, it’s untenable for people who volunteer to serve, invariably for the benefits the military doles out in peacetime, to run away like cowards when called upon to fight – no matter their personal feelings about the legality or morality of this war. And, alas, prosecuting those who make a spectacle of their desertion seems a necessary, even if only marginally effective, deterrent.
Nevertheless, the only hope the US military has of enlisting and retaining enough foot soldiers to fight this unpopular war or, more importantly, to prevent delusional presidents from launching stupid wars in the first place, is to reinstate the Draft!
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