The government has a reponsibility to its shareholders. To give things away for free makes a mockery of capitalism.
God, that is fucking awful. This seems like the kind of thing that if enough people make a racket about it, maybe the gov't will actually do something, though, no? It's just absurd.
If this had happened under the Clinton administration, Republicans would still be screaming about it.
That's why I think maybe some smart Democratic senator will pick this up and try to do something about it. No politician with a brain would come out against fixing this travesty.
This seems like the kind of thing that if enough people make a racket about it, maybe the gov't will actually do something, though, no?
Hopefully. The Congressional delegation looks like it'll be pressing the issue:
six of Minnesota's members of the House of Representatives have asked the Secretary of the Army to look into it -- So have Senators Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman.
Jesus, that's shitty. It's a weird structure for the benefits, though -- you go in knowing that maybe you'll qualify depending on the decisions the Guard makes about deploying you, maybe not, but you don't know upfront or have any control over it.
Deliberately deploy Nat. Guard units because you won't pay for enough regulars and then deliberately cut their orders such that they serve longer than any regular unit would have in WWII (or Korea, or Vietnam) but not long enough that the benefits go on the balance sheet, so they can have enough money to pay contractors.
I'm guessing they studied Soviet methods for more than just torture.
max
['Vile.']
Every town in this area has individualized "welcome back" signs up for these guys -- three from home town. My next door neighbor's son was in the unit but had the option of not going, and he didn't.
From time to time you will hear libertarians and free marketers saying, "They should have thought about that when they signed the contract". That's a terrible flaw in the volunteer army concept -- the attempt to treat military service as a paid job. There's no job even remotely comparable to battle-zone military service, notably because it's a job you can't quit.
Many empires used foreigners as mercenaries, in part because as non-citizens they were completely expendable. (And partly because they had no local loyalties and could be used against citizens.)
Soviet methods
Soviet? 2 gets it right. This is straight out of the Corporate playbook.
I don't know why anyone would let their child join the military these days
Happy people from intact families are rare in combat units in peacetime, which from the recruiting standpoint this has been, i.e. no draft. I think that's been true since antiquity. So the parents rarely have anything to say about it, or are just hoping something straightens the kid out.
In late 2003, there was a truck bombing in Iraq that killed 19 Italians.
The bodies were brought home to a state funeral in Rome. The government declared a memorial day and the funeral was televised. Thousands were unable to unable to fit inside the church where the caskets lay and watched on large screens outside. Italians had a procession through the church that lasted the rest of the day and into the night 'til daybreak.
How another country shows its appreciation for the troops. 19 people!
From time to time you will hear libertarians and free marketers saying, "They should have thought about that when they signed the contract". That's a terrible flaw in the volunteer army concept -- the attempt to treat military service as a paid job. There's no job even remotely comparable to battle-zone military service, notably because it's a job you can't quit.
This. I've gotten stuck on that argument, before -- it's a job like any other, and less dangerous than some (I'm guessing here, but probably). But the fact that you can't say "Screw this" and go home is a huge difference.
I don't know why anyone would let their child join the military these days
Sadly, because the military offers to pay for college. You know, so their kid can have a better life.
Man. Of all the people the government shouldn't be nickel-and-dimeing. Bleah.
12: Are you saying people who come from military families are unhappy?
Lots of kids sign up because their father, uncle & grandfather did. People like this often make good soldiers, too, because they still have a sense of honor, rather than simply being thugs. The guy who tried to stop the Mai Lai massacre was from a military family
Some people think that's outrageous, but the troop-supporting conservative blogosphere has been highly distracted over another outrage. A much more serious one, from all appearances.
Soviet? 2 gets it right. This is straight out of the Corporate playbook.
Post-Cold War, this seems like a distinction with increasingly little difference.
13- I should make clear that this is response to a warmonger administration who sends troops to be killed by the thousands while proclaiming that any opposition to the war is unpatriotic. Meanwhile, those that come back, either dead, wounded or healthy, are all treated like garbage by that same administration.
Although, on the other side, or at least something I don't understand exactly. These educational benefits kick in at 730 days deployment, and this unit's deployment of 729 days was the longest of this war, which would make it definitely unexpectedly long.
Did anyone in the Guard get these benefits at all? Did anyone reasonably expect to? It just seems weird having a benefit that only kicks in at unachievable levels of service.
I was thinking that they got these people to come back for another tour of duty by promising that it would get them the GI benefits that they otherwise wouldn't get, and now they find that they have not actually gotten anything except shot at.
21- The benefits are designed for the enlisted, not the national guard.
A recent Iraq veteran from a different unit committed suicide-by-cop a few miles from here not too long ago. His family reported that he had been problem-free before his service, but were also adamant that his Iraq War should not be blamed for the changes they saw.
My conjecture is that they were very supportive of him to the extent that he confirmed their view of the war, but that when they found that his understanding of the war was far different than theirs, they couldn't respond. I.E., their own support even of their own son was conditional on his support of the mission. They really believed that you couldn't support the troops without supporting the war, to the extent that when forced they would not choose.
That's higly conjectural, but we're seeing a lot of abuse of veterans who do not support the war. The families of soldiers construct these elaborate imaginary narratives about how heroic their child is and how wonderful the mission is, and they don't know what to do if the child doesn't want to play.
"Would not choose, and perhaps even supported the war rather than their own son".
The Guard is being used much like the regular army these days. That's the disgusting thing about the way Bush once tried to equate his Guard service to the service of contemporary Guardsmen. Back in the day the Guard really were a reserve force.
11, 19:
The Soviet Union really makes much more sense once you start thinking of the whole country as a giant corporation. It allocated resources and personnel by administrative fiat rather than by price mechanisms, its industrial strategy sought to maximize national output as a whole rather than the nonexistent profitability of any individual factory, et cetera. It was the USSR, Inc.
The modern "capitalist" firm, for its part, is a shining example of centralized economic planning--it's just that most firms don't operate at the scale of a national economy. Unfortunately, money (by virtue of its status as a medium of universal exchange) naturally becomes political power. Firms would be foolish not to invest in political power, since their long-run economic profits would be zero unless they sought political power to create economic rent.
As this process reaches advanced stages--stages that it appears to be reaching in this country--the distinction between the corporate economy and the national economy becomes increasingly irrelevant. The result is something not entirely unlike Pollock's conception of state capitalism--or like the Soviet Union.
The families of soldiers construct these elaborate imaginary narratives about how heroic their child is and how wonderful the mission is, and they don't know what to do if the child doesn't want to play.
You cannot make this generalization about the families. I think this rings closer to government tales imprinted on the public. The primary thing on the mind of the son or daughter is come out of it alive and to make sure their friends also come out of it alive. The primary thing on the mind of the family is pleasegodletmychildcomeoutofthisalive.
25. 29: I think the real deal is that you can't generalize about what 'the families' generally are feeling either way; like every other large group of people, I'm sure they're all over the map.
I should have said "some families". But in fact, returning combat veterans often or usually have trouble communicating with their families, and I was speculating that in some cases (and one particular case) it is because the returning veteran does not confirm the parents' narrative, and that in effect, "supporting the troops by supporting the war" has become simply "support the war, no matter what."
"Support the troops by supporting the war" has always been a horrible fraud.
Not a single political order has integrated honour into it's everyday functioning and policy. Why do we continue to expect that this particular empire has (or should have) any distinguishing quality?
Honour is now, (and most likely has been for a long time) simply a shiny, uber-attractive concept to lure subjects into war - not to get them out, and surely, not after they have already carried out the commandante's bidding.
Why are we so surprized? It has happened before (many black and Native men who fought in, and were maimed by WWII returned home to find that their promises of pensions and even payment were never to be fulfilled.) It is happening now, and I suspect that it will happen again.
FWIW, I'd guess that 21's right, that the benefit is intended for active-duty folks and the orders for 729 days were cut by some mid-level person who was smart enough to know that Guard troops weren't supposed to get that benefit and that orders needed to be for less than 730 days to avoid committing a lot of government money, but not smart enough to figure out that screwing Guard troops was more likely to come back to bite him/her on the ass than committing the money. If that's what's going on, I'd give pretty good odds that they'll get the benefits in the end.
Hey, at least if you join the military you know your kids will get health care. And if you die, survivor's benefits.
I can seriously see where a parent who couldn't find a job with health insurance might join up. Especially if their kid had any kind of illness or disability.
People that sign up for the military and don't know that they're asking to get fucked over life-, liberty-, and property-wise aren't paying attention. Alas, some people only learn by doing.
We had to talk our Mexican-American nephew-in-law out of volunteering to go to Iraq. Lots of money and only a moderate risk of death. His specialty was defusing bombs.
My nephew ended up not joining the Marines because he was sent to jail instead. His mom and grandma are all upset about it, but you know, of the two options, jail was probably the better one.
The result is something not entirely unlike Pollock's conception of state capitalism--or like the Soviet Union.
With the added bonus that the Soviets considered the lives of their soldiers less valuable than the equipment said soldiers were given.
The US hasn't gone quite that far (force protection in this instance tho is a military necessity and a political necessity), but they're workin' on it!
max
['After all, Max Boot wants to entice lots of furrners to enlist using citizenship as bait, which isn't very far from foreign levies and considering your soldiers totally expendable.']