Rohan Pearce
On January 6, the US Army's news service reported that the defence department intended to extend its "stop loss" orders covering active-duty soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, preventing some 7000 soldiers from either retiring or being discharged, in order to maintain "unit cohesion".
The December 29 Washington Post reported that on these soldiers' "paychecks, the expiration date of their military service is now listed sometime after 2030 — the payroll computer's way of saying, 'Who knows?'." The report added: "Through a series of stop-loss orders, the Army alone has blocked the possible retirements and departures of more than 40,000 soldiers, about 16,000 of them National Guard and reserve members who were eligible to leave the service this year. Hundreds more in the Air Force, Navy and Marines were briefly blocked from retiring or departing the military at some point this year."
The military brass' stop-loss orders signal the beginning of the end of the "volunteer" US army and the re-introduction of conscription, abandoned in 1973. The orders are a de facto admission by the Pentagon that its "volunteer" army has two few combat soldiers to crush armed resistance to its occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
An August survey of US soldiers stationed in Iraq by the Pentagon's own Stars and Stripes news paper revealed widespread demoralisation, with 49% of those surveyed saying they did not plan to re-enlist. Washington's war hawks simply cannot afford the decrease in troop levels that naturally comes through retirement and departures, both of which are even more attractive in wartime than in peace.
A November 3 article on the Salon.com web site quoted the Cato Institute's Charles Pena, who drew a parallel between the Iraq occupation and British occupation of northern Ireland and noted: "[In northern Ireland] the British needed a ratio of 10 soldiers per 1000 population to restore order, and at their height, it was 20 soldiers per 1000 population. If you transfer that to Iraq, it would mean you'd need at least 240,000 troops and maybe as many as 480,000." The US currently has 130,000 soldiers stationed in Iraq.
The respected Jane's Foreign Report observed in August: "Twenty-one of the US Army's 33 regular combat brigades are already on active duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and the Balkans, amounting to roughly 250,000 fighting men and women. And this does not include a substantial number of US troops regularly stationed in Germany, Britain, Italy and Japan, or smaller contingents now scattered around the world."
An army generally needs at least two-thirds of its forces in reserve to conduct effective troops rotations — an equation that is impossible for the Pentagon to balance without the extension of soldiers' tours of duty, unless Washington's international allies supply more troops or the recruitment of new soldiers accelerates to replace casualties and retirements.
Voluntary recruitment of troops remains problematic for Washington. Up to now the Pentagon has been able to rely on "economic conscription" — recruiting from the poorer sections of the US population, particularly Hispanics and African Americans — to maintain the size of its army. Other inducements have included advertisements promising money for college education.
However, with simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US military now needs more soldiers than "economic conscription" is able to deliver.
In a July 2002 executive order, US President George Bush made it easier for non-citizens who serve in the US military to become citizens. According to a November 28 report in the British Independent daily, 5% of active duty members of the US armed forces are non-citizens.
US military recruiters have even crossed over into Mexico to search for potential recruits. So desperate has the Pentagon become to ensure it has adequate cannon fodder to implement the imperial plans of the "war on terror" that, according to the December 23 edition of the New York weekly Village Voice: "As Bush was ramping up the Iraq war last winter, Canadian military officials were startled to discover Pentagon recruiters roaming through their nation's native population reserves trying to persuade Inuit and others to enlist in the US military."
This brewing crisis of "imperial overstretch" has led to serious consideration of re-introduction of compulsory military service, with a notice posted on a US defence department web site on September 23 calling for volunteers to serve on draft boards: "Local board members are uncompensated volunteers who play an important community role closely connected with our nation's defense. If a military draft becomes necessary, approximately 2000 local and appeal boards throughout America would decide which young men, who submit a claim, receive deferments, postponements or exemptions from military service, based on federal guidelines."
The announcement marked the first attempt since 1981 by the Pentagon to revitalise the draft boards.
Although the US rulers are no doubt wary of the possible political backlash the reintroduction of the draft would generate, this hasn't prevented the idea gaining momentum. In July, bills were introduced by Democrats, one in the Senate and one in the House of Representatives, which aimed to introduce compulsory military service "either as a member of an active or reserve component of the armed forces or in a civilian capacity that promotes national defense" (as one of the bills put it).
From Green Left Weekly, January 14, 2004.
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