Great Idea

All volunteer my eye - you volunteer to get in but you have to ask permission to get out or to retire, and now this.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon has abandoned its limit on the time a citizen-soldier can be required to serve on active duty, officials said Thursday, a major change that reflects an Army stretched thin by longer-than-expected combat in Iraq.

[...]

In other words, a citizen-soldier could be mobilized for a 24-month stretch in Iraq or Afghanistan, then demobilized and allowed to return to civilian life, only to be mobilized a second time for as much as an additional 24 months. In practice, Pace said, the Pentagon intends to limit all future mobilizations to 12 months.

Citizen-soldiers are supposed to be citizens most of the time, not just toys for delusional presidents to take out and play with every time they have a "great" idea to save their own legacies. If I were an employer, particularly in a small company I would have a hard time hiring one of these guys under such circumstances. It is too much of a risk.

That has to hurt the quality that the Guard and Reserve can recruit from. Citizen-soldiers have to earn a living in relation to their capabilities. Joining up just might endanger that.

Of course recruiting for active and reserve has taken on an entirely new set of problems....

The day after President Bush announced his plan for a deeper U.S. military commitment in Iraq, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the change in reserve policy would have been made anyway because active-duty troops already were getting too little time between their combat tours.

The Pentagon also announced it is proposing to Congress that the size of the Army be increased by 65,000, to 547,000 and that the Marine Corps, the smallest of the services, grow by 27,000, to 202,000, over the next five years. No cost estimate was provided, but officials said it would be at least several billion dollars.

I suppose now the military will have to accept folks with felonies, mental defects, physical ailments, 50 year old grandmas, 16 year old girls and illegal Mexicans. I see no other way that this increase can be pulled off otherwise - nobody else is showing much interest.