Citizen Soldiers

Recent wars have revealed the inequity in the makeup of America’s fighting forces. For National Guardsmen and women to have to fight to get their jobs back after they return from fighting in Iraq is not only unconscionable but illegal. And it is unfathomable that reservists lose pay while serving in Iraq, causing some to default on their mortgages and loan payments. Forcing soldiers to re-enlist makes the country look like a banana republic. Threatening soldiers to re-enlist or be shipped to Iraq is unconscionable. Punishing the families of soldiers who have returned – not to mention the soldiers – by sending them back to Iraq a second time is incomprehensible. And let’s not forget that a disproportionate number of our forces are made up of African-Americans.

Worse yet is keeping soldiers injured in Iraq in hospitals back in the States that are inaccessible to family and friends. They are the casualties of poor military preparations and planning. Why prolong the pain, suffering and agony? To hear military leaders say that they had not planned for injured returnees is crazy. “No one really thought much about this before,” Col. Barbara J. Scherb, who oversees the wounded soldiers initiative for the Army Forces Command, said. Why not? Why can’t these wounded patriots be in hospitals on bases close to home, where they deserve to be? Why should their families have to travel at their own expense to states across the country? The requirements for medical treatment of injured National Guard and reservists is another unbelievable minefield. For example, someone who leaves active duty and seeks treatment from his own doctor qualifies for medical insurance known as Tricare -- for only six months. Advocates for the National Guard say one in five guardsmen lacks medical insurance from his or her regular job, leaving no room for health problems that may linger. Most Iraq war veterans are not eligible for treatment in the 157 V.A. hospitals and 845 clinics across the country until they are retired from military service or discharged from active duty. Talk about We the Maids having to sweep in major health-care reforms for veterans!
To bar pictures of flag-draped caskets of the heroes who died for their country is a national disgrace.

More U.S. patriots have been killed each month since Saddam Hussein’s arrest than before. Bad months result in more than 100 U.S. fatalities. What is astounding is the U.S. military’s refusal to confirm or deny the figures compiled by adding up the numbers from the press releases put out by the Central Command in Florida. It is outrageous for the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad to claim that the figures are only kept for two-month periods. It is just mind-boggling that the military can’t keep track when URL Iraq Coalition Casualty Count – warcasualties/summary.aspx can easily track all the deaths for 18 months. Is it right for the military to sweep under the rug the number of patriots who died for their country?

Not all patriots are like NFL player Pat Tillman, who turned his back on fortune and football fame to serve and die for his country. Most are poor minorities, many of whom become homeless upon their return to America. Others get arrested upon their arrival and are hauled off in handcuffs, in front of bewildered relatives, for unpaid traffic and parking tickets.

The American all-volunteer army has 1.4 million men and women on active duty, 876,000 guardsmen and women and reservists in units, and 287,000 individual ready reserves serving in 146 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Tens of thousands are not U.S. citizens. The U.S. military is spread thin. About 40 percent of the troops are Southerners, 60 percent are white, 22 percent are black, and a disproportionate number come from empty states like Montana and Wyoming, Time reported in 2003.

The number of blacks in the Army is more than double their representation of the national population. The Navy has the highest percentage of minority recruits. Overall, 37 percent of sailors are minorities. The Air Force has the highest percentage of women in the military, and the smallest percentage of minorities.

While the sacrifices of war have been borne in an inequitable way by African-Americans and the reservists who have to disrupt their lives and careers, We the Apathetic People behave as if nothing has changed. During the Vietnam War, student deferments allowed middle-class Americans to sit out the war. Harry S. Ashmore, the Pulitzer-Prize winning academic, wrote: “The great majority of the grunts who manned the front lines in Vietnam were blacks, Southern rednecks, and urban ethnics. The casualty rate among blacks was more than twice their proportion in the population.” Unfortunately, we are seeing history repeat itself in Iraq.

What is really refreshing for the New World Order is that President Clinton’s “coward’s war” may redefine conflict in the new century. For the three months of the NATO operation in Kosovo, Clinton was a lone voice. His insistence that the conflict be conducted from the air was denounced as the irresponsible reverie of a non-military man.

After NATO troops entered Kosovo, not as a force of invasion but as enforcers of peace, Clinton completely rewrote the rules of war. There would still be skirmishes and casualties in Kosovo – but he had gone a long way toward defining a new type of conflict. Tanks and fighter planes have become as ineffective with today's electronic warfare as the cavalry did when tanks appeared. The bombing of the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorist targets in Afghanistan confirmed this millennium reality. Iraq sealed the pact.

But at what civilian price? The time it takes to receive the necessary clearances required before bombs are released allowed the Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders to get away. Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders who could have been killed in air strikes escaped because of a cumbersome approval process and disagreements within the U.S. Central Command. Any wonder the number of recruits needed by the National Guard cannot be met?