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Given where it’s posted (it’s an anonymous entry in a blog, etc.) there’s no way to check the veracity of this entry, but it does sound plausible given we don’t have a draft. Recruiters are reduced to things like this and this to get people. Your Uncle Dave is only a couple years older than this guy and trust me, if the military were really desperate and I was sent to Iraq, we might as well surrender if I don’t get aspirin (minimum) for my aches and pains, air conditioned everywhere, my daily bottles of Diet Pepsi and damn comfortable shoes for starters. And you terrorist kids get off my lawn!
my 50 year-old uncle just got drafted
My uncle served with distinction in the first gulf war receiving numerous commendations including the bronze star. He was put out at the end of the war before he qualified for full retirement benefits. He has been receiving a yearly stipend from the army since he got out. This apparently keeps him in the ready reserve.Two days before x-mas he got a letter telling him to report for active duty in mid Jan
They must be desperate to draft A 50 year old grandfather back to be a sergeant.
They are calling up the men at the bottom of the list. There is nowhere else to get more men other than bringing back the draft.
My family is totally dumbfounded, he was about to start building his retirement home on a new piece of property they had just bought. His third child has gotten married and moved out. He runs two businesses and has for years.
Now what?
Even at the time, some of the stunts we pulled when counseling draft resisters during the VietNam War made me laugh.
You just reminded me of one guy we sent to the draft board to agree with everything. Came on as Mr. Cannon Fodder, good physical shape, obedient.
Just one thing. He said he couldn’t go unless they gave him his own room. 🙂
Didn’t go. He won.
They are recruiting gang members for goodness sake.
This will be great when they come back home with kevlar they were able to smuggle off, C4 and military tactics.
As always the end justifys the means.
Cursor_
The maximum age for enlisted is now 62, up from 55. If you take the money for inactive reserves and get called, who do you blame? This guy will probably stay state side in support or training. Actual front line combat is a young persons game, but each requires a lot of rear echelon support. The Pentagons long term planning didn’t anticipate a long term hostile occupation.
One would think that the pool of qualified people with a death wish would have been used up by now.
Similar thing happened to my brother, he was stop loss drafted a year after he was supposed to be out of the ready reserves. His time out of the army was spent in law school which he graduated and was hired by a prestigious firm which relocated him to Great Britain. Then he gets sent a letter…
He couldn’t find a legal way out, and not going would have cost him his law license. He was there 6 months and spent it in state side support doing a job he completely forgot how to do, before a failure to renew the stop loss another year got him out.
I was called up in 2001, as my prior service job was lacking in bodies. They were fine with a 35 yr. old, until they found out that my prior service had left me deaf and with a broken spine. They weren’t willing to risk it then, but I wonder if I would pass muster now…?
#6. Yes you would.
You takes their money you takes your chances.
I was lucky the Catholic church tried to indoctrinate me first. After being inoculated against that nonsense “patriotism” didn’t stand a chance. Being a freethinker means you need to be a free thinker.
What part of “Ready Reserve” do you not understand? I bet a 50 year old can do lots of things.
RBG
Picture posted is from a BBC TV series Dad’s Army; a hilarious comedy series about the British Home Guard during WW II. I highly recommend it to Mr. I Get No Spam’s audience.
I agree. You take their money, you ask how high when they say jump.
Just before Christmas, I sent my Congressman a letter expressing my disappointment we were still in Iraq. I hope everyone else would do the same thing. When Congress finally understands the people back home want the troops back in the US, maybe they will quite farting and bring them home.
#11–Thats a good one. Yea. Right after they pass a sustainable energy policy.
If that happened to me, I’d probably use the Ted Nugent draft dodging approach. Google it.
It must be true becuase we hate the military.
#14 – No Mike, we don’t “hate the military.”
We just hate the hypocritical right wing nutjobs who murder our children in the name of oil and corporate expansion into the third world.
#14, Mental Midget MikeN
It must be true becuase [sic] we hate the military.
Spoken like a true Right Wing Nut Neo-con Conservative Evangelical Republican Radiohead Shut-in. You hate our men and women in uniform enough to send them off to die in order to support your masters getting richer. The same masters who hid when the country needed their services.
Hey MikeN===serious question.
If you support the troops, do you send them to war and keep them in war without any thought of an exit strategy, or do you avoid the foregoing as much as possible?
Which is it?
Oh, you keep them out of war if it’s unnecessary.
You also don’t say things like we support the troops when we shoot their officers, if you’re intellectually lazy, you get stuck in Iraq, accuse them of all sorts of war crimes like Haditha, etc.
Why the supposedly pro-war New Republic just got bamboozled in believing an army private’s fantastic lies about bad behavior by troops in Iraq(himself included).
#18–thanks, fair answer at the start. But you are equating the criticism of forced callup of 50yo grandfathers as being the same as shooting their officers? ((whatever THAT refers to?))
And Elsewhere, you think the economically advantaged are in Iraq to the same percentage as the underpriviledged or that it is not supporting the troops to state the plain fact of the matter? Or that there were NO war crimes at all?
And there you go, denying the lack of perfection is simply not an honest activity. I hope you agree. Now, stop that knee from jerking around so much and correct those liberals from there unpatriotic attacks—when they actually do it.
If you take the money for inactive reserves and get called…
Inactive reservists do not get paid while inactive. When you finish your active duty commitment, you become part of the inactive reserves…like it or not.
I guess it depends on what economically advantaged means. I have no evidence, but I assume the rich are less represented in the military. However, the military does tend to be a little bit wealthier, and are above average in intelligence.
As far as the illegal alien recruiting bit, an applicant needs a green card to enlist. Immigration isnt cutting any slack for applicants either. A fake I-551 card would get caught during the ETNAC (basic security clearance check) that all service members receive.
All service members have what is called a Military Service Obligation (MSO) that is 8 years from the time they enroll in the service regardless how long they enlist for. This applies to officers as well as enlisted. So a typical scenario is a 4 year enlistment and then 4 years in the Inactive Ready Reserve (IRR).
Enlisted service members who finish their MSO but who are not eligible for retirement from the service may be offered money to place them into the IRR for an extended set amount of time. Some voluntarily place themselves in the IRR with no incentives. All retirees are placed in the IRR. All officers, regardless of current disposition, are placed in the IRR for life. An officer would have to resign their commission to be pulled from the IRR. A retired officer who asked to resign their commission would also lose their retirement benefits.
The most notable public example is retired Gen Schoomaker who was called back to active duty to be the Army Chief of Staff a few years after his retirement.
Scary. That could have been me, I’m 50 (just). But I never signed up. A good thing.
I’ve got three in the Army now. One finally got back home to Germany after 15 months in Iraq (nothing like having less than one month left and finding out you’re staying an extra 3 months), and the other two (married couple) are currently in or around Balad, and if they are lucky, they’ll only have a 12 month deployment instead of the 15 month that they were told up front about.
I’ve written letters to the Senators, to my Representative, and to the Asshole in Chief. I did get some platitudes from the senators. I didn’t even get a post card from Shrub about it (I got one from Clinton years ago…) I’ve even called them. Doesn’t seem to matter.
I’m a 50 year old retired helicopter pilot. I’m in great shape and could easily perform the same duties that I did 10 and 20 years ago. I’d be happy to go back, if recalled.
#24:
I’m with you. I’m civvy now too but I’d be happy to return to active duty, civilians are a bunch of whiners and I miss the military sometimes. As long as I could score Cobras or UH-1’s I’d be happy, I have no interest in the new-fangled birds.
sure, draft us young people – if you want an uprising. Think the “terrorist threat” is bad now? In the words of the wonderful fictional hero Tyler Durdon, “Do not fuck with us”
The military might want to take that to heart
BTW, I’m kinda surprised that Dvorak would post such an article. Jeez, he’s gotta be pushing 60, does he really think that 50 is too old to serve? Frankly, I think that it’s idiotic to retire pilots at such a young age. Airline guys fly well into their 60’s.