EDITORIAL – “Stop loss” overextending troops

You might have seen one of those Army commercials, the ones where an eager young adult looks… You might have seen one of those Army commercials, the ones where an eager young adult looks into the camera as if he was looking into the eyes of his father. He tells the camera how he’s excited about his future and how the Army will give him the opportunities and training he needs to be a productive member of society. The Army will give soldiers money to go to college after their service has ended.

Sounds like a great deal, right? Serve your country for a couple of years, gain some experience, then go to college for free and start your life with a clean slate and a wealth of knowledge. Many people who watched these commercials and joined the armed forces under the assumption that this was how life was going to be have found that it’s not that easy to get out of the military.

And that’s because of what some people are calling a “backdoor draft.” It’s a trend in the military over the past few years, affecting thousands of people in the armed forces. These men and women are being kept on the job and in the middle of war zones well past their retirement or enlistment length, according to an Associated Press article.

It’s easy to see how many people loathe this practice, as it leads to moral and psychological problems among troops. Jules Lobel, the vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a lawyer who has represented enlistees challenging forced extensions, says that servicemen feel like recruitment fails to accurately portray length of service.

“It has, in some cases, made soldiers feel that they were duped or deceived in how they were recruited,” Lobel said in the AP article.

The AP reported that the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are exploring ways to decrease the practice, also known as “stop loss.” Forced extensions have been used sporadically within the armed forces for years prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Since then, all branches have adopted stop loss to some extent.

The Army Times newspaper reported that 10,000 soldiers were being held past their enlistment lengths in September. That number is down from a 2003 figure which estimated that 25,000 soldiers were being held past their enlistment expirations.

Forced extensions are a bad investment in the future of the armed forces. They only cause recruitment problems, as people on the fence about joining up decide that they don’t want to share the fates of people who are already on their third tour of duty in a war that’s not even four years old. Stop loss is only a way of dodging the larger issue, which puts an incredible strain on our military.

Keeping soldiers past their retirement or enlistment is an ineffectual way of avoiding present problems like decreasing morale and increasing mental and physical strain, while it simultaneously discourages reenlistment. It’s also borrowing against the future of our armed forces, and that’s not a risk we can afford to take.