Just because I felt like stirring up some trouble here in the poly forum, I want to see what your opinions are on the governments use of the stop call policy to keep soliders who have completed their enlistment contract to have to stay and continue fighting in Iraq.
Is it a breach of contract on the government’s part? Does the stop-call law apply in the Iraq situation?
Let’s hear it boys, I would esp like to hear from men who have served, are serving, and lawyers regarding the legal issues.
If they have completely filled their enlistment agreement, then they should be allowed to go home.
However, if they are still in the IRR, and still have time left, then there isn’t a breach.
But I could be wrong.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
If they have completely filled their enlistment agreement, then they should be allowed to go home.
However, if they are still in the IRR, and still have time left, then there isn’t a breach.
But I could be wrong.[/quote]
just so everyone is aware, im speaking more about men who HAVE finished their enlistment agreement, these are the men who the stop-call affects the most.
I don’t think that the contracts are written to guarantee the right to leave at a certain time anymore. Of course, it’s pointless to try to figure out the language of the contracts without having access to the contracts…
But see this item, which I posted on another thread, for general info on “stop gap” measures:
December 06, 2004
HOW SOON THEY FORGET
Big news tonight that a group of soldiers are suing the government because although their terms of enlistment are up, they aren’t being released due to stop loss.
Prepare to hear the phrase “backdoor draft” all over again.
But here’s what amazes me about this: the reason for stop loss may or may not be in part to play a numbers a game; but it’s also to make sure that units about to deploy or already deployed are frozen in place, to make sure that unit cohesion isn’t altered by having people coming and going when service contracts come due, making it necessary to replace those individuals.
The services didn’t randomly wake up one morning and decide that freezing units in place during war time might be a fun thing to try. As I’ve noted repeatedly, something the press always misses, since they pretty much stopped paying attention to the military after Vietnam except for a month here and a month there (and six months during Desert Shield/Storm) is that the military has spent twenty-five years obsessing over what went wrong in Vietnam and how they could make sure it would never go wrong again.
And one thing that made everyone’s list was the one year tour of duty. It meant that every unit was made up of people who were at different stages of their tour, rookies mixed in with veterans, people who didn’t really know what they were doing with people who were risk averse because they were close to going home, people who were tightly bonded mixed in with people who barely knew one another’s names, people close to their half-way point leave, people just back from leave – it was a disaster. And based on that disaster the move was made from deployments for individuals to deployments for entire units. No longer would an individual go to war for a set period of time. Now an individual was assigned to a unit and he or she would deploy with his or her unit for as long as that unit deployed. (Which was still less than World War II, when troops, and units, had deployed for the duration.) But units simply cannot be guaranteed in advance that they will deploy for a specific period of time and have that be honored no matter what during time of war – the needs of the military have to come first.
But the only alternative is to have some people, whose terms of service end before the unit is to come home, leave early, and be replaced by people unknown to the rest of the unit, with far less experience than the rest of the unit. It doesn’t replicate the Vietnam experience, but it comes close enough that the military just isn’t going to play. Not when it doesn’t take but a few people in critical slots to throw everyone off and put a number of people of risk.
And that’s the part of stop loss the press never explains.
I signed up for 6 years in 1985, and at that time I believe they told me that they had the discretion to keep me an additional 2 years if a war were to start up. And they had the right to recall me up for a certain amount of time after my enlistment time was up.
It has been a number of years, so my numbers could be off, and they could have changed them since then also. What these people need to do is read the documents they signed. (Actually one of the reasons they prefer to enlist the young. They will tend to sign anything without reading it.)
leave it to a virginia man to put it like it is… boston barrier, where in VA do you hail from bro?
I live in Arlington, right outside of DC – about 2 miles or so from the Pentagon, right near the 395.
I’m a Herndon man myself, right near 7 and Dulles Airport.
Anyways, I was wondering what you thought about this
I can understand our regularly enlisted guys, but what about our Try One’s?
Hoosier –
Unfortunately, to do a contractual analysis I’d really have to start with the language of the contract. If the contract states the policy - or really even incorporates it by reference - it would seem that the general rules of interpretation would say that’s what it means.
I could foresee two arguments: 1) The contract is drafted in a matter that makes the meaning unclear on its face – ambiguities are generally held against the drafter in these types of non-negotiated contracts; or 2) That the recruiters actively lied to the recruits, which might be enough to void the contractual language.
But the crux of the analysis is: What does the contract say?