Army Defends Plan for Involuntary Troop Call-Up

[seemslikeadream]

'BACKDOOR DRAFT'

Rand Beers, national security adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, said:

"The fact is that this involuntary call-up is a direct result of the Bush administration's diplomatic failure to get real international help in Iraq." Kerry has called the stop-loss order a "backdoor draft." The latest move shows that this back door has "swung wide open," Beers said.

California Democratic Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a member of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said the call-up from the Individual Ready Reserve was "a dangerous step that could bring us closer to breaking our military.

America has relied on an all-volunteer military since ending the draft three decades ago.

Retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, a Boston University international relations professor, worried about damage to the concept of a volunteer military and said the latest moves indicate the Army is too small for its current missions.

"These are people who used to be soldiers and no longer are," Bacevich said.

"The informal contract -- the one as understood by soldiers regardless of what they actually signed -- is that I have volunteered for a certain period of time. And once that time is up, then the choice returns to me to decide either to continue my service or to opt out. What the Bush administration is doing is just shredding that informal contract."

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