Consider:
You apply for a job. You're accepted, and you sign a two-year contract. You go to work. A year into your two-year contract you're sent on a 12-month foreign assignment. It's a high-stress assignment, but it pays well, it'll be over in a year, and you have thoughts of starting a different career when you get back.
As the assignment — and your employment contract — nears its end, you look forward to getting home to your family, anticipate starting your own auto-repair business after having spent the last two years fixing trucks for your employer. But then your employer says no, you can't go. We're unilaterally extending your contract. And there's nothing you can do about it; if you don't comply you go to jail, and you don't even get proper legal representation if you want to fight it.
You think that would fly if the employer were, say, Ford? Not a chance.
But if your employer is the United States Army, expect it. It goes by the innocuous name of “stop loss”, and it's been solidly in place for the last five years or so.
Technically, it's in their contracts: soldiers agree, when they enlist, to stay, in the event of war, for up to six months beyond the end of the war. Let me say that again: not six months beyond the normal end of the contract, but six months beyond the end of the war.
Think about it: beyond the end of a war with no end. King George has declared us in a “war against terror” that has no clear enemy, no defined beginning, and certainly no definition of an end. Even if we only consider the conflict in Iraq, the US Army's Commander in Chief refuses to announce or accept any timeline for ending it, and, therefore, provides no assurance that soldiers can ever expect to leave their jobs and get on with their lives.
Our soldiers deserve to know when they can leave, whether or not they're replaced when they do. They should not be under indefinite conscription. Joseph Heller wrote Catch 22 as satire and fiction, but with a nod to reality. George Bush has made it reality.
Catch 22 has a character called General Scheisskopf.
I'm not saying anything with that, I'm just saying....
4 comments:
Being a loyal subject of HM QE2, I have to take issue with your continued use of the phrase 'King George' as a derogatory term - you are being very unkind to real kings. I believe 'Despot George' or 'Dictator George' would be much more descriptive of what he really is, though I must say they don't have anywhere near the same ring to them. Of course, there are many more colourful phrases I would prefer to use, but this is, after all, a public forum.
Perhaps we should have a contest to choose a new name for him.
Why has there never been a King John II, or King Henry IX??
Some kings are vicious, entitled, self-serving despots.
Perhaps "Koenig Scheisskopf."
You could clear up alot of your misconceptions about stop-loss and military enlsitment if you just read the enlsitment contract.
Yes, you're probably right. Is there an authoritative version posted on the web? If you post a link I'll read it, and thanks.
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