"How do you tell someone he's part of a voluntary military yet he's being involuntarily extended?"

[BurtWorm]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/28/AR2007082801417.html?nav=rss_politics


Evan Knappenberger, left, with Adam Kokesh, said involuntary extension "makes no sense." (By Haraz N. Ghanbari -- Associated Press)

Veteran Questions Ethics of War Policies

By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 29, 2007; B06

Evan Knappenberger is like many young post-Sept. 11 Army enlistees who went from high school into the military for patriotic reasons. He wanted to spread democracy, to topple Saddam Hussein, "to do something to affect the world in a good way," the freckled 22-year-old says.

Today, Knappenberger is a disillusioned Iraq War veteran, four months out of the military and on a one-man mission as a peace activist campaigning against Defense Department policies that he believes unethically support the continuation of the war.

He is not so much protesting as standing guard against the Pentagon's so-called "stop-loss" and "inactive reserve" policies, both designed to maintain troop strength in light of failed recruitment goals. His platform is a makeshift six-foot-tall guard tower that he erected Sunday next to the Washington Monument. There, outfitted in his battle dress uniform, Knappenberger is holding a vigil for seven nights and eight days.

The policies have, in effect, created conscripted service in an ostensibly voluntary military, he said.

"How do you tell a 17-year-old or a 55-year-old grandpa that part of a voluntary military and yet he's being involuntarily extended?" Knappenberger asked as he stood in front of his guard tower, filled with sandbags, covered with burlap netting and decorated with a "Funding the War is Killing the Troops" placard.

"It makes no sense, and it's wrong."

...

[atreides1]

1. The Reality

No one in the military is a volunteer, volunteers can quit at any time, volunteers don't sign contracts, volunteers don't get monetary compensation.

"Volunteer:To give or offer to give voluntarily/To perform or offer to perform a service of one's own free will/To do charitable or helpful work without pay/A person who renders aid, performs a service, or assumes an obligation voluntarily"

All military personnel are contract employees, until they get stop-lossed, then they become indentured servants.


Found this definition as well: voluntary recruit to armed forces: somebody who has freely offered to serve in the armed services.

[treestar]

2. Voluntary in this context only means not the draft

They voluntarily sign, but what they sign still applies.

The guys in this article are like the male version of Miss South Carolina. Poor guys, they are old enough to "defend" the U.S., but haven't gotten enough education to realize that signing a contract means you are bound by its terms. And they are not educated enough to reason beyond what they were told. They were told they were defending the U.S. and they believe it without question.