Should Soldiers Be Considered Heros?

[Smart]

The US military isn't made up of mercenaries.

It isn't? What is "join the military and will pay for your education" then?

 

[SmokeAndMirrors]

I'd have to disagree. I think the act of enlisting itself is a heroic act. When you sign that paper you do become property of the American people (or the UK in your case!).

You're pledging to fight the battles on behalf of your nation at the whims of the people. That's a pretty heroic stance. It's remarkably different than someone in a tri-corner hat with tea bags hanging off it claiming to be a patriot and bitching about their taxes. I don't see anything that is more patriotic rather than giving your life int he name of your country.

Problem is not everyone signs up for those reasons! Some people sign up to help pay for university, some people need a change and think the army will be for them and some people are just out of options. They go through basic training and suddenley they are in a warzone crying to an Officer " I didnt sign up for this" and do everything they can to get out of their contract.

Or they literally didn't sign up for it. My sister signed up for the Guard, before they started sending people over to the ME. She never signed up for that.

We are the biggest, baddest apes in the monkey house. There will always be war. The same for peace. If it weren't for war, you'd probably be wearing black boots and speaking a different language.

I don't think I ever argued there should never be war. I argued that most wars are unjust and stupid - which they are.

I don't really give a crap what language I'm speaking as long as I'm living in a reasonably sane and decent place. If you're referencing WWII, that would be a somewhat isolated case of a justified war in my opinion.

 

[Goshin]

With the United States not having been invaded since 1812, and millions of civilians having been killed in Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq. We also spend about 750 billion on defense against middle easterners with ak-47s. I am tired of people yelling out ignorantly how we should support our troops. When they fight these useless wars(Vietnam, Iraq, Korea, Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada). All for political gain and also another factor is the military industrial complex. All the companies that build the tanks, body armour, fighter jets, rifles ect... Do you think we should glorify war and our soldiers as hero's?

Something like this seems to come up every six months or so here on DP.

I think we throw the word "hero" around much too casually these days.

A Medal of Honor recipient is almost certainly a hero. Someone who has been awarded the Silver Star is probably a hero. A fireman who risks his life to pull a child from a burning building is a hero. A man who takes on a pair of armed criminals to save a third party from being victimized, when he could have simply stood aside, is probably a hero.

Not all soldiers are heroes. Not all soldiers have done anything remotely heroic. Some did their term shuffling papers or repairing humvees on a base that is safer than Fayetteville. Some never saw combat and never heard incoming fire. Not to say that vehicle repair and clerk are not useful and necessary jobs, but not normally associated with "heroic".

However, I consider all (or almost all) soldiers worthy of respect for choosing to serve their country in a manner that might put them at risk of life and limb, and will almost certainly cause them to endure varying degrees of inconvenience, discomfort, hardship, personal sacrifice, stress, discipline, hard work and etc, in return for a tiny pay scale and benefits that are often iffy.

No soldier should ever be blamed (or have it taken out on him) for fighting in a war that you consider a "bad war". Soldiers don't choose wars, politicians do. Soldiers take an oath to obey the Commander in Chief (regardless of who it is, they follow the OFFICE not the MAN) and to obey the lawful orders of their superiors. They go where they are told to go and fight who they are told to fight and very little choice enters into it until you're a General, and even a General is under the direction of the civil authorities. If you don't like a war, take it out on the Politicians, not the Soldiers.

Every honorable soldier who comes home from war should be welcomed by cheers and open arms and unqualified approval. Even if the war itself sucked, the soldier simply did his duty as he is sworn to and should be respected for that. Don't diss the young man who fights in your stead. He fights the enemy in their backyard so YOU don't have to fight the enemy in your own.

 

[Goshin]

Or they literally didn't sign up for it. My sister signed up for the Guard, before they started sending people over to the ME. She never signed up for that.

Anyone who signs up for the military should realize that they may be called on to go fight... that is the #1 job of the military and why they exist. Anyone who finds it a shock when they are told "you will go to X country and fight Y enemy" didn't think it through when they signed up.... and I'm being very very polite and kind in putting it that way.

I don't have much sympathy for someone who signs up to be a ditch digger and then acts shocked and dismayed when they're told to dig a ditch.

If you don't want to fight, do not join. This is so elementary even an elementary school child could comprehend it. No offense intended to present company....

I don't think I ever argued there should never be war. I argued that most wars are unjust and stupid - which they are.

I don't really give a crap what language I'm speaking as long as I'm living in a reasonably sane and decent place. If you're referencing WWII, that would be a somewhat isolated case of a justified war in my opinion.

It was a roundabout way of saying that you probably wouldn't want to live under the Nazi's, or Stalinist USSR, and that without fighting or resisting such forces they would have taken over.

 

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Anyone who signs up for the military should realize that they may be called on to go fight... that is the #1 job of the military and why they exist. Anyone who finds it a shock when they are told "you will go to X country and fight Y enemy" didn't think it through when they signed up.... and I'm being very very polite and kind in putting it that way.

I don't have much sympathy for someone who signs up to be a ditch digger and then acts shocked and dismayed when they're told to dig a ditch.

If you don't want to fight, do not join. This is so elementary even an elementary school child could comprehend it. No offense intended to present company....

I don't really think it's quite that simple. As the posts I quoted illustrate, a lot of people join essentially because of the carrot recruiters wave in the face of people who are impoverished and stuck. And they go out of their way to hide that fact that the Guard can be sent abroad. These are the kinds of people who might not even have internet access or a library within 50 miles of them, and they graduated from a high school with a 70% par literacy rate, if that.

A whole lot of people join the military with no idea, or totally false ideas, of what they signed up for, because those things were intentionally kept out of easy access.

It was a roundabout way of saying that you probably wouldn't want to live under the Nazi's, or Stalinist USSR, and that without fighting or resisting such forces they would have taken over.

Yes, it is. I'm not sure what point you're making here, though.

 

[Goshin]

I don't really think it's quite that simple. As the posts I quoted illustrate, a lot of people join essentially because of the carrot recruiters wave in the face of people who are impoverished and stuck. And they go out of their way to hide that fact that the Guard can be sent abroad. These are the kinds of people who might not even have internet access or a library within 50 miles of them, and they graduated from a high school with a 70% par literacy rate, if that.

A whole lot of people join the military with no idea, or totally false ideas, of what they signed up for, because those things were intentionally kept out of easy access.
.

Recruiters are salesmen. Their job is to get you to sign on the dotted line; that is how their job success is measured. Like most salesmen, they "accentuate the positive" and de-emphasize (or ignore) the negative. Some of them flat out lie too. This is well known.

The thing is, if someone complains that the details of their college benefits aren't exactly like their recruiter claimed, I can understand their dismay at being mislead in this manner.

However, if someone proclaims that, in joining the MILITARY, it didn't occur to them that they might be called on to go somewhere and fight.... oh, man... I am searching for the proper phrase to convey my utter disbelief that anyone could be that ....errrrum..... unthoughtful in real life and still be able to tie their own shoes.... and I'm having trouble coming up with a polite way of saying it.

It is stupid. Just plain ignorant. It is the MILITARY. Their job is to kill people and break things. Hicks from the Ozarks know that. Children in 1st grade know that. My dog knows it. :mrgreen:

If I sign a contract with Ultimate Fighter Productions and act dismayed when asked to climb into the Octagon and fight someone, how disingenous is that? Very.

If a young man and a young woman date, get married, go on their honeymoon, get nekkid, climb into bed, start making out, and just as the moaning and panting get loud she suddenly exclaims "Oh wait, I didn't know we were going to ****!?!?!" most people would find this a smidge hard to believe, yes? :mrgreen:

It is just about that ridiculous.

I could show a class of kindergardeners a picture of a soldier in full battle-rattle, thus:




... and ask "what do you think this man's job is?"... and I'm pretty sure they'd be able to tell me and it wouldn't be "collecting money for college".

I know I'm being a smartass and I really don't mean to offend, but to me it is just THAT obvious and I find it hard to sympathize with anyone who doesn't realize a soldier may be called on to fight.

 

[Medusa]

as long as they can defend their countries ,they are heroes

 

[SmokeAndMirrors]

People realize that there are different branches of the military that do different things too. But they don't necessarily know how flexible that structure can be.

Here's what they told my sister: The Guard is not deployed abroad. You won't be going anywhere. We just want your weekends. Put your name here and we'll pay for your college.

Too bad she was too jacked up to go when she was discharged.

It's not unreasonable for someone to believe that. Ignorant, yes, but not unreasonable. Having a strictly and exclusively intranational guard makes logical sense, if you don't think about it too hard. And it's not like a lot of these people have any other source of information to go to. In her case, there weren't more than 20 people in a 10 mile radius of her so it's not like she had a ton of people to ask. Why wouldn't they believe the recruiter? Why would they think the recruiter would lie to them?

They look for people like her. Poor, unsure where to go, and with no resources to gain information that they might use to protect themselves from dishonesty.

And it's not unreasonable when they believe it. They're just poorly educated. They know military personnel go to war, but they also know that not all of them do. If the recruiter downplays the odds, or lies to them about whether the branch they're signing up for can be deployed, why would they ask questions? They aren't military buffs, they don't know how to do research, they're just teenagers who don't know what they're doing.

 

[ttwtt78640]

People realize that there are different branches of the military that do different things too. But they don't necessarily know how flexible that structure can be.

Here's what they told my sister: The Guard is not deployed abroad. You won't be going anywhere. We just want your weekends. Put your name here and we'll pay for your college.

Too bad she was too jacked up to go when she was discharged on psychiatric disability.

It's not unreasonable for someone to believe that. Ignorant, yes, but not unreasonable. Having a strictly and exclusively intranational guard makes logical sense, if you don't think about it too hard. And it's not like a lot of these people have any other source of information to go to. In her case, there weren't more than 20 people in a 10 mile radius of her so it's not like she had a ton of people to ask. Why wouldn't they believe the recruiter? Why would they think the recruiter would lie to them?

They look for people like her. Poor, unsure where to go, and with no resources to gain information that they might use to protect themselves from dishonesty.

And it's not unreasonable when they believe it. They're just poorly educated. They know military personnel go to war, but they also know that not all of them do. If the recruiter downplays the odds, or lies to them about whether the branch they're signing up for can be deployed, why would they ask questions? They aren't military buffs, they don't know how to do research, they're just teenagers who don't know what they're doing.

Right, we never hear of NG deployments, ever. In search of free gov't benefits, until the payback is wanted, then poof - no deal.

 

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Right, we never hear of NG deployments, ever. In search of free gov't benefits, until the payback is wanted, then poof - no deal.

There are a lot of people in this country who have no way of accessing this internet thing you're currently on. There's a lot more people who wouldn't know what to do with it even if they could.

There are people who never read the news. There are people who wouldn't know what the hell it was about even if they did. There are people who wouldn't even get that far, because despite having a diploma, they can hardly read.

All of us have stuff we know jack about. Stuff that, to someone more informed and interested, might seem really obvious. And we're a better-educated lot than most.

Do you have any idea how many people in this country don't really know how babies are made? Grown adults who don't really understand how reproduction works. Parents who don't really understand how reproduction works.

If there are people who don't know how sex and babies work even though they have both, why is it hard to believe there are people who don't know how the military works?

If you weren't old enough to remember the last time any significant number of the Guard was deployed, you don't read the news, or you couldn't if you tried anyway, how are you going to know? And in my sister's case, she signed up before the wars. So even if she did read the news, it wouldn't have helped. She'd need a much better education than what she got to know that.

It's not a matter of them wanting to get the benefits without doing the job. It's a matter of them being kept in the dark or lied to about what the job is.

 

[ttwtt78640]

There are a lot of people in this country who have no way of accessing this internet thing you're currently on. There's a lot more people who wouldn't know what to do with it even if they could.

There are people who never read the news. There are people who wouldn't know what the hell it was about even if they did. There are people who wouldn't even get that far, because despite having a diploma, they can hardly read.

All of us have stuff we know jack about. Stuff that, to someone more informed and interested, might seem really obvious.

Do you have any idea how many people in this country don't really know how babies are made? Grown adults who don't really understand how reproduction works. Parents who don't really understand how reproduction works.

If there are people who don't know how sex and babies work even though they have both, why is it hard to believe there are people who don't know how the military works?

But if you weren't old enough to remember the last time any significant number of the Guard was deployed, you don't read the news, or you couldn't if you tried anyway, how are you going to know?

It's not a matter of them wanting to get the benefits without doing the job. It's a matter of them being kept in the dark or lied to about what the job is.

Someone that naive, uninformed and uneducated wants to join the "pretend" military and then go to college? LOL

 

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Someone that naive, uninformed and uneducated wants to join the "pretend" military and then go to college? LOL

Yes. There are a lot of people like that. A lot of them didn't have a whole lot of choice in being as stuck as they are.

About a third of American college students need some sort of remedial education in their freshman year. As a tutor who worked mostly with community college students, I spent a lot of time working with people who were basically illiterate, either in English, or technology, or both. And that was in one of the best-educated states in the country. And some were vets.

 

[StillBallin75]

It isn't? What is "join the military and will pay for your education" then?

A form of benefit. Still doesn't make them "guns for hire."

 

[Goshin]

There are a lot of people in this country who have no way of accessing this internet thing you're currently on. There's a lot more people who wouldn't know what to do with it even if they could.

There are people who never read the news. There are people who wouldn't know what the hell it was about even if they did. There are people who wouldn't even get that far, because despite having a diploma, they can hardly read.

All of us have stuff we know jack about. Stuff that, to someone more informed and interested, might seem really obvious. And we're a better-educated lot than most.

Do you have any idea how many people in this country don't really know how babies are made? Grown adults who don't really understand how reproduction works. Parents who don't really understand how reproduction works.

If there are people who don't know how sex and babies work even though they have both, why is it hard to believe there are people who don't know how the military works?

If you weren't old enough to remember the last time any significant number of the Guard was deployed, you don't read the news, or you couldn't if you tried anyway, how are you going to know? And in my sister's case, she signed up before the wars. So even if she did read the news, it wouldn't have helped. She'd need a much better education than what she got to know that.

It's not a matter of them wanting to get the benefits without doing the job. It's a matter of them being kept in the dark or lied to about what the job is.

True, but that does not describe the average soldier. I've known hundreds of soldiers, and very very few of them were remotely that ignorant and uneducated and naive. I've rarely ever heard one say "I didn't think I'd have to FIGHT..." and that includes people who joined the Guard.

At 21 I tried to join the Army Reserve. I was ultimately rejected due to a hearing problem, to my disgust, but I will tell you one thing: I grew up on a farm in South Carolina BEFORE the Internet was invented... the nearest library was a 45 minute drive... and I knew damn well that joining the military might mean going overseas to fight.

I'm sorry but I just firmly believe, based on experience, that few people are THAT ignorant who join and if they are, too bad. It is the military, the military fights.... if you don't realize you might have to pay for those college benefits by performing the function of your service then too bad.

Oh yeah... recruiters lie. I knew that too because my Dad and my uncles warned me beforehand, and I had enough sense to ask someone who'd been in the service before joining.

No offense to your cousin or whatever, but she isn't typical.

 

[SmokeAndMirrors]

I'm willing to bet a hell of a lot that you got a better education about the military than most young people do today. I'm also willing to bet you got a better education all-around than a lot of young people do today.

There wasn't anybody to warn her. There isn't anybody to warn a lot of people. There are people who genuinely believed, if they signed up before the wars began and they were young, that the Guard doesn't go abroad. Recruiters encourage this false belief. Not everyone is aware that recruiters lie. And it's a pretty sad state of things when the representatives of the organization that protects the country lies to people.

Typical, maybe not, but it does happen a fair amount. And going into it for college money is very common. Also, you're dealing with teenagers whose brains are physiologically not capable of contemplating the future and risks as well as an adult is.

It's "too bad" if people wind up doing a job they never thought they were signing up for because the representative who recruited them lied? In any other profession, that's a pretty serious matter, and if it involves substantial risk of bodily harm, you could certainly go to court for that, and lose. But military personnel don't deserve the same consideration?

 

[Porchev]

People realize that there are different branches of the military that do different things too. But they don't necessarily know how flexible that structure can be.

Here's what they told my sister: The Guard is not deployed abroad. You won't be going anywhere. We just want your weekends. Put your name here and we'll pay for your college.

Too bad she was too jacked up to go when she was discharged.

It's not unreasonable for someone to believe that. Ignorant, yes, but not unreasonable. Having a strictly and exclusively intranational guard makes logical sense, if you don't think about it too hard. And it's not like a lot of these people have any other source of information to go to. In her case, there weren't more than 20 people in a 10 mile radius of her so it's not like she had a ton of people to ask. Why wouldn't they believe the recruiter? Why would they think the recruiter would lie to them?

They look for people like her. Poor, unsure where to go, and with no resources to gain information that they might use to protect themselves from dishonesty.

And it's not unreasonable when they believe it. They're just poorly educated. They know military personnel go to war, but they also know that not all of them do. If the recruiter downplays the odds, or lies to them about whether the branch they're signing up for can be deployed, why would they ask questions? They aren't military buffs, they don't know how to do research, they're just teenagers who don't know what they're doing.

Just for the record, since shortly after 9-11-2001, there have been National Guard units regularly deployed overseas. 24/7 365 days a year there are National Guard units overseas. The role of the Guard has evolved to being more on the "front lines" with active duty.

 

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Just for the record, since shortly after 9-11-2001, there have been National Guard units regularly deployed overseas. 24/7 365 days a year there are National Guard units overseas. The role of the Guard has evolved to being more on the "front lines" with active duty.

Yes, I know, and so does she now. She's 9 years my senior. She signed up before the wars began. Before 9/11 as well, I think.

 

[Goshin]

I'm willing to bet a hell of a lot that you got a better education about the military than most young people do today. I'm also willing to bet you got a better education all-around than a lot of young people do today.

There wasn't anybody to warn her. There isn't anybody to warn a lot of people. There are people who genuinely believed, if they signed up before the wars began and they were young, that the Guard doesn't go abroad. Recruiters encourage this false belief. Not everyone is aware that recruiters lie. And it's a pretty sad state of things when the representatives of the organization that protects the country lies to people.

Typical, maybe not, but it does happen a fair amount. And going into it for college money is very common. Also, you're dealing with teenagers whose brains are physiologically not capable of contemplating the future and risks as well as an adult is.

It's "too bad" if people wind up doing a job they never thought they were signing up for because the representative who recruited them lied? In any other profession, that's a pretty serious matter, and if it involves substantial risk of bodily harm, you could certainly go to court for that, and lose. But military personnel don't deserve the same consideration?

Yes, I am pretty well educated; thanks for the compliment. Thing is, I went to the same mediocre schools as everyone else around here; if I'm better educated than most of them it is because I'm mostly self-educated because I always read a lot. It got me a scholarship to go to college on, but this was back when college wasn't so damn expensive too.

How many people do not know SOMEONE who was in the military? I know people with former service are probably uncommon in certain places, 'Frisco maybe, but I've never been anywhere that you didn't occasionally meet a veteran. How much brains does it take to say "Paw, do you know anybody who was ever in the Army?" and go ask that person to fill you in on the straight word? Not much.

Okay well ignorance hurts.... this is well known. If you've never set foot in a library and you only know 20 people and your entire world consists of 20 square miles of Ozark mountains, you're starting off in the world at a huge disadvantage in ANYTHING.

This doesn't describe the average soldier however. The US Army is no longer interesting in recruiting people with an IQ of 80 who don't know the world is round; the modern soldier has to be both physically and mentally adept, able to make complex decisions quickly and use lots of high-tech equipment.

The average soldier is not some victimized hick.

Now about Recruiters.... they get a bad rap and some of it is deserved, true. I did say some of them lie outright.... but let me emphasize that doesn't mean they ALL lie outright. I know a recruiter and he is an honest and honorable man... but yes when talking to prospects he does tend to focus on the positives and doesn't make a point of trying to talk prospective recruits OUT of joining by telling them horror stories or painting worst-case scenarios.... that isn't his job, any more than it is the job of a car salesman to tell people "I hope you realize that more Americans die in car crashes than any other kind of accident, and that you may die in this car."

Common sense says you do your due dilligence before signing on the dotted line, and it doesn't take much dilligence to discern that if you join the military you may have to go fight. If nothing else, surely someone has seen a John Wayne movie like Sands of Iwo Jima on broadcast TV! "Hey Billy Bob, you know wut? I seen this here John Wayne movie last week and figgered out that thuh Army fights folks!" :mrgreen:

Like I said, if you find out that your college benefits are not as extensive as your recruiter claimed and get pissed off about that, I am understanding and sympathetic. But joining the military and getting upset at being called on to go fight is just..... beyond comprehension. I'm sorry, I have no sympathy for people who stick a fork in an electrical socket and get shocked that they were shocked. :doh

Self-victimization through ignorance just doesn't arouse a lot of my sympathy if you're older than 14.

 

[radcen]

It just boggles the brain cells that someone can be naive enough to join the military, and somehow believe it when told it's not the military. Why does it even exist in the first place, if not to potentially fight wars? :doh

 

[radcen]

Back in the 1991 Gulf War it wasn't uncommon to hear people complain, "I didn't sign up for this.", when sent to fight.

Ummm, yes, you did.

 

[Matt Foley]

It just boggles the brain cells that someone can be naive enough to join the military, and somehow believe it when told it's not the military. Why does it even exist in the first place, if not to potentially fight wars? :doh

Some people weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth and need jobs.

 

[radcen]

It just boggles the brain cells that someone can be naive enough to join the military, and somehow believe it when told it's not the military. Why does it even exist in the first place, if not to potentially fight wars? :doh

Some people weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth and need jobs.

Way to sidestep the point of the post. If you take a job as a cook, you're going to have to cook food. If you take a job as a taxi driver, you're going to have to drive a taxi. If you enlist in the military, you just might get called on to fight a war. Duh!!! Don't act so surprised if it happens.

 

[MoSurveyor]

I'm sorry but I have to side with SmokeAndMirrors on this one. Prior to Iraq II the National Guard was just not used for overseas duty. Hell, why do you think so many Richie Rich Boys joined the Guard during Vietnam? While there have been isolated instances over the years of Guard units being put on active duty it's been very, very rare until this past decade.

It's one thing to expect war if you join the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, or the reserves for those branches and it's quite another when you join the National Guard. Someone who joined the Guard prior to 2004 before we started calling them up for overseas duty has every right to be pissed off because it had never been done on such a scale before now. At this point the cats out of the bag, so to speak, so no one should get fooled like that again but I certainly can't blame the people who joined the Guard prior to 2004 - instead of the Reserves - and then got shafted by an unprecedented change in SOP from Uncle Sam.

 

[radcen]

I'm sorry but I have to side with SmokeAndMirrors on this one. Prior to Iraq II the National Guard was just not used for overseas duty. Hell, why do you think so many Richie Rich Boys joined the Guard during Vietnam? While there have been isolated instances over the years of Guard units being put on active duty it's been very, very rare until this past decade.

It's one thing to expect war if you join the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, or the reserves for those branches and it's quite another when you join the National Guard. Someone who joined the Guard prior to 2004 before we started calling them up for overseas duty has every right to be pissed off because it had never been done on such a scale before now. At this point the cats out of the bag, so to speak, so no one should get fooled like that again but I certainly can't blame the people who joined the Guard prior to 2004 - instead of the Reserves - and then got shafted by an unprecedented change in SOP from Uncle Sam.

You are factually incorrect.

History of the Army National Guard

Highlights from the above link...

...in the spring of 1917, the U.S. declared war on Germany and entered World War I, and the Guardsmen had a chance to put their training to good use.

The National Guard played a major role in World War I. Its units were organized into divisions by state, and those divisions made up 40% of the combat strength of the American Expeditionary Force.

All 18 National Guard divisions all saw combat in World War II, and were split between the Pacific and European theatres.

The Korean War began in June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. Within two months, the first of 138,600 Army National Guardsmen were mobilized and National Guard units began arriving in South Korea in January of 1951. By the summer of 1951 a large number of non-divisional engineer and artillery units in Korea were from the National Guard.

The 1960's began with a partial mobilization of the National Guard as part of the U.S. response to the Soviet Union's building of the Berlin Wall. Although none left the United States, nearly 45,000 Army Guardsmen spent a year in Active Federal Service.

...when the bombshell of the Viet Cong Tet Offensive struck in 1968, 34 Army National Guard units found themselves alerted for active duty, eight of which served in South Vietnam.

In response to Iraq's invasion of oil-rich Kuwait in August 1990, Operation Desert Storm brought the largest mobilization of the National Guard since the Korean War.

More than 60,000 Army Guard personnel were called to active duty for the Gulf War.

 

[MoSurveyor]

I'm sorry but I have to side with SmokeAndMirrors on this one. Prior to Iraq II the National Guard was just not used for overseas duty. Hell, why do you think so many Richie Rich Boys joined the Guard during Vietnam? While there have been isolated instances over the years of Guard units being put on active duty it's been very, very rare until this past decade.

It's one thing to expect war if you join the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, or the reserves for those branches and it's quite another when you join the National Guard. Someone who joined the Guard prior to 2004 before we started calling them up for overseas duty has every right to be pissed off because it had never been done on such a scale before now. At this point the cats out of the bag, so to speak, so no one should get fooled like that again but I certainly can't blame the people who joined the Guard prior to 2004 - instead of the Reserves - and then got shafted by an unprecedented change in SOP from Uncle Sam.

You are factually incorrect.

History of the Army National Guard

Highlights from the above link...

(emphasis added)

I stand corrected - it had not been done on such a scale since WWII.


Being given stateside duty to fill slots of normal duty personnel so they can be sent overseas is not the same as being sent overseas yourself.