The new “Backdoor Draft”
The New York Post writes that, with no fanfare from the media or from Democrats, or Republicans, for that matter, the President signed an Executive Order on October 16th which started a new “Stop/Loss” period.
This news was not widely reported. But, for any veterans of the global war on terrorism reading this: No, this is not a joke.
Yes, our military is still shrinking. Despite continued “non-combat” operations in Afghanistan, a renewed “advisory” mission against a “new” enemy in Iraq and even a mission to confront an infectious-disease crisis, the service chiefs are still obligated to continue downsizing the active force.
Of course, both the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno have repeatedly testified on Capitol Hill that these cuts will leave the US military unable to respond should the need for another major operation arise.
Even before getting handed the Ebola mission, Odierno warned of the high risk the nation faces.
The text of the Executive Order, according to the White House website;
Executive Order: Ordering the Selected Reserve and Certain Individual Ready Reserve Members of the Armed Forces to Active Duty EXECUTIVE ORDER
– – – – – – –
ORDERING THE SELECTED RESERVE AND CERTAIN INDIVIDUAL READY RESERVE MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES TO ACTIVE DUTY
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including sections 121 and 12304 of title 10, United States Code, I hereby determine that it is necessary to augment the active Armed Forces of the United States for the effective conduct of Operation United Assistance, which is providing support to civilian-led humanitarian assistance and consequence management support related to the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa. In furtherance of this operation, under the stated authority, I hereby authorize the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the Coast Guard when it is not operating as a service in the Navy, under their respective jurisdictions, to order to active duty any units, and any individual members not assigned to a unit organized to serve as a unit of the Selected Reserve, or any member in the Individual Ready Reserve mobilization category and designated as essential under regulations prescribed by the Secretary concerned, and to terminate the service of those units and members ordered to active duty.
This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
BARACK OBAMA THE WHITE HOUSE,
October 16, 2014.
The EO 13680, was published in the Federal Register on October 23, 2014.
Hollywood made movies about it when President Bush instituted Stop/Loss during the War Against Terror – the media and the leftists (I’m being redundant, I guess) called it a “Backdoor Draft”, but I don’t see that happening this time around.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Military issues
Different pres__sent, different rules.
Stop Loss was a terrible movie. I can’t decide if it was worse than the Hurt Locker, but they’re both pretty equally bad.
I remember the person who directed Stop Loss responding to the negative press about it implying that we “weren’t ready as a nation” for that kind of movie. Don’t recall the person behind Hurt Locker being that stupid.
Yeah it sucked and just ridiculous film. Almost like they did zero research on that shit.
Not the first time and not the last time….
Hopefully this applies to specific MOSs or such and not the entire military…as has been done in the past.
” Congress first gave STOP LOSS authority to the Department of Defense right after the draft ended. However, the military didn’t use the authority until the 1990/1991 Gulf War, when Bush Senior imposed STOP LOSS on pretty much everyone in the military during the Gulf War. This STOP LOSS was later revised to include only those deployed, and individuals in certain critical job skills.
President Clinton imposed STOP LOSS at the beginning of the Bosnia deployment, and during the Kosovo Air Campaign. STOP LOSS was imposed for a brief period right after 9/11, and then again in 2002 and 2003.
Son of a Bitch.
Yes she was.
And yes he is.
Republican does it = Press says it is outrageous abuse, and border line unconstitutional!
Democrat does it = crickets…
You also have to remember, that to the liberal press and Hollywood, anything this president does or says is like the Oracle coming down from Delphi to enlighten us unwashed hillbillies….
Maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet.
The dreamer president meets reality, of course the ass clowns at the Puzzle Palace haven’t been much for standing up and being heard when it comes to defending the troops and the needs of the troops.
So here we are once again, welcome to the real world Mr. President.
I suspect it’s not quite what you imagined with your whopping 4 years of senatorial experience and zero executive management experience…here’s hoping you can successfully navigate the remainder of your term to the benefit, and not the detriment, of the people you just forced back onto active duty.
Maybe I misread – this EO isn’t a “stop-loss” but a recall to active duty of reservists, both “drilling” and IRR. My guess is that those with certain medical and logistic skills will be pulled back to AD to support the Ebola mess.
That’s how I read it nbcguy54….
” and designated as essential under regulations prescribed by the Secretary concerned , and to terminate the service of those units and members ordered to active duty.
The second part being that they can use this at their will…you go on active duty and then you’re ass is shown the door when it’s no longer needed (or as was in my case, no more case)
I was “activated for Restore Hope for Somilia back after Christmas 1992. I deployed to Dover AFB and then was there for the duration. We had hoped it was going to be a while as many of us (at the time) as Reservists, were un/under employed and mostly young and single so we could bolt at a moment’s notice. In April we got the notice that we were going to be shown the door. Yeah, so it kind of works both ways….”Sorry, we’re out of money/don’t want to have you go past 179 days so you get Active Duty benefits.”
I’d say that it’s a double edged sword.
Chip I agree it’s a double edged sword, but unfortunately that’s what we get stuck with in the Guard/Reserve a lot of times. I’ve seen plenty of “professional reservists” in the last 10-12 years who were told repeatedly not to count on the Reserves for a consistent paycheck and they did because the money was good when we had it. When the money ran out all of a sudden we had folks who had no jobs and hadn’t planned on the funding ever stopping. I don’t like the wording of the EO precisely because of what you pointed out, the service chiefs get you use mob/demob authority at will. It’s going to be interesting to see how this authority is used in this instance.
Get to use, not get “you” use. That’s why I shouldn’t type without glasses or spell check.
That’s my reading too, nbcguy54. I see this as defining a specified contingency for the purpose of allowing recall of RC units and individuals under 10 USC 12304 – not ordering blanket STOP LOSS as was done after 9/11. Two separate actions.
For me, I was placed on stop-loss while on Tittle X orders in 2006. Not while on IRR or such, heck, my MSO was completed in January of 1990.
nbcguy54:
I authored the editorial. I would have liked to have gone into much greater detail, but had a constraint on word count… which left some not quite catching what I was throwing down. Due to the sequester, the DoD is required by the bill signed by Congress (to avoid the debt ceiling crisis in April 2011) to downsize. Due to not having enough people to make mission, Odierno and Co. are being forced to find new and creative ways to find bodies. They can’t “Stop Loss” people in the sense they did during the first 10 years of the GWOT (or years prior), because they must reduce the size of the force. However, even though IRR and reserve folks are “activated”, they are not counted on the active rolls. So we are still “drawing down the active force” and meeting the intent of the sequester on paper, but in reality they aren’t. Hence, the concept of this order being a “New back-door draft”… except worse. Not only does it inconvenience our service members beyond reason, but it is an attempt to side-step the intent of Congress.
REP, DEM, or whatever, the bottom line is that is just a signal that our government as a whole (all of the national level leadership involved… EXEC and LEG) is not functioning properly. The legislative branch is passing legislation, not understanding the threat level the nation faces and the size of the force needed to meet it. So the executive branch is having to develop unique ways to make mission. All the while, our military is left holding the bag.
Like with all of his other crap, I assume that anyone dissenting with B. Hussein 0bama & Company will be labeled as a “racist while they snivel and sneer.
This is exactly why Hollywood and the MSM don’t disagree with him. They call anyone else who disagrees with him “raysis” so they don’t want to be called that themselves.
It is ludicrous to connect those two things, but they are still afraid of being considered so.
I may be reading this wrong, but the EO text above doesn’t appear to me to implement stop loss. It looks like it gives the Component Commanders the authority to mobilize reserve forces as needed.
Hey, c’mon it’s okay this time because he’s doing it for humanitarian reasons to combat ebola. He won the peace prize for crying out loud and this is how a peace prize winner conducts his military operations.
I think the folks in the IRR would disagree with you guys.
Then those folks in the IRR need to re-read their enlistment contract, Jonn. Until they fulfill their MSO, they’re subject to recall if their Service Secretary determines their skills are required to support a particular declared contingency operation.
I got so p!ssed off during Desert Shield and (to a lesser extent) watching some medical and IRR types whine about being recalled that I’m damn glad I never found myself in the same room with any of them. You sign on the dotted line, you go if called. Period.
I agree. Lord knows, I gave Matthis Chiroux enough grief about that when he was recalled from the IRR for Iraq and he skipped out. But, my point is that the people who were not on my side of the political spectrum back then blamed Bush for that, and the same people won’t blame Obama.
I’m not saying Obama is right or wrong on this single issue. What is wrong, though, is that they’ll continue to reduce the force while using the same people who they’ve used up to cover for their short-sightedness.
When Bush did it, it was an accounting trick.
No argument that the press is playing this differently, Jonn. Nor with the fact that a double-standard is apparently at work.
But calling declaring a contingency for the purposes of allowing a RC recall some kind of “STOP LOSS” is simply not accurate. The NY Post is IMO grossly overreaching if not outright dissembling here in calling it another “STOP LOSS” or a “backdoor draft”.
When DOD cancels or suspends the mandatory release date for RIF’d personnel, then it will be a Stop/Loss.
This is just a declaration for authority for a contingency which is required for releasing funding.
What’s next? A movie called ‘Wag the Dog’?
I thought the military was going into drawdowns and cutbacks. Was all that just a misprint?
Or is there more here than meets the eye?
Oh, wait – I forgot who we’re talking about. Silly me.
I think that this may be appropriate here…..
Where are all the commies with their protest marches and gnashing of teeth? Oh, I forgot, it’s a democrat in office. A black democrat, so you can’t say anything or you will be called a racist.
Stop/Loss is a retention killer.
So much for the “Volunteer Army”.
The irony is that it could be the liberals that enable future mandatory conscription policies.
Yes, it will be the liberals.
I’m expecting to see women required to register with Selective Service some time soon.
Its fair.
Agreed.
It’s fine with me.
I did my time, and didn’t whine.
It’s a great injustice that women aren’t in Selective Service now and it is a great injustice that women didn’t get drafted in Korea, Vietnam, WW2. You vote, you fight.
Stop Loss was the one that had a character digging a fighting hole in his front yard because he was sooooo damaged by PTSD, right? hahaha…what a laughable piece of shit that one was.
I was under the impression that Stop Loss/Stop Move for deployed was still in effect and had been for a long time. Am I mistaken in this? If so when did that stop?
I was in 2009 the the Defense Department stopped using the post 9/11, war On Terror blanket stop-loss on a large scale. I have a second cousin whose guard was slated to go to Afghanistan in 2010, but because his ETS date was a few months into his deployment, his guard unit told him he would not deploy unless he either extended his current contract or reenlisted.
Can confirm similar situation happened to my NCOIC in 2012
his wife threatened to leave if he extended. so he chose to stay home.
Our 2009/2010 OIF deployment had Stop Movement on folks ETSing during the tour, but that sounds like it was roughly the same window when they transitioned off using it.
If you deploy and your ETS is during the deployment, they “can” extend you for the duration and for 90 days after to ensure you have time to conduct transition and stabilization. However, (now) you usually need to agree to that extension.
I’ve seen it go both ways, some will extend to deploy, some will not deploy because they’re getting out.
Aren’t they cutting 10,000’s of troops?
lol what fucking looney toons.
This may just be the most brilliant “screw the people” plan of this administration. It appears to have the effect of:
1. Having no impact upon the draw down of the military, so thousands of volunteers will be involuntarily separated and dumped into the work force.
2. Calling up thousands of reservists, most of whom have full-time jobs or are students, to replace those active duty folks being separated.
In one simple order, twice as many military members (part-time and full-time) as would otherwise be necessary will be negatively impacted, plus all the employers who must hold the jobs indefinitely for their now serving employees. Add in all the confusion of the assorted families and the hardships on those separated active duty folks as they scramble for ways to support themselves and their families.
See? Figure the draw down numbers and multiply by four or so to get the minimum potential number which this order can cause at least some serious inconvenience if not outright pain. Nice plan, and thanks so much for the assist, clowns.
Idiots all.
Liberal: ” As long as my son or daughter does not have to do it!”.
Yep, keep kicking people out who you’d potentially have to pay a retirement to and call in the “contractors” which is what this is.
They bring Reserve personnel in all the time, until they are close to that magic timeframe of 18 years AFS.
So now, they are kicking people out before they hit 18 years AFS (sanctuary) so they don’t have to give retirements to them. But its okay because they can bring in the “contractors” to work part-time.
Back in 05-06 we went to Iraq with about 250 IRR call-ups in Baghdad. Quite a few did a decent job, but there were plenty who were shitbags who shouldn’t have been deployed.
What made it worse was, about 4 months into the deployment, Army Times published a story saying “AWOL IRR will not be punished” which caused the morale of those who did deploy with us to go into the crapper. (Duh!) Granted they should’ve been called “Deserter IRR” because that’s what they were.
The last couple of years the reserves are doing the same stupid thing by putting dirtbags into the IRR again. So the next time there’s a callup, who will actually show up? (Whoever feels like it) Oh and why are they just putting them in the IRR instead of separating them completely? The paperwork to transfer to the IRR is ten times easier than separating them. (Thanks lawyers)
Air Force just finished a round of personnel cuts recently. I don’t know how many AF wide, but we let go some 9 from our unit, each of whom was a shitbag and had an Art 15 in the last six months. Rules for that round were easy…if they are a dirtbag, they were shown the door.
Hate to see people screwed, but these screwed themselves.
Lol, the media and the leftists are the same thing. Yeah, right. Whatever you say.