It’s Official: Inherent Resolve is Part of the War on Terror
Remember that implicit “the GWOT is over – we ended it” claim of the clueless DC clown krewe current Administration? You know, when they quit using the GWOT title for military operations against Islamic terrorist enemies worldwide?
Well, maybe not. Yesterday the Department of Defense – in a typical exercise of the “bury something you don’t want the public to notice in a Friday afternoon news release” principle – declared personnel deployed in support of Operation Inherent Resolve eligible for the GWOTEM.
In case anyone’s forgotten: Operation Inherent Resolve is the recently-assigned name to operations in Iraq, Syria, and surrounding areas against ISIS/ISIL/whatever the hell those Islamic terrorist bastards are calling themselves these days. We currently have 1,400 troops in Iraq today that just became eligible for the GWOTEM – plus a bunch more in surrounding areas.
Last time I checked, the acronym GWOTEM stands for “Global War on Terror Expeditionary Medal”. So much for that “end” of the Global War on Terrorism.
But remember: the current Administration “got us out of Iraq on schedule”. They just did that by fornicating Fido* so badly negotiating our 2011 exit that we were virtually guaranteed to return in a few years. And now – less than 3 years later – it looks like our return is official.
As Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” That’s true no matter what outdated, erroneous Marxist dogma Progressive political theory says to the contrary.
I guess they’ll try to blame Bush for this, too. Oh, wait – the Communists Socialists useful idiots Progressive fools have already started to try to do exactly that. Even after it’s been proven that this developed during the current Administration’s watch, and they were warned over a year ago this could happen.
“Clueless idiocy.” Look it up in the dictionary, and I’ll give you three guesses as to the photo and illustration.
* – Politically-correct version of “screwed the pooch”.
Category: Foreign Policy, Government Incompetence, Military issues
Obama’s Iran Plan Makes Tuesday’s Vote A Critical Global Event!
If Obama’s plan to make a deal with Iran in his 2nd-term is true, then the mid-term election on Tuesday takes on even greater significance in terms of the safety of the world!
Read more at The Political Commentator here: http://politicsandfinance.blogspot.com/2014/10/obamas-iran-plan-makes-tuesdays-mid.html
Republicans, Conservatives, Libertarians, Independents and Fed-up Democrats Get Out And Vote On Tuesday!
And Get Your Friends, Family and Co-Workers Out As Well Because We Have All Learned The Hard Way That Elections Have Consequences!
Hondo,
Authorizing the GWOT-EM for Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR, which come to think of it could stand in of Operation Iraqi Redo) is the right decision, but I’ll agree with you that releasing the announcement at the end of a Friday before the midterm election is chicken shit. I can only wonder what next Friday will bring, perhaps a Bergdahl announcement?
While recognizing the troops is the right thing to do I am troubled by the fact (given the locations involved) that we have three sets of troops who are receiving three different sets of benefits and recognition while supporting/executing the same operation. One group is support the operation from locations where they receive both the Combat Zone Tax Exclusion (CZTE) and Hostile Fire/Imminent Danger Pay (HF/IDP), another group received the CZTE but not the HF/IDP, and a third group receives HF/IDP but not the CZTE.
I would find this situation humorous, if it wasn’t actually so serious.
In the unfortunate event that a service member is killed in the line of duty while supporting OIR, their dependents will receive differing benefits, to include being taxed differently on those based solely on where they happened to be.
Additionally, each service records service credit (specifically “combat service”) differently depending upon the benefits that accrue those differing areas. For instance, if you are in the Army and in Iraq, it’s a combat tour, if you happen to be in Syria or Lebanon working against ISIL it’s an operational tour.
Luddite4Change – no argument with the designation per se. I just find the spectacle of seeing this
clueless DC clown kreweAdministration backpedaling like hell from their “we ended the War on Terror” position . . . heartwarming.As for the differing benefits and designations: IMO, DoD has so broadly applied the CZTE, IDP/HFP, and other combat zone bennies for the past 20 years as to make them virtually meaningless. Were I calling the shots, only the land and airspace of Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan would be so declared and get the “full Monty” of combat zone bennies. People in uniform directly supporting Inherent Resolve from other locations outside CONUS would get the GWOTEM (like many people in Thailand and the Philippines did the VSM during Vietnam) – but unless they flew over or set foot those areas, no tax bennies and no IDP/HFP. IMO, virtually all of SW and Central Asia has been little more than a remote hardship tour since relatively soon after the Gulf War – frankly, from what I saw there it’s not much (if any) worse than I saw in Korea in the early 1980s. And folks in Korea sure as hell didn’t get Combat Zone bennies then – and don’t today.
Czte is broken, has been for a long time.
Syria is not a CZTE location.
HF/IDP is a less so, especially with the last review that eliminated a significant number of locations.
As for comparison with 80’s era Korea, I’d ask that you balance that with the forces protection posture that are in effect in each location/time.
I’ve been to both areas, L4C – Korea during the early/mid 1980s, and Afghanistan/Iraq/Kuwait/Qatar, 2007-2008. Iraq and Afghanistan were TCS; Kuwait and Qatar, short-term or TDY.
Iraq and Afghanistan were hairy; they IMO fully deserved Combat Zone designation and bennies.
Kuwait? Iraq border area, maybe. Rest of Kuwait? Pfft. Other than off-post being a place you didn’t particularly want to go, being in Kuwait was IMO no worse than being at Camp Casey in the mid-1980s – and wasn’t as worrisome as being north of the Imjin. Arifjan fully deserved the derisive nickname used by those in Iraq and Afganistan of “Camp Cupcake”.
Qatar? Don’t make me laugh. From what I saw, Qatar was easily no worse than the larger duty stations in Korea – and Korea north of Imjin (and much of Korea north of Seoul) was far worse.
I stand by my earlier statement. The only places right now in the CENTCOM AOR I’d rate as meriting CTZE are Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and maybe Yemen. The rest? Family separation and hardship duty pay is all they merit – and is all they’ve merited IMO since maybe the mid-1990s.
If you’re measuring the time between hostile fire incidents targeting US forces in a country in terms of multiple years or decades, in my book it simply isn’t a legitimate combat zone.
I don’t disagree with keeping the area where folks get the full menu of benefits (CZTE and HF/IDP) for OIR pretty small: although I’d add Lebanon, parts of Turkey, and maybe even parts of Jordan
HF/IDP is conditions based and comes when a location crosses a minimum risk threshold.
In Iraq,Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan everyone was way over the minimum threshold. In most of the rest of the Arabian peninsula (Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Saudi, and Persian Gulf waters) the vast majority of service members had been well under the bar for a long time.
In the other locations in the Middle East and Africa; the small number of service members coupled with the remote nature of their work and near zero QRF/medical support pushed them over the line also (but I would admit that not everyone in those locations is uniformly faced with the same circumstances).
Having been involved with reviewing additions and deletions of locations for HF/IDP status at times over the last 7 years, part of the problem for DOD is that it is a large bureaucracy that at times tries to cut cheese with an axe, while the State department takes a much more nuanced approach. For instance, DOD will issue HF/IDP for an entire country, where as State will issue it for specific locations within a country. Don’t even get me started on my the process for State takes as short as three days and DOD has taken as long as three years.
Bernie Sanders needs a vasectomy between his ears. Dumb ass, hard headed, liberals like him will NEVER let Bush off the hook for anything. be it his fault or not. If a Democrat wins in 2016, (Yes I just threw up in my mouth writing that.) there will be new and improved verses and choruses to the “This Was Bushes’ Fault”, Democrat’s favorite song.
The 8 years between Bush and a dem successor to Øbola will disappear down the wormhole as soon as the 2016 election is over, if Hillary or Liawatha wins.
“Liawatha” giggle snort snort giggle.
Stealing that term as well.