Over 200,000 Casualties So Far!!!

American Troops Losing a Battle

Over 200,000 Casualties So Far!!!

reposted from Congress.org

Largely unreported, American forces are losing yes LOSING an important battle in the global war on terror, not to car-bombing insurgents and wild eyed jihadists but to an archaic law gnawing quietly away at their morale. Because of a single law, thousands of skilled American warfighters are doing the unthinkable, and walking away from the battle as one they simply cant win. This has never happened before in all of American history. The numbers are staggering: so far an estimated 200,000 casualties and climbing daily.

It is not jihadists who deplete our strength, but rather, it is an ill-considered act of Congress, done in a bygone era, which today depletes American combat power. Fortunately the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff can get us out of this looming crisis quickly, effectively, and at no cost.

The culprit is 10 USC 1408, the (so-called!) Uniformed Services Former Spouse Protection Act. With that law as a guaranteed financial incentive for military spouses to leave hearth and home, troops returning from deployments and danger find that while they were defending America their home life was under attack, their families splintered, and their dream of secure retirement years cashiered by the policy choices of Congress and their own chain of command.

Concurrently that same chain of command now frets why mid-level leaders of all services are leaving in hordes, causing expensive redundant training and creating a readiness problem of loss of mid-level leadership. Solving that no-win scenario is really a no-brainer and can be accomplished with a five minute instruction by Sec Def Rumsfeld to his Chief Counsel to take the matter to the Supreme Court as a violation of multiple Constitutional protections.

Though most Americans are unaware, the Secretary of Defense is defendant in a Federal lawsuit over the constitutionality of this law, and for reasons both specious and politically correct his attorneys defend the discriminatory financial rape of America’s warriors as good and proper policy. The courtroom arguments of DOD attorneys to date have been arcane works of the lawyers art, bearing no relationship to Mr. Rumsfeld’s responsibilities for troop welfare.

It’s time for the SecDef and the Chairman JCS to take careful stock of what this 23 year old controversial law actually does to national security interests. It adversely impacts recruiting, retention, and morale, and puts green replacements into the force to replace troops who have left in disgust rather than finish a career which gives away their earned retirement benefits. By causing a revolving door of disillusioned mid-level leaders, this law reduces force proficiency and readiness, and wastes billions of taxpayer dollars on unnecessary, redundant training. (New accessions must be trained in skills for which departing troops were already trained.) Force proficiency is lowered just when we need skilled warriors for the GWOT. Military readiness suffers and national security interests play second fiddle to political correctness. By supporting this law, DOD loses a lot but gains nothing.

The only proper criteria for the DOD reviwe of this archaic and probably unconstitutional law must be it’s impact on the troops; not to the interests of the ACLU, NOW, or the ABA each of whom feasts on the corpses of military families and could care less about US national security.

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