Morale among U.S. military personnel in Iraq, especially reserve troops called up to active duty, has become so dangerously low that the commanding general of the U.S. Army Reserve has expressed doubts about the Army’s ability to continue functioning.
Sinking morale parallels and is fueled by the drop-off in recruitment numbers for both the regular Army and the Army Reserve.
In an internal Pentagon memo, written last December but only leaked to the press and published in the Baltimore Sun in early November of this year, Lt. General James Helmly called the Army Reserve a “broken” force, and said the reserve has reached a point where it cannot fulfill its missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
About 40 percent of the active-duty troops in Iraq are reservists, some of whom have been forced to undergo two, three, or even four tours of duty, under the terms of the Rumsfeld Defense Department’s “stop-loss” policy.
Stop loss, the involuntary extension of active duty status of soldiers beyond their contractual obligation, has been called “a back-door draft” by Lieutenant Paul Rieckert, an Iraq veteran and Pentagon critic. Calling the policy “a band-aid solution,” Rieckert contends that “Stop Loss is destroying the very concept of our volunteer military, is terribly damaging to morale, and is yet another indication that the original plan for war was flawed.”
When asked 11 months ago whether the morale-destroying Stop Loss policy would continue, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said he has no plans to discontinue the practice because it's important to maintain "unit cohesion."
Writing recently on the New York Times op-ed page, columnist Bob Herbert described Stop Loss and multiple deployments as “a form of Russian roulette.”
One combat veteran known only as “hEkle” described the current level of morale as “pretty low.”
In an interview conducted by Socialistworker.org, hEkle said “While we were in Iraq, (morale) was pretty low. It depends on what camp or operating base you were at. If you are at a place where you didn’t go out on missions, but stayed on and provided support for others, morale was higher, because they weren’t seeing the shit. Battalions that were going out every day and doing missions--their morale was pretty low.
”You’re crammed into a 15-by-20-foot aluminum box with two other roommates--plus the heat, plus the miserable conditions, plus bad food for a whole year. You add it all up, and morale gets pretty low.”
Because of morale problems caused by Stop Loss and the Army’s rapidly diminishing recruitment rates, General Helmly says that under current procedures, and considering the inadequate numbers of recruits, his forces will be unable "to meet mission requirements associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom" in Afghanistan.
Helmly was especially critical of current Army use of financial incentives to attract and retain reservists on active duty, which the general says confuses "volunteers" with "mercenaries," and of the Defense Department’s practice of calling reservists to active duty at only a few days' notice.
For those reservists already on the ground in Iraq, redeployment and extension of active duty time sometimes comes with no notice at all. In his chronicle of his service in Iraq, “The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell” (Riverhead Books, 2005), combat veteran John Crawford describes how it felt to have his hitch unexpectedly extended, and the devastating effect it had on troops’ morale:
“’Sir, there are rumors of a follow-on mission. Is that true?’…
“’I’m working on that, men. I’ll get back to you.’”
“That was how it went. Vague answers and no one ever asked what we all were thinking. ‘Sir, are you fighting to get us a follow-on mission so that you and the rest of Headquarters Company can earn your combat infantry badges and you can get some leadership time in theater? Do you feel as though you missed the war and now you’re going to make up for it with our blood and sweat? Are you upset because we came over, did our jobs, and are ready to go home while you did paperwork?’
“No one asked, because we already knew the answer. It was as clear on his face as the disgust was on ours.”
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