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Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses

latimes.com

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Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses

#141

Post by user982 »

a3n wrote: post #136
vacri wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm certainly of the opinion that this is a ridiculous situation and those bonuses should be left alone (salary of 42 auditors alone would probably take the lion's share of the recoverable funds, independent of the moral issue), let's keep things in perspective - deployment to Iraq was not 'defending their country'. The US was never threatened by Iraq. Similarly, not everyone in Vietnam got drafted, and even if…

> deployment to Iraq was not 'defending their country' They served. They were certainly misused and misdeployed, but they served their country, they lost limbs, lives, time and the innocence that most of us enjoy our entire lives, and they deserve respect and support. Not worship; merely respect and support.

Nothing you wrote addressed what you quoted. They defended neither their country nor their freedom. Your platitudes can be applied unchanged to any set of war criminals throughout history.

Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses

#142

Post by a3n »

user982 wrote: post #141
a3n wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> deployment to Iraq was not 'defending their country' They served. They were certainly misused and misdeployed, but they served their country, they lost limbs, lives, time and the innocence that most of us enjoy our entire lives, and they deserve respect and support. Not worship; merely respect and support.

Nothing you wrote addressed what you quoted. They defended neither their country nor their freedom. Your platitudes can be applied unchanged to any set of war criminals throughout history.

War criminals? Are we talking about the same people?

Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses

#143

Post by dogma1138 »

return0 wrote: post #135
dogma1138 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that this is somehow even passed the slightest political oversight. You need to be a special kind of bastard to ask some one who willingly signed up to get shot at while defending their country to pay back any amount of money they got paid for doing so. Wars aren't pretty, regardless of what you think about them, and especially about Iraq and Afghanistan never ever take it out on the soldiers, they are…

My understanding is that the US has a professional army. Why are they called "volunteers"? Over here, a volunteer is someone who voluntarily joins earlier than required to begin his mandatory army service. People who join a job are all volunteers of course, but that's not remarkable.

There are two types of military service compulsory and voluntary hence they are called volunteers.

Compulsory involves conscription or a draft, I'm not sure how the "jail or army" thing is classified but since you are given a choice it's technically stelly voluntary.

The "professional" classification of the army doesn't mean it's voluntary professional means that you can be a career soldier and you are paid for doing so even if you are drafted, conscripts on the other hand are not paid other than a small stipend.

That said once you sign up the contract this isn't a job, you can't quit, you can't "call in sick", can't say no to anything, you are effectively forced to give up certain rights for the duration of the contract.

Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses

#144

Post by tedunangst »

mariuolo wrote: post #133
tedunangst wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. They gave the radio operator bonus to the cook (as an example). It's easy to see from the amount it was the radio bonus, and it's easy to see from the service record somebody was a cook, and that was bonus was overpaid. And now they want their money back (which is pretty shitty, given the circumstances). But the amounts of the correct bonus and the given bonus are not unknowable. These aren't bespoke contracts,…

Unless they can show bad faith on the part of the beneficiary, shouldn't whoever authorised the payment be on the hook for it?

I'm guessing here, but I imagine there's a clause like "recipient agrees to attend X training, and return bonus otherwise." Whether the recipient remembers seeing that clause is another matter.

Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses

#145

Post by JabavuAdams »

jcbeard wrote: post #96
JabavuAdams wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't blame someone who got drafted, but it is reasonable to fault someone for joining a volunteer army of a militarily aggressive nation. If you sign up to become a fire-fighter or paramedic, you will never be in a position where the machine you are a piece of requires / encourages you to kill people who don't need killing. The fact is that there are parts of war / military life that are more exciting than bein…

Sometimes you don't have a choice, as you so blithely put it. Many people join the military because they would otherwise have no other career, or because they need a leg up, or health insurance (pre-affordable care act). So if someone offered you an extra years salary that would allow you to put your kids through college for doing something that you feel serves the people of your country, wouldn't you take it? How ab…

To clarify, I don't see "combat tourism" as the only explanation. I think the military can provide a useful hand up to those in difficult situations. We just need to be clear that that is essentially a selfish argument, not one for service.

Regarding the scenario you've laid out: in general, people will do what they need to do for family survival, me included. But, if I steal or I kill to save my family you are right to criticise me.

Additionally, how is that any different from the choices in front of the people whose countries we go and invade?

In Restreppo, e.g. the captain lectures villagers after an Apache strike kills and maims a number of civilians. It was basically, why do you allow the Taliban to shoot from your village, so that I have to come and kill your sons?

Exactly the same argument applies in reverse. If you voluntarily join the aggressive American military machine, you're no better than the villagers who we kill for failing to root out the Taliban.

If you're a Sunni in Iraq and you're being massacred by Shia death-squads, then why is it wrong to support this ISIL gang who promise to protect you? You see where this argument leads?

I have sympathy for US soldiers, but I have more sympathy for civilians facing worse choices in the countries that we tend to invade or intervene in.

There are ways to serve that do not make you part of a machine that has historically been used to commit mayhem and murder on a vast scale.

EDIT> None of the above means that I think it is justifiable to claw back these enlistment bonuses. A promise was made to these enlistees, and it should be honoured. Is there an estimate of the total cost to forgive all of these repayments?

Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses

#146

Post by navbaker »

paulmd wrote: post #125
dogma1138 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that this is somehow even passed the slightest political oversight. You need to be a special kind of bastard to ask some one who willingly signed up to get shot at while defending their country to pay back any amount of money they got paid for doing so. Wars aren't pretty, regardless of what you think about them, and especially about Iraq and Afghanistan never ever take it out on the soldiers, they are…

Unfortunately this is par for the course. DFAS' accounting systems are antiquated, involving 2200 individual systems, manual re-entry when data needs to be moved around, and "fudge" entries to fix the errors in the books. When the mistakes inevitably happen, they then try to claw back the overpayments from the soldiers. http://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/#article/part1 Another similar situation that came up…

>When the mistakes inevitably happen, they then try to claw back the overpayments from the soldiers.

I know from personal experience that if the military overpays you for anything, there's often no warning between when they find the error and when they garnish your paycheck. SOP is to take everything back at once, leaving the servicemember with nothing and with no warning. DFAS is supposed to send a letter of indebtedness to give the family time to prepare for any financial adjustments, this often arrives after the first garnishment.

Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses

#147

Post by JabavuAdams »

grzm wrote: post #105
Hondor wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people joined the Taliban for those reasons, and ISIS and Al Quaeda. Many common criminals commit crime because they need money too. Just because you're desperate, doesn't give you the right to kill people. Just because you feel it serves your country doesn't make it OK to ruin someone else's country. These soldiers complaining about their money helped to destroy Iraq and caused the deaths of 100s of thousands o…

The military in and of itself isn't necessarily bad. It can be used to do bad things. Soldiers in the military who do bad things are responsible for their actions. Is this a fair paraphrasing of your position? If not, please correct me. If I'm understanding that correctly, I can follow that chain of reasoning. It looks like you're also making the claim that if they've done bad things they're not allowed to complain i…

> The military in and of itself isn't necessarily bad. It can be used to do bad things.

Of course, the military fulfils a necessary function. Unfortunately, it is often used for ill, and there's no sign of that ending. So, one might choose to not offer oneself as a tool to be used by corrupt or evil masters, except in the most direct cases of self-defence.

Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses

#148

Post by return0 »

dogma1138 wrote: post #143
return0 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the US has a professional army. Why are they called "volunteers"? Over here, a volunteer is someone who voluntarily joins earlier than required to begin his mandatory army service. People who join a job are all volunteers of course, but that's not remarkable.

There are two types of military service compulsory and voluntary hence they are called volunteers. Compulsory involves conscription or a draft, I'm not sure how the "jail or army" thing is classified but since you are given a choice it's technically stelly voluntary. The "professional" classification of the army doesn't mean it's voluntary professional means that you can be a career soldier and you are paid for doing…

compulsory is definitely not voluntary. otoh i dont think theres any difference between professional and voluntary.

Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses

#149

Post by vacri »

a3n wrote: post #136
vacri wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm certainly of the opinion that this is a ridiculous situation and those bonuses should be left alone (salary of 42 auditors alone would probably take the lion's share of the recoverable funds, independent of the moral issue), let's keep things in perspective - deployment to Iraq was not 'defending their country'. The US was never threatened by Iraq. Similarly, not everyone in Vietnam got drafted, and even if…

> deployment to Iraq was not 'defending their country' They served. They were certainly misused and misdeployed, but they served their country, they lost limbs, lives, time and the innocence that most of us enjoy our entire lives, and they deserve respect and support. Not worship; merely respect and support.

Why don't police get treated the same way? They risk life and limb as well, but you don't see unrelated people thanking them for their service, or getting misty-eyed on TV when talking about them. There are abuses by the police, yes, but there are also abuses by the military.

Words matter, and if you actually care about people losing their lives and innocence in these wars, then you should totally be on board with not calling the US military adventurism in Iraq "defending their country". It's mythologising the event in a way that's likely to get more people to sign up, when you should be getting fewer people to do so. The US unilaterally decided to invade a sovereign country that was no threat to it in the slightest, a country that was on the other side of the world, and that the US's own allies were begging the US to hold off. That is not 'defending'. 'Serving', yes, but not 'defending'. It also didn't do much for 'Freedom' in the area - one country is destroyed, another is imploding, and Europe is a little destabilised, all due to this adventurism.

If you care about people in general, you should call it what it is. Don't abuse soldiers who didn't do abuses themselves, but at the same time, don't mythologise them and chest-beat about how patriotic it is to go and kill brown people that aren't a threat to the people back home. Yes, 5000 US soldiers are dead, but that's only 1% of the death toll in Iraq from the invasion, and that doesn't include the knock-on effects in Syria. There was an article recently on HN about how even the guy who toppled the statue of Saddam in that famous photo-op, even he would rather live under Hussein's regime than modern Iraq.

If you want this kind of horror to stop happening, then people need to stop getting misty-eyed about serving their country in ways that are clearly not defence. There's a difference between 'not respecting' and 'not wanting the lie propagated'. Then the next time this kind of thing happens, there's not going to be a fresh source of recruits.

Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses

#150

Post by [deleted] »

vacri wrote: post #149
a3n wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> deployment to Iraq was not 'defending their country' They served. They were certainly misused and misdeployed, but they served their country, they lost limbs, lives, time and the innocence that most of us enjoy our entire lives, and they deserve respect and support. Not worship; merely respect and support.

Why don't police get treated the same way? They risk life and limb as well, but you don't see unrelated people thanking them for their service, or getting misty-eyed on TV when talking about them. There are abuses by the police, yes, but there are also abuses by the military. Words matter, and if you actually care about people losing their lives and innocence in these wars, then you should totally be on board with no…

[deleted]
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