Stop-Loss

You volunteer to join the military and you sign a contract to do four years of service and then you are told when your four years are up that you cannot leave and must serve up to an additional 18 months. Is that fair? Should that it even be legal? It's involuntary servitude and it's wrong. Why is this happening? Because we have an executive branch of government that led us into a war that's turned our fighting forces into an occupation force that is not trained to do what they've been ordered to do. It's shameful to sit around and pretend you 'support the troops' when you sit there silently while this is happening. We need to bring our troops home and it should have already happened.

US Army forces 50,000 soldiers into extended duty The U.S. Army has forced about 50,000 soldiers to continue serving after their voluntary stints ended under a policy called "stop-loss," but while some dispute its fairness, court challenges have fallen flat. The policy applies to soldiers in units due to deploy for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Army said stop-loss is vital to maintain units that are cohesive and ready to fight. But some experts said it shows how badly the Army is stretched and could further complicate efforts to attract new recruits. "As the war in Iraq drags on, the Army is accumulating a collection of problems that cumulatively could call into question the viability of an all-volunteer force," said defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute think tank. "When a service has to repeatedly resort to compelling the retention of people who want to leave, you're edging away from the whole notion of volunteerism."