One topic that many Kossacks have shown a lot of concern about is the ongoing back-door draft. There are several ways for the government to keep soldiers enlisted past their voluntary service dates. One we've become familiar with is the "stop-loss" policy, which says that members of the military can't go home when their enlistment runs out as long as their unit is still deployed.
It should come as no surprise, then, that eight soldiers from across the country have now filed suit to enjoin this practice:
But the eight share a bond of anger: each says he has been prevented from coming home for good by an Army policy that has barred thousands of soldiers from leaving Iraq this year even though the terms of enlistment they signed up for have run out. And each of these eight soldiers has separately taken the extraordinary step of seeking legal help, through late-night Internet searches and e-mail inquiries from their camps in the conflict zone, or through rounds of phone calls by an equally frustrated wife or mother back home.
With legal support from the Center for Constitutional Rights, a liberal-leaning public interest group, lawyers for the eight men say they will file a lawsuit on Monday in federal court in Washington challenging the Army policy known as stop-loss.
Mind you, these soldiers aren't doing this because they oppose the war:
"You should know I'm not against the war," said David W. Qualls, one of the plaintiffs and a former full-time soldier who signed up in July 2003 for a one-year stint in the Arkansas National Guard but now expects to be in Iraq until next year.
"This just isn't about that. This is a matter of fairness. My job was to go over and perform my duties under the contract I signed. But my year is up and it's been up. Now I believe that they should honor their end of the contract." Some military experts described the soldiers' challenge as both surprising and telling, given the tenor of military life, where soldiers are trained throughout their careers to follow their commanders' orders.
Regardless of whether these soldiers are victorious, this suit will doubtless bring additional attention to this practice. I definitely plan to follow it as it proceeds.