Thousands of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East and Afghanistan are scheduled to receive the equivalent of the
Office Space order to come in on Saturday and Sunday. Only the military's demanding a
whole lotta Saturdays and Sundays!
Forcing the weary to slog on is but one prong of the military's two-pronged approach. The other is the equivalent of that trick that has been played multiple times in cartoons:
a box propped up with a stick baited with some tantalizing object. In this case, the military's offering re-enlistment bonuses of up to $10k for soldiers already in Iraq, Kwait, and Aghanistan.
And, like a certain two-pronged object in Requiem for a Dream, these parallel orders are designed to screw our soldiers even further than they already have been.
The former order will keep troop leaders in the field. The latter is designed to draw the grunts back into serving even further than they already have. Those troop leaders won't, unfortunately, have any choice. The men and women who make up those platoons and batallions, on the other hand, will. Considering that the military has already cut hazard pay and family separation allowances for our troops valiantly fighting Bush's SNAFU, the possibility of ten grand is going to look mighty attractive to the career soldiers...and doubly so considering that our "economic recovery" has been a jobless one.
Yet further evidence that this war has not been the cakewalk the Bushies made it out to seem...unless you're talking fruitcake.