A rare IRR mention in the media...

I forgot to pass along this link the other day. It would seem that the media took a pause from its incessant Stop-loss bashing to briefly mention the crazy IRR fad that none of the kids are talking about.

The WaPo military blog expands on the story of this San Francisco vet that just got his IRR letter in the mail--so much for the rumors floating around that there weren't going to be anymore IRR call ups. The comments on the WaPo blog aren't as interesting as the last two WaPo blogs I linked to, but they're interesting all the same.

Notice that, as always, the focus with IRR stuff tends to be people giving advice on how to sham out of the call up. The whole thing seems harmless on the surface, but what does this ultimately do? It increases the number of people that the Army has to call to fill a given slot. With every new call up, the dodgers have a greater chance of getting over, and eventually enough responsible types have been recalled that the Army can meet its quota.

The process ends up disproportionately punishing those soldiers with a more pronounced sense of duty (and/or pronounced Catholic guilt), and I for one don't think that's very fair.

It's that whole Three Buckets thing again...and I think my attitude has slightly changed since I wrote the Three Buckets post. I used to have respect for those who decided to blatantly ignore the summons, if that's what their conscience told them to do. More than 600 days since I got my letter in the mail and my life was completely knocked on its side, I don't have much sympathy for the folks who ignored the recall. Why? Because in so doing it foisted the problem into someone else's lap, and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think that was a little messed up.

Ah well...what're you gonna do?

p.s. For those of you who are interested, here is another IRR link, this one about a dude who reported and was medically released. Buried in the post you'll find a link to my Three Buckets post (which is how I found this other blog to begin with). If nothing else, this is more evidence that the recall continues, under the radar as always...