“Stop-loss, in the United States military, is the involuntary extension of a service member’s active duty service under the enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond their initial end of term of service (ETS) date.”

While we await the imminent and joyous birth my nephew’s first child, we now also face his impending redeployment to Iraq. His ETS date would have been early next year. Currently, he is settled in at the base and in school and building baby furniture. Now he will serve at the least an additional ten months beyond his ETS… at risk in a conflict we shouldn’t be in… oh, don’t get me started. And if I could tell you why his brigade has to go back, you would be even more indignant.

Yes, we all know that this travesty is legal and every soldier signs a contract agreeing that it can happen to them, but that doesn’t make it okay. It‘s truly exploitive, especially when a young adult is volunteering to be in service. Regardless of their motivation to enlist, they are sold an expectation that doesn’t include being held against their will. After all, the likelihood of it happening is less than 10%, right? (btw, 10% = 58,300 stop-lossed soldiers since 2002)

So, my amazing nephew and his wonderful wife have bought a video camera to record every second of the their son’s first few months with his daddy.

What can you do?
Please support the protest against this unjust practice by voicing your opinion to your legislators to support the Gates initiative (below) to be implemented on schedule. It won’t help my nephew, but it might stop the next 58,300 soldiers from having their civil rights contractually violated while they serve our country.
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additional info:
For service members opposed to involuntary extension, it represents implementation of a desultory clause in their contract, which alters their expectation of an end of term of service date. It also exposes them to the risk of an additional or prolonged combat deployment. For opponents of a current armed conflict, the public perception of “involuntary extension” is contrary to the notion of voluntary service and undermines popular support for the conflict.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, as one of his first acts in his position, penned a memo compelling commanders to “minimize” the stop-lossing of soldiers. Despite Secretary Gates’s order, by April 2008 use of stop-loss had increased by 43%.

In March 2009, Gates ordered the virtual elimination of the stop loss policy. “Gates said the goal is to reduce that number by 50 percent by June 2010 and to bring it down to scores or less by March 2011.” “To hold them against their will . . .  is just not the right thing to do,” Gates said at a Pentagon news conference.

Resources: Wikipedia and The Washington Post