CUTS IN U.S. MILITARY MEAN JOB LOSSES FOR CAREER STAFF:
DOES CONGRESS CARE??
SEQUESTRATION IS ONE OF THE REASONS WHY DEMOCRATS LOST IN NOV 2014.
FAYETTEVILLE — For all the insecurities of war, Capt. Elder Saintjuste always figured the one thing he could count on from the military was job security.
A Haitian immigrant who enlisted as a teenager, he deployed three times to Iraq, missing so many birthdays and Christmases that he sometimes felt he barely knew his four children. He hid symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder so he could stay in the Army, because he loved his job and believed that after 20 years he could retire with a captain’s pension.
Then this summer, on the day Saintjuste reached his 20 years, the Army told him that as part of the postwar downsizing of the force he would have to retire.
And adding insult to injury, he would have to retire as a sergeant, earning $1,200 less per month, because he had not been a captain long enough to receive a captain’s pension.
“I worked, I sacrificed, I risked my life, and they took it away like it didn’t matter,” Saintjuste said as he brought groceries into his house near Fort Bragg. “It wasn’t just losing a job. It was like having your wife leave you suddenly and not tell you why. It’s your whole life.”
For the first time since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the Army is shrinking.
Faced with declining budgets, the Army, the largest of the services, cut its force this year to 508,000 soldiers from 530,000, with plans to trim another 20,000 troops next year. If funding cuts mandated by Congress continue, the Army could have fewer than 450,000 soldiers by 2019 – the smallest force since World War II.
The cuts have largely come through attrition and reductions in recruiting, and have, so far, mostly affected low-ranking enlisted soldiers who have served only a few years. But this summer, the cuts fell on officers as well: 1,188 captains and 550 majors, many who were clearly intending on making a career of the military. More are expected to lose their jobs next year.
And for reasons the Army has not explained, the largest group of officers being pushed out – nearly 1 in 5 – began as enlisted soldiers.
Many are being pushed out despite having good records. When the Army announced the impending officer cuts a year ago, officials said they would target officers with evidence of poor performance or misconduct.
But an internal Army briefing disclosed by a military website in September showed the majority of captains being forced out had no blemishes on their records. The briefing, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, also showed that officers who had joined the Army as enlisted soldiers, then endured the demanding process required to rise into the officer corps, were three times as likely as captains who graduated from West Point to be forced to retire.
Many of those former enlisted soldiers had been encouraged to make the jump to the officer corps between 2006 and 2009, when the Iraq war was raging and the Pentagon was struggling to replace junior officers who were leaving the Army as soon as their initial commitments were over, often because they were worn out by multiple deployments.
The soldiers who volunteered to fill the gap – older than most junior officers because they had already served in the enlisted ranks – were picked from the best of the ranks, and some had to earn bachelor’s degrees to make the cut.
Many said in interviews they believed they were being pushed out because they were entitled to more pay and were eligible for retirement earlier, since they had been in the Army longer than other commissioned officers.
“The Army knew we had more years and they could save money by cutting us,” said Capt. Tina Patton, 43, a combat medic who became an officer in 2007. “Looking back at our records, a lot of us can’t figure out why else we would be cut.”
The Army declined to discuss in detail its criteria for trimming the officer corps.
“Selections for separation are based on a soldier’s manner of performance relative to their peers while serving as a commissioned officer,” Lt. Col. Benjamin Garrett, an Army spokesman said in an email. “The boards retained those with the highest demonstrated levels of performance and the most potential for future contributions on active duty.”
Promises of something big
Although the U.S. military has drawn down after every war, this one may seem more painful for many because they were not drafted but volunteered, often looking to make military service a career.
“They recruit with all kinds of promises, whether it’s career benefits or something more amorphous like being part of something bigger,” said Beth Bailey, a professor at Temple University who studies the Army. “They support families in a way that makes it a whole lifestyle. People become part of an insulated Army culture. For that to suddenly be taken away, I’m not surprised they feel betrayed.”
The Army has tried to ease the transition, offering separation pay – a cash buyout of sorts – sometimes amounting to more than $100,000, and months of notice to give officers time to find other work.
Captains who served more than 20 years get a full pension, and those who served more than 15 years get a prorated pension. But many of those getting pensions – about a third – have not served the eight years required to retire as captains, according to Army data. When they leave the Army, those soldiers revert to their previous highest enlisted rank, often sergeant, with lower retirement pay.
Capt. Tawanna Jamison, 43, who served 22 years in the Army but only seven as a captain, will get a sergeant’s retirement pay of $2,200 per month, less than half of what a retired captain receives, which is about $4,500.
“I could be facing bankruptcy,” she said. “I was helping my daughter pay for college. Now she’s on her own. I couldn’t have planned for this. It’s hard not to feel like the Army isn’t trying to save money on our backs.”
‘I get nothing’
Several officers said they neglected their home lives during the wars, believing they would eventually be repaid.
“Iraq, Afghanistan, jumping out of airplanes, doing all the training, leaving for work so early and coming home so late that I wouldn’t even see my family during the week, and I get nothing,” said Capt. Nathan Allen, who served more than 14 years as a linguist and intelligence officer and was awarded a Bronze Star.
As an officer, he worked 15-hour days, studying the latest intelligence for impending deployments while going through parachute and weapons training. He left for Iraq two weeks after the birth of his first child and was in Afghanistan for the birth of his third.
In seven years the family moved 10 times. Counting deployments and training, he estimated that he spent a third of his marriage away from his family.
“The whole time I told myself to just keep running and worry about the family later,” Allen, who is stationed at Fort Meade, Md., said in a phone interview.
After he learned he was being forced out, he said, “I fell into a deep despair.” He started having chest pains and body aches that made it hard to get out of bed. In October, he and his wife started seeing a counselor.
“I’m a mess right now,” he said. “They took away who I am. I’m a soldier.”
Source: News and Observer
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