« End of an Era | Main | Mega-Regions » Firing Deserters14 Apr 2008 11:35 am Progress toward effective governance in Iraq? The Iraqi government has dismissed 1,300 soldiers and policemen who deserted or refused to fight during last month’s Shiite-on-Shiite battles in Basra, it said Sunday. How do you fire a deserter? It seems that someone named Paul Jane Pilzer wrote a book called Should You Quit Before You're Fired that may be relevant to this issue, but I'd recommend buying my book instead. Comments (24)
Well, I'm sure those guys are home now, updating their CVs, thinking about grad school, maybe taking a year off to travel. No parallel at all to firing Saddam's army. 
Uh, shouldn't someone ask the obvious question? If these 1300 soldiers/policemen are fired, well, just where are they going to go to be employed now?
Whoa, whoa, whoa! You have a book coming out, Yglesias?
You stop paying him. But doesn't a deserter traditionally stop showing up for work?
If the Iraqi military's HR department is anything like my employer's HR department, then all those deserters would have direct deposit and wouldn't necessarily need to show up to work to collect a paycheck. I was also recently coerced into accepting a paperless pay stub, but fortunately my HR dept. brandishes no AK-47s.
Fired? I think this shows not progress, but how little the Iraqi government has progressed. If a soldier deserts, you imprison him. You don't "fire" him. Ridiculous. I suspect there also may be a certain amount of political tact being displayed here - imprison the deserters and it could cause a huge flare-up - but if you're going to bluster about functional your government is, then there needs to be some more substance here. This also shows that even in the Iraqi Army, people identify more with people like Sadr than they do with their nation.
But doesn't a deserter traditionally stop showing up for work? So all you need to do is stop paying him. That doesn't happen automatically, right? I mean, isn't there two parts to "firing" someone - you stop paying him and he stops working for you. The deserters have already taken care of the second part, you just need to take care of the first.
Al - Well, I'm sure that those deserting soliders will be shocked - SHOCKED - to find out that they won't receive a check anymore, and had they known that not getting paid anymore would have been the consequence in the first place, they totally would have owned up to their responsibilities. Totally.
Weird as it is, I agree with Al.
s. jones writes: "Whoa, whoa, whoa! You have a book coming out, Yglesias?" Believe it or not. He also doesn't like robots, and sometimes his posts have typos. I've done a lot of research on this blog, as you can see.
here's an idea that i'm afraid has no possible chance of actually happening. NAJAF, Iraq (AP) — Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demanded Monday that the Iraqi government reinstate all security forces fired for deserting during fighting in Basra. "All the brothers in the army and police who gave up their arms to their bothers (Sadrists), were only obeying their grand religious leaders and they were driven by their religious duties," the anti-U.S. cleric said. "I call upon all concerned authorities to reconsider their decision to dismiss those people from the army and the police. I demand they be reinstated and even rewarded for their loyalty and devotion to their religion," he added.
I knew lots of people who went AWOL periodically, and they didn't get jailed, at least not for long, and hardly any of them got BCD's. In a well-established, traditional force, you may go after deserters. In a place like Iraq, getting fired is a perfectly appropriate response. We had quite a few "deserters" in our own wars right through 1865. For years now I've been hearing bitter complaints that the Iraqi forces were infiltrated with militias, and the government was unwilling or unable to do anything about it. Now, they do "something about it" in a big way, and the same people are still complaining. 1300 people isn't a lot in an organization the size of the Iraqi security forces today, and this is just part of the process of institution-building.
If we had some bread, we could have some ham sandwiches. If we had some ham. You have to have control over someone to fire them. People you no longer have under your control aren't "fired". That's why we have two words: "fire" and "quit". (Source of that sure fire knee-slapper, "You can't fire me, I quit!") I don't think we're going to see 1500 militia guys showing up, Costanza-like, pretending to still support Maliki. and the same people are still complaining. Well, no. All negative speech isn't complaint. Some of it is mockery. Again: that's why we have 2 words. Complaint. Mockery. (This isn't an exhaustive list of negative speech.)
Remember that episode of Growing Pains where Mike got fired from the fast food place cause he covered up for somebody stealing and then pretended to still be going to the job so his parents wouldn't take his porche away? Do you think there are any Iraqis lying to their family now about not getting fired for the same/similar reasons?
Furthermore... If they are lying doesn't it illustrate that they aren't learning about morals and values via the family sitcom? Perhaps the first step to reducing secretarian violence would be to put out some Iraqi versions of the following...
The only problem is that Maliki would probably make sure that Skippy, Boner, and Kimmy were all Sunni which might make my plan backfire.
BTW, this kind of reminds me a bit of Office Space. You know, where Milton was supposedly "fired" but kept getting paid anyway (and kept showing up to work)? Whether or not you are "fired" has very little to do with whether or not you show up to work, and very much to do with whether you are still getting paid.
"If a soldier deserts, you imprison him. You don't "fire" him. Ridiculous." In this country, we have laws on the books allowing the government to imprison deserters, but they are rarely enforced.
I'm surprised that people are talking about imprisonment....for some reason I thought desertion was still a capital offence in the United States. It isn't??? Surely desertion _under fire_ is still a capital offence? I am _really_ surprised that it isn't a capital offence in Iraq.
I am _really_ surprised that it isn't a capital offence in Iraq. Being an Iraqi in Iraq is a capital offense.
Fred and Powell have it wrong, as usual. I'm not sure how it goes now, but this is how it went in the Army when I was working at the Adjutant General's office at Fort Rucker, Alabama, in the late '60's. What happens when you go AWOL or desert (thirty days or more of AWOL) is that the Personnel Office holds your file for thirty days. Then it goes to the Adjutant General's office where it gets held for a specified period of time, I think it was another thirty days. During those thirty days, the FBI comes out from the local office and fills out a form with the info from your personnel file. They send that to the local police department of your home town. They go out and arrest you - supposedly - since most people who desert are stupid enough to go home. According to Wikipedia: "Over 21,000 US military personnel were convicted and sentenced for desertion during the 3.5 years of American involvement in World War II. Of these, 49 were sentenced to death, but only one soldier, Eddie Slovik, was actually executed for desertion. The 'Lost Division' was a term given to the estimated 19,000 U.S. Army soldiers absent without leave in France at the close of World War II." "According to the Pentagon, more than 5500 military personnel deserted in 2003–2004, following the Iraq invasion and occupation. [4]. The number had reached about 8000 by the first quarter of 2006. [5] Another report stated that since 2000, about 40,000 troops from all branches of the military have deserted, also according to the Pentagon. More than half of these served in the US Army [6]. Almost all of these soldiers deserted within the USA. There has only been one reported case of a desertion in Iraq. [Obviously - where the fuck are you going to go? - RSH] The Army, Navy and Air Force reported 7,978 desertions in 2001, compared with 3,456 in 2005. The Marine Corps showed 1,603 Marines in desertion status in 2001. That had declined by 148 in 2005." Obviously, you don't execute US soldiers for desertion - simply because you'd be wiping out a battalion every year...and most of their relatives would probably object.
Finally, a somewhat useful post from Hack! Perhaps the number of US deserters will put the Iraqi figure in proper context?
Why were there fewer desertions during the Iraq war? Because 1) fewer people wanted to sign up in the first place; 2) those who did were even dumber than those who signed up for Vietnam - they thought they were fighting the "war on terror". At least the ones who signed up for WWII knew about Pearl Harbor - even if they didn't know the US pressured the Japanese to the point where the Japanese figured they had to attack the US. The nitwits who signed up after 9/11 had NO clue what was going on. The ones who signed up after the Iraq invasion - now THOSE people are certified morons. As someone else said, quite a few people signed up to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, then ended up in Iraq fighting for the oil companies. Still not the deserting type - but hardly in favor of the circumstances they find themselves in. None of which is relevant to the issue or Matt's post. The reality is that most of the police were Mahdi Army in the first place, and most of them are probably now working directly for the Mahdi Army instead of the police. Sadr's call for reinstatement is simply a ruse to get his people back into positions in the police where they were more useful. Won't happen, and he knows that, so it isn't particularly relevant to anything going on.
Comments closed April 28, 2008. |
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Heads in the Sand
How do you fire a deserter?
You stop paying him.
Posted by Al | April 14, 2008 11:43 AM