Air Force Times Confirms 40,000 AWOL

ComSen, I hope you're aware that the title on a Newsvine seed doesn't have to be the same as the actual article title. Yes, some people do that, but the seeder is more than welcome to create their own title.

Yes, they are welcome to create their own title. However, it is a violation of the Code of Honor for a title to be misleading.

However, ComSen, this title isn't misleading. The name of the newspaper may be (it implies that it is sponsored by the USAF) , but that isn't Pamela's fault.

jjsonp

she was writing from the context of the earlier UK guardian article, the accuracy of which several commenters had disputed. this article substantiates that one and claims the pentagon as its source for the 40,000 figure.

No it doesn't Read my post above about the Air Force Times.

MasterNav, I'm surprised you went through all that extra effort when you could simply have clicked the link above and read, "By Ana Radelat, Gannett News Service." However, as was mentioned in the prior seed, if the Pentagon is refuting the 40,000 number that keeps on getting mentioned as coming from them, then why have they not issued anything stating so?

if the Pentagon is refuting the 40,000 number that keeps on getting mentioned as coming from them, then why have they not issued anything stating so?

Probably because they are

a) Busy fighting a war
b) Don't reply to silly accusations
c) Are just pre-occupied with other things

That would be my guess.

Thanks for commenting Lunar, while I do usually rely on bylines to attribute sources, I like to dig a little bit too just to make sure. Bad habit I developed over the years *grin*.

And frankly I don't know whether the Pentagon is trying to refute the numbers or not. I haven't seen anything official - nor am I alleging that the source is inaccurate - just that they are not an official government news service, and therefore deserve the same scrutiny as any source does - including a government source! Correlation of statistics is a small intellectual requirement of mine!

er.. "military" ... "instances" (damn spell-check button taunting me!)

This is an astounding number, 40,000. One would imagine if it is true or even something close to it, that the military would be very anxious to keep it out of the public consciousness.

The figure 40,000 is over a 5-6 year period. That is about 8,000 per year. The total number of U.S. active duty troops is about 1.4-1.5 million. (See Wikipedia). This works out to about 0.5 percent per year. To put it another way, 99.5 percent do not desert.

Since 2000, about 40,000 troops from all branches of the military have deserted, the Pentagon says. More than half served in the Army. But the Army says numbers have decreased each year since the United States began its war on terror in Afghanistan.

This is not that surprising. I would guess that most of the deserters were in their first year of military service. People join the military for a variety of reasons and some of them cannot adapt to military life. Some of them desert. Some would like you to think that all of the deserters deserted because they are philosophically opposed to the Iraq war. Some of them may be, but many of them just were not cut out for military life.

The main conclusion I reached from this information is that the Army needs to do a better job of weeding out potential deserters. The Army accounts for about 1/3 of the total force but more than 1/2 of the deserters are attributed to the Army.

You may be right. The number may not be that surprising, but we don't have all the data really, and I am ignorant beyond the frame of reference from Vietnam I included below.

One wonders what the normal rates of desertion are, and further still need to see some polling (admittedly polls are imperfect, but good polls can amount to useful statistics) of deserters, or at least conscientious objector (link is to the DoD directive regarding conscientious objectors) discharge filings over times of conflict and times of relative less conflict.

There is a lot left to this beyond just this article.

Patrick Miller

This is an astounding number, 40,000. One would imagine if it is true or even something close to it, that the military would be very anxious to keep it out of the public consciousness.

Apparently not. A single un-named Pentagon source is quoted in it.

Here is a bit of info from Britannica that addresses your question:

Though popular at home, the withdrawals lowered the morale of the troops remaining in Vietnam by underlining the apparent pointlessness of the war. By 1970 signs of serious problems in morale and leadership were seemingly everywhere. These signs included increased drug abuse, more frequent and serious racial incidents, and even "fraggings," the murder or deliberate maiming of commissioned and noncommissioned officers by their own troops with fragmentation weapons such as hand grenades. News of the My Lai Massacre, a mass murder by U.S. soldiers of several hundred civilians in Quang Ngai province in 1968, became public at the end of 1969, further undermining convictions about the righteousness of the U.S. military effort in Vietnam. From 1965 to 1973, more than 30,000 U.S. military personnel either in Vietnam or in service related to Vietnam received dishonourable discharges for desertion (though only a small number of desertions actually took place on the battlefield). Another 10,000 deserters were still at large when the United States withdrew from the war in 1973; most of these took advantage of clemency programs offered under President Gerald R. Ford in 1974 and President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Also during the period 1965–73, about half a million men became "draft dodgers," illegally evading conscription into the armed forces or simply refusing to respond to their draft notices. More than 200,000 men were charged with draft evasion and more than 8,000 convicted. Of those convicted, most were either offered clemency by Ford or pardoned by Carter.

REFERENCES

Vietnam War. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 30, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-234637

The point about Gannett Group's non-military affiliation is conceded here, Stephan. You're right it would be nice to have the returning AWOL statistic.

I do think the article however, is neither short-sighted or closed-minded. It reports a number that someone has been given, and then goes on to talk to people on both sides of the issue from deserters to vets, provide the Pentagon's statements in counter, refers to the procedures of the military with AWOL soldiers, and mentions a few things about border jumping.

We'll have to see how this turns out, and may not really have good (trustworthy) numbers on this for a long time.

Agreed, the resemblance to Vietnam is very real to me. A useless war with no clear goal that will not stop the tid eor threat of any of the -isms. In this case it's terrorism, in that case it was communisml. All cases of Republicanism.

TBone... hmm you mean to tell me only republicans served during the vietnam war? The vietnam war started back in the 1950 under Truman(D) when we gave aid to the french, then a couple more dems were involved, so how is this "All cases of Republicanism" ?

@I SPY, that's a pretty broad statement you are making. You assume that all of these deserters did what they did because they believe that the war is unjust, but I hate to break it to you, a lot of them could care less. They are AWOL because they want to spend an extra day with their wife, or they were drunk and didn't want to report to their CO the next day, or they got lost in Saudi Arabia, or worse, they were arrested in Saudi Arabia.

I SPY, protesting the Iraq war is fine. Great, in fact, considering I disagree with the Iraq war. However, deserting your unit only causes the possible death of members of your unit and making it so more troops are needed sooner i.e., with less training. Far worse morally, IMHO.

There is a point when you must say that this is not war it is an exercise in futility and US citizens are dieing for no good reason. Camaraderie is all good and well but when the Nazi's said "We were just following orders" and that was rejected, then we have a new standard for warfare. In this new Century It is the responsibility of the individual to actually make the decision to fire. This is something that would weigh heavily on the minds of soldiers who do not believe that there is any justification for being in Iraq and Judging by the reaction of the US armed services, ie. to ignore or not mention the problem, I would guess that there may be a legal Argument behind the desertions. I also do not believe that the way the Forces go about recruiting these days is actually worse than conscription.

Ofcourse this is a very grey area so I am not going to pretend that my personal opinion is correct or the best one out there, I think it could be ?

@Andrew - You're right..I left out Democrat-ism. The (D)'s voted for this war too when it was the popular thing to do. I hold them equally in disdain and hope to see an emergent 3rd party come in and clean house.

Well, 18K + 19K is almost 40K ... even in the Google cache that I found.

It seems like it must be higher now. Did you see the story today about the Army Medic "deserter" who was sentenced to, erh, 6 mos in jail (or something like that).