01-27-2005




By Paul Connors



Readers of DefenseWatch articles posted over the last few months on the U.S. Army’s botched recalls of officers in the IRR are now quite well aware of just how far the service has had to reach to find a new pool of company grade officers for the meat grinder in Iraq.



That series has examined the incompetence of Army Human Resources Command officials, incomplete records, inconsistency in the interpretation of regulations and the bureaucrats’ falsehoods perpetrated on IRR members. Just this week, I received an email from 1st Lt. Todd Parrish, the very first officer to take the Army to court and challenge its right to recall him to active duty indefinitely.



Unfortunately for Parrish, it now seems that the Army does get to unilaterally re-write contracts and to dragoon former service members back into uniform. Parrish, one of several former officers featured in a segment on the IRR recalls on “60 Minutes” several weeks ago, previously resigned his commission, had the resignation accepted by the Army and then faced the quandary of an involuntary recall to active duty.



Just this week, he informed me that he was reporting to Fort Sill, Okla., one of the main mobilization points for recalled IRR members. It is a post he knows well, having attended various field artillery schools there as both an enlisted soldier and later, when he attended the Field Artillery Officer’s Basic Course there after receiving his commission through the ROTC program at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.



The fact that Todd was reporting for duty, after using just about every legal method available to him, told me that when it comes to the average citizen vs. the government, the government is going to win. It was an outcome for Todd that I hoped would not happen and it now all the more lamentable because it proves that the Army and the government appear to have unlimited power to recall reserve officers to duty for indefinite terms of service.



The Army decision means that it does not matter that Parrish had served his eight-year statutory obligation, or that he had correctly followed the procedures established for resigning his commission. That was all for naught.



The Army’s answer to Parrish’s request for injunctive relief in federal court was a pathetic, “Yes, we accepted his resignation, but it was a clerical error. We demand that he return to duty.”



The court hearing Todd’s case declined to hear his appeal and instead, allowed the Army’s incorrect recall order to stand. Almost out of money for a continued legal defense, Todd accepted what appeared to be the inevitable and made his preparations to report as scheduled on Jan. 23. He is a 1st lieutenant who should have been promoted to captain almost ten years ago, another proof that incompetents are at the helm of the HRC.



Officers twice passed over or declining promotion are, by law, supposed to be processed for discharge. But now, with company grade officers in short supply, the Army is rewriting the rules, ignoring federal statutes pertinent to officer personne. And the abuse of former soldiers and officers continues unabated.



Nor is Parrish the only case.



Another former Army officer, who left active duty more than 12 years ago as a captain in the Quartermaster Corps, was recently ordered back to duty after finding out that he had been promoted in the IRR to major. When he contacted the HRC, he pointed out to the officer who answered the phone that he had been selected, but not notified of the promotion. He then pointed out that the recall was for captains, and he was a major.



Checking into his records, an officer called back to tell him that he was really a captain and should report as scheduled and have his records corrected by the Board for the Correction of Military Records. As the victim pointed out to me during several lengthy phone conversation, appeals and corrections of military records can often take a year or more. In the meantime, this perhaps-captain-maybe-a-major is facing the complete disruption of his civilian life and a massive financial hardship caused by the involuntary recall.



The United States has always prided itself on being a nation of laws, a characteristic that separates us from autocratic and totalitarian regimes that have long been known for the abuses and horrors they have inflicted on their own people (as well as inhabitants of neighboring countries). Now it seems that these former officers, citizens of a representative republic, need to consider that their government will not protect them. Their rights under the U.S. Constitution and their contractual rights, as part of the original agreements they entered into with the U.S. Army and the government, have been abrogated by the unilateral actions of the Army Human Resources Command as it scours the nation in its never-ending search for additional warm bodies for Iraq.



And so, veterans like Todd Parrish, who served honorably and carried out their contractual obligations, are having their lives uprooted at the whim of uncaring and incompetent bureaucrats in the Armys Human Resources Command. The federal courts, long criticized for legislating from the bench, now appear to be either unwilling or incapable of defending the Constitution they too were sworn to uphold and defend.



If Todd Parrish were my son, you can rest assured I’d be yelling from the mountain-tops about the violations of his rights by the Army in which he honorably served. I never thought I’d see the day, but the doublespeak of 1984, described so well by George Orwell in his prescient novel, is alive and well in our Army.



There’s an old saying from the marketplace, “caveat emptor” (let the buyer beware). In the cases of Americans accepting commissions in the U.S. Army, that is a warning that should not be taken too lightly or dismissed too quickly.



Editor’s Note: These are the previous articles on the IRR callup situation written by Senior Editor Paul Connors:



01-06-2005 Breaking the ‘Social Contract’ with Reservists

12-10-2004 One Officer Battles the IRR ‘Press Gang’

09-21-2004 Is A Commission a Life Sentence?

09-16-2004 For Guard & Reserve Members, Service Comes at a Price

08-17-2004 The Need Is Real

07-07-2004 And Now Comes The Resistance

06-30-2004 One Prediction I’m Sorry Came True

06-23-2004 What We Owe Our Soldiers

05-27-2004 Army Shift in IRR Victimizes Soldiers



Paul Connors is a Senior Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at paulconnors@hotmail.com. © 2005 Paul Connors. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.

Ellie