{"id":395902,"date":"2019-02-12T01:17:16","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T00:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/national-guard-recruits-sign-on-for-once-a-month-then-sent-to-war\/"},"modified":"2019-02-12T01:17:16","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T00:17:16","slug":"national-guard-recruits-sign-on-for-once-a-month-then-sent-to-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/national-guard-recruits-sign-on-for-once-a-month-then-sent-to-war\/","title":{"rendered":"National Guard Recruits Sign On for “Once a Month” — Then Sent to War"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A young friend is seriously considering joining her state\u2019s National Guard. She\u2019s a world-class athlete, but also a working-class woman from a rural background competing in a rich person\u2019s sport. Between seasons, she works for a local farm and auctioneer to put together the money for equipment and travel.<\/p>\n

Each season, raising the necessary money to compete is a touch-and-go proposition, so she\u2019s now talking to the National Guard. If, after basic training, she joins the Army\u2019s World Class Athletes Program <\/a>as a reservist, her service will essentially consist of competing in her sport. She\u2019ll get an annual salary, health care, college tuition \u2014 all to do what she loves and wants to do anyway. What could possibly go wrong?<\/p>\n

Well, she could end up fighting in one of this country\u2019s forever wars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what happened to thousands of National Guard troops and reservists when Washington discovered its all-volunteer forces were woefully inadequate for the project of occupying Iraq after the 2003 invasion. As then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously explained, Washington went to war with the Army it had, \u201cnot the Army you might wish you have.\u201d So the National Guard filled in the gaps, supplying up to 41%<\/a>of the troops deployed there by 2005. By 2011, more than 300,000 Guards had deployed <\/a>to Iraq and Afghanistan as well.<\/p>\n

Real Soldiers Fighting Real Wars<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Members of the National Guard sign on to train one weekend a month and two weeks a year in return for some substantial rewards, including (at the moment) a possible $20,000 signing bonus<\/a>. But what many of them don\u2019t realize is how likely it is that, somewhere along the line, they\u2019ll be deployed for a lot more than two weeks.<\/p>\n

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Don’t miss a beat<\/strong><\/p>\n

Get the latest news and thought-provoking analysis from Truthout.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The National Guard isn\u2019t the only force whose members sign up for 12 weekends and two weeks a year. The regular armed forces also maintain reserves, soldiers who want to combine military service with…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A young friend is seriously considering joining her state\u2019s National Guard. She\u2019s a world-class athlete, but also a working-class woman from a rural background competing in a rich person\u2019s sport. Between seasons, she works for a local farm and auctioneer to put together the money for equipment and travel. Each season, raising the necessary money […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-395902","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}