In its never-ending quest to find new and creative ways of undercutting the troops, the Bush administration is apparently preparing to eliminate “imminent danger pay” for some troops serving in Kosovo, including 500 members of the MA National Guard. Other benefits may also be affected. Governor Patrick has sent the following letter urging Secretary of Defense Gates not to follow through on this plan.
March 15, 2007
Honorable Robert Gates
Secretary of Defense
Pentagon
Washington, DC 20318
Dear Secretary Gates:
There are currently approximately 500 members of the Massachusetts National Guard serving as peacekeepers in Kosovo. These brave men and women comprise about one third of the United States armed forces in that nation.
It is my understanding the Department of Defense is considering a plan to cease imminent danger pay for these troops, and that such a termination would affect those currently deployed. If implemented, such a reduction in benefits would have a devastating effect upon the families of those serving. They have budgeted for a certain level of income and to reduce that midway in the deployment would pose a real hardship.
As you may know, Massachusetts makes up the difference in pay for public employees who are mobilized in either the Guard or Reserves. Only a relatively small number of the 500 deployed are public employees eligible for this benefit. As such, the planned reduction will negatively affect the overwhelming majority of Massachusetts peacekeepers serving in Kosovo.
I call on you to reconsider any reduction in pay and allowances for currently deployed forces and to take all steps to prevent this reduction from occurring. I thank you for your consideration.
Must be justified. The justification is? How many KIA/MIA in Kosovo in the past year or the past several years relating to hostile fire?
The fact is that we shouldn’t even be in Kosovo. I was actually under the impression we pulled out troops last year. Maybe that was Bosnia?
to keep two or more warring groups apart, I’d say thats a pretty good sign the peacekeepers are in imminent danger. I have a friend over there right now with the Guard. Hes been there since the summer on (at least) an 18 month tour. The Gov is right on this one. To cut the pay being sent home to his wife and children midway through his tour is just fundamentally unfair.
I’m not exactly sure what the definition of “imminent danger” is for purposes of being eligible for the pay increment, but it isn’t entirely clear that people serving in Kosovo are in any particular imminent danger. But they are away from home, hearth and their usual jobs, apparently for extended periods of time, and they should receive some additional compensation at least for that.
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Now, I’m not entirely sure what caused Patrick to write the letter, but I will suggest one concern. The fact that the US military is abusing the National Guard could be worrisome for recruiting (Reserves is another issue). If I were of enlistment age (I’m not) and knowing what I know now, I would be very reluctant to enlist in the National Guard. Maybe the state of Massachusetts should start its own quasi-National Guard system, separate and apart from the national system to service the needs of the state, with the enlistees not subject to being called up to federal service.
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Given the abuse of the National Guard and the Reserves by the federal government, if I were an employer, I would be reluctant to hire any member of either. Hire them one day, gone the next, and you have to hold the employment slot open for them.
know about our country’s military and how it compensates its members.
Briefly, the military uses a number of diferent clasifications to identify what the peceived “level of danger” might be for a service person and adjusts their adittional compensation accordingly. For example,
members of the US Army who are “paratroopers” and members of the Navy’s Submarine Service draw “hazardous duty pay” regardless of war or peace status for obvious reasons. People in active “combat areas” i.e. Iraq draw “combat pay”, etc.
As it has now been many years since Mr Clinton launched an illigitimate attack in the Balkans and the troops that have remained there all these years have long since transitioned from a “combat risk situation” to more of a nightly beer hall /bar fight risk /occupancy, then perhaps elimination of “combat pay” is appropriate. By the way, no one has heard Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid et al demanding troop withdrawals from Kosovo after 10 + years or have we missed something?
Your comment about the”abuse” of National Guard Units signals your ignorance as the majority of them have never been called up.
Also your comment about not hiring members of the National Guard because they might be called to serve our Country is offensive and disgraceful.
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If you’re going to live here, perhaps you might consider becoming a United States Citizen?
It’s like LGF with half the brains, & you can smell the desperation. Hey, Mitt’s gotta find some place to spend all that PAC money. Better to shore up the ‘home’ front. I hear that he’s paying them $4.35 per comment, plus breath mints.
It’s amazing that anyone makes use of Charles Johnson’s “web services,” considering what a wacko he is.
…”raj”?
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If you’re going to live here, perhaps you might consider becoming a United States Citizen?
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Get over yourself. “raj” are my initials, and I have used the same handle, or a variation thereof (“raj49” “rajmgk”) on every message board or comment thread that I have ever posted on. Conservative, liberal, or wacko. I’ve been a US citizen since the day I was born, which is probably since before you were born.
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I’d respond to your issues regarding military compensation, but you’re too much of a dunce to concern myself with.
no surprises….. personal attacks, nasty comments, the usual.
Been reading here awhile ( that which isn’t just garbage and there’s a lot of that). I read the appeal that the monitor Charley, made for some civility but that doesn’t appear to have done much good either.This thread has realy degenerated into a high school chat room populated by some very nasty people.
that you randomly assumed someone wasn’t a US citizen, and used that assumption to denigrate his comments. Turned out he was. Oops.
I have a little first hand knowledge of the situation in Kosovo as my son is serving there. Just to let you know, they don’t spend their time partying and drinking. They’re not allowed to drink AT ALL and must have a weapon with them at all times. There may not have been any troops killed by hostile fire there recently but that doesn’t mean they’re not in danger. Nobody wants to see our military in combat anywhere. However, they are there, there is danger and they deserve to be compensated. To assume that they’re not performing any kind of helpful mission over there and that they’re just there for the party is ignorant. Did you even know that we still had men and women over there? Did you know that there has been violence there recently? Thank God (am I allowed to say that?) that there are men and women in our country who are willing to do the jobs our military do. Without them where would we be? I would like nothing more than for my son to come home and all the sons and daughters in Iraq and Afghanistan too. Our military, especially the National Guard, should be here. It is unfortunate that we need a military at all, but we do. They are performing a job they were assigned to do and should be paid for that job.
of being deployed to Iraq.
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Among other things.
on this issue is here — MA isn’t the only state affected.
why not look at withdrawing some troops from Kosovo in the first place? Something tells me that withdrawing 1% of troop would save them far more money than downgrading the pay of 100% of troops there.
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Not only would they not have to pay salaries on that 1%, they’d also not have to feed them, clothe them, house them, etc. Supply chain costs are huge, and so reducing the demand at the very end of the chain has huge savings all the way back.
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I’m not advocating putting our troops or mission at risk by under staffing it — I’m advocating for reexamining why we’re there in the first place, and disengaging from the area if possible.
…American participation in Bosnia and Kosovo were actually as part of NATO missions there. Why they were NATO, I’ll never know*, but they were, and it is part of American treaty obligations to support them.
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*I’ll let you know that I objected to Clinton making the missions in both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo NATO missions, for a variety of reasons, primarily because it appeared to transform NATO from a defensive alliance (the operative section of the NATO treaty is section 5, which is clearly limited to defense) to an offensive one, without congressional ratification of the change.
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It is fairly obvious that, after the demise of the USSR and its client states, NATO was seeking a new mission (government programs never go away, do they?) and the Bosnia and Kosovo missions were part of that transition.
…Bosnia and Kosovo were and remain outside of territory covered by the NATO treaty.