Again with This Bovine Excrement

I try to keep my formidable temper in check here, like a good little hostess should, but if you want to see my head explode, let some knucklehead uninformed person mention the Big George W. Bush Lie to me: the “AWOL” nonsense. In my comments section about “chickenhawks” from Sharon:

oh and George Bush: Air National Guard, managed to disappear for the last 18 months of his enlistment. Can you say AWOL?

So instead of being lazy and comparing the Big Lie to “the natural by-product of a bull's digestive system” (Thank you, Paul Jané), allow me to enlighten the woefully misinformed with a few facts.

AWOL stands for Absent Without Official Leave. You know what that means, right? Apparently, some don’t, so let me define it in--obviously necessary--a more plain English: it means that you are gone from your place of military duty without official permission. Who gives that official permission? Why, the commander of your unit, natch.

This works differently in Guard and Reserve Units than it does in Active Duty units. Since AD personnel belong to the military 24/7/365, you must have a darn good reason to be gone for longer than your accrued leave time (30 days per year; at least the last time I checked).

Since Guard personnel and Reservists are only required to be on duty for two days a month and only required to serve a minimum of two weeks of active duty per year, they don’t accrue leave. They also have more leeway when it comes to periods of absence. (This last depends on many things: job, manning level, mission, etc.)

Additionally, if the Guardsman/Reservist attends a service school--such as pilot training--during a given year, part of the time in school can serve as his/her two weeks of active duty or part of it can be used as the two days of duty for a given month.

Also, if a member has served enough time to retire and has applied to do so—six months between application and bye-bye date--he/she doesn’t have to come back to his/her unit at all after that (though I did).

And, on top of that, if the member wants to take an extended period of absence from his/her duty for any reason—family, school, work in a political campaign, or just because he/she needs a break—he/she can do it with the unit commander’s permission. That’s it. That’s all that’s required. Not a flocking act of Congress, not some monetary exchange in a back room somewhere.

I know this, because I did it. Yes, little bald-headed black chicks can take a break from the Reserves if they want to, just like rich white guys. And I kept my money--and my virtue, such as it is--in my pocket when I did it.

Ain’t America great?

So please peddle the AWOL shizam somewhere else. This is not the place.

MORE RANTING: Could someone explain to me how someone "dodges the draft" by joining the military? That's more than tortured logic. That's logic dropped into Saddam's People Shredder.

UPDATE: (February 4, 2004) To make any further comments on this post, go here.

Comments

[Paul Jané]

You've quoted me! *Blush* I am honoured, to say the least. :-)

And thank you for helping to explain how things really work, excellent post.

[baldilocks]

LOL. I've been waiting to use it. I knew that someone would provide me with the opportunity eventually. ;-)

[Indigo]

I LOVE IT!!! Now that you've explained AWOL in re Bush, are you ready to take on the can of worms surrounding Clinton? I'm sending you an email I received that raises a lot of questions for me.

[Serenity]

Way to slap them about with the Clue Bat (tm).

Now, if you would be so kind as to take out a full page ad in the NY Times and put this post there, I'd appreciate it.

[Mrs. du Toit]

heh heh. But but but... don't you know that if the facts don't agree with the meme, you simply change the facts! What's truth got to do with this?

It was a beautiful and concise explanation. If folks still don't get it, it's because their heads would explode and their lies and slander would begin oozing out their eyes and ears (not at all a bad image, if you ask me), their hair would miraculously appear combed, and their clothing would no longer smell like BO and patchoulli.

So since you're on a roll, wanna tackle the Cheney/Halliburton connection? You should just start a weekly lies and slander column. Explain how they really need to come up with some new material because these lies are older than Methusal... oh, however you spell it.

[McGehee]

Remember: you can't spell AWOL without AOL.

[triticale]

At the time GW joined the Guard, TANG was flying combat missions, and it is not likely that he could have known that they wouldn't be by the time he qualified.

Much is made of the notion that his father used political pull to get him this "cushy" posting. GHW had recently lost a senatorial bid; if he had any pull it was as a former combat aviator, which is much less offensive to the grunts.

[Jim Gierlach]

Dear Baldilocks,
Here is how to dodge the draft by enlisting (I did it in 1973); I was reclassified 1A after successfully passing the strenuous draft physical in Nov 1972 (turn your head and cough) and in January received the lucky 67 draft number (low is an opportunity to excel, high means you get to date the draftees girlfriends while they are at Basic Training). So I looked at what was going on in the world (Viet Nam still rolling, although with very few combat troops) and decided that the very worst thing that could happen to me would be to get drafted, trained as a clerk typist and sent to Ft Riley Ks. The home of dust, ennui and alcoholism. So I volunteered for Airborne Infantry at Ft Campbell in the (then) 101st Airborne Division. Which lead to a Ranger Bn, which lead to Special Forces, which lead to a commission which lead to... you get the idea.
As I look back, it was a fairly complicated (read- boneheaded) way to evade the draft, but I hate the cold so Canada was out, and Berzerkley wasn't going to hire me to conduct research into the lunacy of the socialists. And if I had to do it over, I would have asked for language training in 1977 and gone into SF anyway, not much different (in effect) than what I actually accomplished.
v/r
Jim

[Sharpshooter]

Ma'am, with all due respect, I THIMK that AWOL stands for Absent Without Official Leave. Maybe...

Me? Oh, I just decided that the draft wasn't about to get ME, and enlisted. For 4 so that I could receive a year of language training in Monterey, Calif, where I got to hear Janis at her first public venture at the Monterey Pop Festival!

But that didn't stop me from going overseas to stand the line between THEM and Sweet Liberty, which I stood, on mountain tops, in Korea, with my ears deeply into Communist affairs...

Which helped me to learn THAT and WHY it is important to protect our rights to assert dumb stuff...

And why, to this day, I treat the War on Terror as if it actually IS a war, and I have a small part carrying the Regimental Colors here, in just one of the many trenches worldwide, blogwide, from sea to shining sea, -oh! -sob!-

*snurff* (We return this diatribe to its normally-balanced contributors) :)

[TomCom]

Baldilocks

You're right on.

TomCom

Jim G.

With all due respect, if memory serves me after 35 yrs, I believe that "AWOL" stands for "Absent Without Leave" as opposed to "AWL", which stands for "Absent With Leave".

The confusion or the obfuscation arises because the term is used precisely in the Military & loosely elsewhere. E.G., in the phrase "Democrats who accuse Pres B 43 of shirking his Military duty are AWOL in the fact area."

In any event, those who accuse Pres B 43 of being AWOL, including, especially including, good civil libertarians who'd generally be among the first to tell us that someone is innocent 'til proven guilty, have the burden of proof with respect to this charge. It's an offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice & can get a perp some jail time.

To be specific, those who note that Pres B 43 was not with his unit for some period of time must come forward with some evidence (can you spell evidence, boys & girls?) that he was AWOL rather than AWL. Let me spell it out for Bush haters: Neither he nor anyone else has to prove that he was AWL; it's the other way around.

And I may be missing something, but I've not seen any evidence that Pres B 43 was AWOL, just lots of circular quoting of others who are engaging in the imprecise use of a term, in some cases innocently, in some cases not.

Also, some obfuscaters (usually trying to gloss over the complete absence of any form of Military service on the part of their guy) would have it that those of us who served only six months on active duty (plus in my case 7 1/2 in the reserves), were somehow AWOL from Military Duty. Cute.

TomCom