Army prosecutions of desertion rise sharply; 'New subset' of deserter: traumatized, accomplished soldiers
 The United States Army is court-martialing and discharging deserters at a growing rate, The New York Times reports.
"Army prosecutions of desertion and other unauthorized absences have risen sharply in the last four years," writes Paul von Zielbauer for the Times, "resulting in thousands more negative discharges and prison time for both junior soldiers and combat-tested veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Von Zielbauer, who bases his assessment on Army records, says that the rising number of prosecutions is meant as a "a deterrent to a growing number of soldiers who are ambivalent about heading — or heading back — to Iraq and may be looking for a way out," according to several Army lawyers he interviewed.
"Using courts-martial for these violations, which before 2002 were treated mostly as unpunished nuisances, is a sign that active-duty forces are being stretched to their limits," Von Zielbauer quotes military lawyers and mental health experts.
Von Zielbauer notes that the increase in prosecutions is in line with what Army researchers already know: During war, desertions rise and the Army "tends to lower enlistment standards, recruiting more people with questionable backgrounds who are far more likely to become deserters," he writes.
One Army spokesman said that "the Army treats the offense of desertion more seriously" and military leadership "will take whatever measures they believe are appropriate if they see a continued upward trend in desertion, in order to maintain the health of the force."
The Times article notes that Army doctors and lawyers are seeing a "new subset of deserter" emerge in "accomplished soldiers who abscond reluctantly, as a result of severe emotional trauma from their battle experiences," writes von Zielbauer.
"It's not just that they don't want to be in a war zone anymore," he quotes a West Point sociologist. "We saw that a lot during Vietnam, and we see that a lot in the military now."
Excerpts from the registration-restricted article, available at this link, follow...
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"They are scraping to get people to go back, and people are worn out," said Dr. Thomas Grieger, a senior Navy psychiatrist. Though there are no current studies to show how combat stress affects desertion rates, Dr. Grieger cited several examples of soldiers absconding or refusing to return to Iraq because of psychiatric reasons brought on by wartime deployments.
At an Army base in Alaska last year, for example, "there was one guy who literally chopped off his trigger finger with an axe to prevent his deployment," Dr. Grieger said in an interview.
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Army studies and interviews also suggest a link between the rising rate of desertions and the expanding use of moral waivers to recruit people with poor academic records and low-level criminal convictions. At least 1 in 10 deserters surveyed after returning to the Army from 2002 to mid-2004 required a waiver to enter the service, a report by the Army Research Institute found.
"We're enlisting more dropouts, people with more law violations, lower test scores, more moral issues," said a senior noncommissioned officer involved in Army personnel and recruiting. "We're really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get people to join." (Army officials agreed to discuss the issue on the condition that they not be quoted by name.)
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