Combat or Child Care?

[DaveDeVille]

...
i would imagine single fathers would also have to be considered as future " hardship cases ",
if this woman is allowed any special considerations by the Army...
hmmmm.

i'm sure it's not cool to quote yourself , but , i think a question needs to be asked ...

...
Maybe America is not so weak and desperate that separating a mother from her child is an acceptable cost of doing business.
...
IMHO YMMV

again , what about single fathers who have no real family to take care of their child ?

this might open a real can of worms , but , what are the odds that a male soldier
who just might not want to be deployed to war , might decide to have a child out of wedlock ,
{ with someone who agrees to his terms of single parenthood } and try to claim a hardship ?

without claiming to completely understand this womans' circumstance ,
also not claiming that she became pregnant to escape her duty
as a soldier ,
is he any less entitled to your sympathy than this single mother ?

just askin ' ...

 

[Chad Michael]

Maybe....

....I am going to assume that she is just a troubled service member that may need a little outside the box help in fulfilling her service commitment.

IMHO YMMV

I'm going to agree with Steve's post.

Here's the deal:

Unless you are / have been a parent (raises hand), and are / have been in active duty in a wartime situation, (raises hand)...

.. dont take it personal if you aren't taken seriously here in this thread.

 

[Steve]

Here's the thing, NOBODY KNOWS what the deal is.

Refusing to go right then and there is totally different from refusing to go ever.

I see no difference between a single male parent without options and a single female parent without options. Both IMHO should be provided with a suitable option or both would be entitled to some sort of deployment deferment. If that deferment takes the form of dishonorable discharge I expect that a parent who is unavoidably put in that circumstance would consider that a fair trade. I know I would.

How they got themselves into that predicament is an issue worthy of assessment as is how they get themselves out of it.

I'm sure none of this is new ground for the military and there are options available to the service member (and child) in crisis. Whether or not those options were presented to the soldier in question is unknown. She says they told her "though luck put the kid in foster care."

If that is in fact the truth of the issue, I fully support her "Bite me" attitude.

If on the other hand, she or any other service member is using their child as a human shield and anchor baby then they themselves by that very act are unfit parents and the baby should be in foster care. That frees them up to fulfill their service commitment.

In any case, I'll withhold judgement until the investigation is complete. It's an America thing. Innocent until proven guilty and all that garbage.

IMHO.

 

[DaveDeVille]

In any case, I'll withhold judgement until the investigation is complete. It's an America thing.
Innocent until proven guilty and all that garbage.

IMHO.

great post .... and i agree there are probably underlying circumstances that we haven't read about yet .

 

[Balog]

Breach of contract is breach of contract. Mitigating circumstances may lessen the punishment, but not the action. I'm a pretty big fan of people sleeping in the beds they've made.

 

[Chad Michael]

.... I'm a pretty big fan of people sleeping in the beds they've made.

Understood, but the child most certainly did not make the 'bed'. The child's future needs consideration here.

 

[Dr. Cheese]

NPR did a story on this situation that has made me a bit less sympathetic to the soldier in question. From what I heard, there is no indication that she made any attempt to tell her CO about her plight although her mother told her she couldn't take the baby a month ahead of time. I was also struck by the fact that once she was arrested, and the baby taken into Army child services, the grandmother hopped on a plane from California and got the baby the next day. The grandmother also suggested that the baby was mistreated in child services, something that came off as a cheap shot, IMO.

I'm leaning towards thinking that the young soldier just didn't want to go to Afghanistan. I don't blame her, but she did volunteer.

 

[Steve]

Her being a system gamer is every bit as likely as her being a system victim.

I find it pretty hard to believe that the military doesn't have a system in place to deal with something like this. It's hardly and unforeseen circumstance.

It's also easy to imagine that if she took her issue to her deployment officer, and that officer for whatever reason, chose to make her life miserable rather than just reaching into the desk drawer and handing her the proper form to fill out, that piece of information is going to be very difficult to nail down. It will be all "he said, she said" and probably a career killer for the deployment officer if it gets verified. Especially given the level of publicity.

As with most things, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. It'll come out sooner or later.

In any case, She certainly doesn't appear to be the sharpest knife in the mess hall does she?