July 17,
2008: In the last five years, the U.S.
military has had about 30,000 deserters. A deserter is anyone on active duty
that is away from their unit, without permission, for more than 30 days. About
half of them were army. However, about half the troops on active duty during
that period were army. In the last year, the army lost nine soldiers per
thousand to desertion. That's twice as many soldiers as were lost to combat
(dead and seriously wounded). Desertion is the largest cause of losses in the
military, larger than combat, and non-combat, deaths and serious (resulting in
medical discharge) accident injuries.
The navy
actually has a slightly higher desertion rate. While the navy has suffered far
fewer casualties than the army, the fleet has been at sea for longer periods
since September 11, 2001, and that tends to wear you down. The marines have
about the same desertion rate as the army, and the air force has a much lower
one. None of the combat, or time-at-sea stresses in the air force.
All of the
services see desertion as a failure of someone to adapt to military life. For
example, most of those who desert and say it's "because of the war" have never
been in combat or been exposed to combat stress. They just don't want to be in
the military anymore. It's long been a problem, even after the U.S. went
all-volunteer in the 1970s.
During the
Vietnam war, there were years where the desertion rate was more than three
times what it is now. Part of that was due to the use of conscription, mainly
for the army. Since the end of the Vietnam war, only volunteers are accepted
for the military, and the main problem now is people who have problems adapting
to military life. The current war has
meant that about 60 percent of army personnel will end up in a combat zone.
That tends to be a high stress situation for some, and that often results in
desertion. But most deserters just don't like military life, and are not smart
enough to scam their way to an early discharge.
Another
aspect of desertion is that, if you walk away, the military won't come after
you. It's not worth the effort. Of course, deserters are cut off from veterans
benefits (a substantial part of the overall compensation package), and your
name it put on the national fugitives list. If you encounter the law and they
run your name past this list, you will be arrested for desertion. But even with
that, only five percent of current deserters are court martialed and officially
thrown out of the military each year. Back in the 1990s, only about two percent
of deserters were caught. But since September 11, 2001, national criminal
databases have gotten more thorough, and heavily used. So more deserters are
being found.
When a
deserter is caught, he (it's usually a he) is turned over to military police.
The deserter is then returned to their unit, where the punishment ranges from
loss of rank and dishonorable discharge, to that, plus up to five years in
prison. The most common punishments are at the low end, although in the last
few years, there have been more cases of deserters being shown leniency, and given
another chance to complete their enlistment.
Those
arrest warrants for deserters never expire, and some Vietnam era deserters are
still getting picked up. They get the same treatment as deserters of more
recent vintage. Fleeing the country does little good. Nearly all foreign
countries, including Canada, refuse asylum to those who volunteered for
military service, and then just walked away. Canada, for example, has a
volunteer military as well, and understands that there other ways to get out of
the military besides just walking away. Canada has begun returning U.S. military
deserters who were unable to obtain legal immigrant status up north, and had
claimed political asylum because they were deserters.