Activations in The War On Terror
Until the War on Terror, members of the Individual Ready Reserve had not been called up since Operation Desert Storm. A major difficulty in activating the IRR stems from the fact that many of its members, typically those from the junior enlisted ranks, are unaware that they are even in the military. This results from such members typically being informed that they are "discharged" upon release from active duty when in fact they have been transferred to the inactive reserves. To solve this situation, many military separation transition courses now spend additional time explaining the nature of the inactive reserve. As of 2005, the military also began to enact "IRR Musters" which were once a year occurrences where an IRR member would be required to report to a military base, confirm their personal and contact information, and sign acknowledgment paperwork that they were members of the IRR.
The military has encountered isolated incidents of IRR members who "disappear" and cannot be located or IRR members who refuse to mobilize, stating they were advised that they were "out of the military". This normally has little impact on benefits obtained following release from active duty, but can lead to a less-than-honorable discharge from the reserves.
Read more about this topic: Individual Ready Reserve
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or terror:
“Our young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which not only adds to the national honor but uplifts a nation and develops patriotism and courage. That is all true. But it is only fair, too, to let them know that the garments of the deity are filthy and that some of her influences debase and befoul a people.”
—Rebecca Harding Davis (1831–1910)
“The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)