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Soldiers Risking Their Lives in Iraq Might Face Prison Over Child Support Upon Return April 9, 2003 by Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D. As America's servicemen risk their lives to protect their families and ours, the federal government is preparing to put them in jail. That's right; you heard correctly. Most societies honor their returning heroes. In America we punish them. Soldiers who ship off to Iraq risk not only their lives but arrest and jail when they return. Those who accept a pay cut to defend their country can be incarcerated when they are unable to pay the impossible child support burdens imposed on them by the federal government's divorce machinery. It is mind-boggling that servicemen who risk their lives to protect us will face arrest as they step off the plane. Yet this is precisely what happened after Desert Storm, and it will happen again this time. The federal government has issued the usual PR smokescreen, urging soldiers to contact their local child support agents to request a modification. But such requests are almost never granted. Child support fills government coffers with federal taxpayers' money. Governments have no incentive to give these soldiers a break and plenty of incentive not to. The Christian Science Monitor reports that a soldier whose domestic job pays $31,000 must pay $900 a month in child support. His reserve pay will reduce his income to $27,000. The Monitor neglects to point out that even at the higher pay, this is about half the man's take-home pay, and that he is likely to be living on less than $1,000 a month. Another father's child support comprises 73% of his income, leaving him $200 a month to live on. Do we really believe that these heroes are "deadbeat dads" who went to Iraq to avoid paying child support? If not, perhaps it is time we began to examine whether the entire child support system is anything other than a fraud. If these men are not "deadbeats," then who is? If these arrests are an abuse of government power, why are not all the others? Attempts to protect our civilization from external threats will be pointless if we allow it to be undermined from within. How long do we expect men to sacrifice their lives and livelihoods for their country when their government steals their children and uses those children to extort huge sums of money from their fathers? What kind of morale can we expect in our armed forces when the same
brave men who risk their lives to protect their families from invasion
by terrorists are powerless to protect their families from invasion
by their own government. Stephen
Baskerville Dr. Baskerville teaches political science at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from the London School of Economics. |
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