During his presidential campaign, President Barack Obama said that his administration would work to make easier the lives of members of the military – in particular, those in the Reserve and National Guard.
Obama promised to "limit lengthy deployments to one year for every six years," to "restore the 24-month limit on cumulative deployment time" and to "end the 'Stop-Loss' program of forcing troops to stay in service beyond their expected commitments."
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates had made ending the stop-loss policy one of his goals when he took over his position in 2007, and he announced in March 2009 that the army would end the policy by May 2011.
Gates announced that he had made good on that promise at a June 2011 Senate hearing. "There are no Army soldiers stop lossed," Gates said.
Obama also promised to restore the military's 24-month limit on cumulative deployment time for members of the National Guard and Reserve. But Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, said current policy limits deployments to 12 consecutive months, and no more than 12 cumulative months in any five-year period.
But policy and reality aren't the same thing. And while that ratio hasn't been met, significant progress has been made.
In an Army Times article from June 2008, about six months before Obama took office, Lt. Col. Tim Pheil, deputy chief of the Army Guard's personnel program, said, "right now, we're averaging between one year mobilized and two to three years at home."
Almost three years later, George Casey, chief of staff for the U.S. Army, said during a March 2011 House appropriations hearing that the ratio had improved significantly. "I will tell you that beginning the 1st of October this year, given what we know about the projected demands…our Guard and Reserve units will deploy with an expectation of having…four years at home when they return," Casey said.
Weller said that actually measuring that ratio for every member of the guard and reserves is a near-impossible task, "but on the whole it's fair to say the system operates at 4-1." While that ratio isn't quite at the level that Obama promised, it does show a significant increase since Obama took office.
Taking a broader look at the three promises, the 24-month cumulative deployment limit is superseded by policy setting a limit of 12 months. The administration has ended the stop-loss policy and made significant progress on the dwell ratio. With the administration having made progress on all the elements of this promise, we rate it a Compromise.