Guard bonus matter erodes trust

When I was a young officer in the Tennessee Army National Guard, I had confidence in my superiors to let me know what’s what. And my first responsibility as a commanding officer was to know what’s what for the benefit of my soldiers.

Without that relationship of trust, the military’s good order and discipline breaks down and the mission does not get accomplished. It’s essential that troops know that their superiors will give them good information, lead them correctly and point them in the right direction.

{mosads}I don’t understand all of the details involving the re-enlistment bonus program that has ensnarled the California National Guard. The Guard has always had re-enlistment bonus programs, lots of them, and they are all different.

But I do know that many of the soldiers caught in the ongoing effort to collect repayment of bonuses improperly obtained are guilty of nothing more than misplacing their trust. Perhaps this describes most of the nearly 10,000 Guard members thought to have possibly received money to which they were not entitled.

Certainly, not all of them fit in this category. There were, no doubt, some bad apples who knowingly misused the program designed to keep people in the Guard while the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were raging 10 years ago or so.

Those people should be identified and properly disciplined. Some already have been.

But most were acting only on the faith they had that superiors, who were supposed to be experts, had their best interests in mind and were steering them toward something that would be to their benefit and that of the Guard.

These soldiers, when identified, should be allowed to keep any money they received. And those who have already returned the money should be reimbursed—with interest—as long as they fulfilled their obligations. Not just in California and not just in the Guard, but wherever such problems are found.

And the Pentagon should ensure that any future bonus programs are outfitted with the proper checks and balances so that this type of situation does not arise again.

Look, we need these programs. They are a must for the Guard and a benefit to the taxpayer. The bonuses, in this case upwards of $15,000 to $20,000 for some, are a fraction of the cost of recruiting and training a new Guardsman.

And the targeting of the bonuses to certain military specialties, as this program did, only increases the value of rewarding a trained and experienced soldier for making the commitment to serve his or her country and state a few more years.

Let’s not pile on the California National Guard either. Its leaders have been trying for years to get someone’s attention about this matter. And they’ve offered their help to soldiers applying for a waiver to repay the bonus.

But the people who should not pay any price for this mess—the people who should not bear any of the burden of trying to repair this wrong—are the soldiers who trusted people who they were supposed to trust. They acted in good faith and should not be penalized.

The military cannot allow that bond of trust between its members and its leaders to be broken, or even stretched.

The cost of misplaced trust in this re-enlistment bonus issue is only money. But put those soldiers on the battlefield and have them wonder even for a second if their superiors know what’s what and the price is much, much higher.

That’s really what is at stake here.

The author is the president of the National Guard Association of the United States in Washington, D.C. He served from 2002 to 2009 as the Tennessee adjutant general.

The views expressed by authors are their own and not the views of The Hill.