This FAQ is related to Courage to Resist’s “Resisting Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) recall” published February 2009. If this question is of interest to you, please read our overview first.

It is possible, and it is the likely reason why we were the first to pull this information together in one place and to make it easily available.

There are some military rights advocates that would rather have kept this information low-key to be shared only with individuals who they directly speak to. This would have ensured that they had something helpful to tell IRR members, and there would be a smaller chance that the overall situation might change.

We decided that it was more important to inform as many members of the IRR as possible about their actual situation. This approach is also in accordance with our mission, “To weaken the pillars that maintain war and occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere by supporting GI resistance, counter-recruitment and draft resistance, which cuts off the supply of troops….”

Since publishing the overview, we have come to believe that the overall IRR situation would take an act of Congress to change—specifically, to amend the UCMJ to clearly extend jurisdiction to the IRR—not just a policy decision by the military. It should be noted that amending the UCMJ to cover members of the IRR would have far-reaching implications, to include freedom of speech issues, for years following someone’s discharge.