CLAIMS OF "NOT FAIR"

And they are right...it probably isn't.

But then, "fair" isn't listed in the contract.

Glued to the stock of Army Sgt. Benjamin Kaye’s M-16 is a photograph of his 10-month-old daughter, Brittany.

She has blond hair, blue eyes ... and spina bifida, a condition in which her spinal cord is underdeveloped...

A Red Cross letter arrived in February and Kaye completed the form to return home. But his battalion commander, Lt. Col. Christopher Holshek, denied the request. Despite more queries to return home, intervention by the Red Cross and an end to major combat, Kaye remained in Iraq...

Kaye’s plight is like many others deployed as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Emergency leave, according to troops in the field, is inconsistently applied across the theater.

Troops say one soldier is allowed to fly home for the death of a grandparent, while a 20- year-old servicemember whose wife needs surgery for cervical cancer is denied a week off to be at her side...

A spokeswoman for U.S. troops in Iraq said granting leave requests varies from soldier to soldier based on that soldier’s job or the current operations.

“Emergency leave is a commander’s program, meaning the unit commander is the level of authority that grants leave,” said Army Lt. Patricia Vencill, a spokeswoman for the U.S. military directorate in Iraq that handles personnel issues. “The program varies from branch to branch, and individual cases vary from unit to unit.”

To me this is another case of folks needing to watch their lanes.

Certaiinly your heart goes out to this guy...but there is a bunch we don't know.

We don't know if this soldier is of some critical value to his unit and the operation in Iraq.

We don't know how many soldiers in his unit area already on emergency leave to be with loved ones on their death beds.

We don't know exactly what the soldier's being at home will accomplish/solve/change nor how long it will take to accomplish/solve/change it.

We don't know just how engaged his unit is, versus the others.

Perhaps most importantly we don't know how does one equate a sick child with a dying grandparent, with a house lost in the Southern California fires.

Which is precisely why the Army leaves these decisions up to local commanders. The commander has the authority to make these decisions and is expected to use that authority wisely.

Because at the end of the day, while it is nice to see to everyone's personal needs, the Army hired the commander to see to it that the unit accomplishes its mission.

And if you will trust an old colonel here...the logical result of a large group whine on the subject of "fairness" of emergency leave will be a one-size-fits-none policy that eliminates more leave possibilities than it includes.