One way of maintaining higher military morale out in the deployment area and lowering the level of dissent in a deployed military force would be to allow individuals to opt out of service in a particular area in exchange for a reduction in pay. For example, instead of going to Iraq, a soldier could opt to stay home (and continue training) in exchange for a significant reduction in pay. Of course, if the military really needs all the personnel they can get, the military would have the right to order the dissenting soldier into the deployment area and resume payment at the regular rate.

A soldier has to have a very good reason based on some fundamental disagreement with the military mission to object to a military deployment. During the period of time that the soldier is permitted an absence from the original deployment area, that soldier must be forced to undergo an education process explaining why the mission has been approved by the government, what the goals are and the fact that everybody can’t always have their way and that when people work for others they must sometimes do things with which they may not fully agree.

For small scale military missions, such as Somalia, where only a small force may be necessary, perhaps the military could implement some sort of advertising campaign where individual soldiers or perhaps individual military units could sign up to form a special task force composed of people willing to participate in the mission. This type of setup may be unworkable because it would require strangers to rapidly get to know and trust each other. It would also leave several traditional military groups without some of their members. However, perhaps individual military groups could vote on whether they would like to join the task force, with the majority ruling.