Well here's the problem. There is no non-deployed base yet for the MC-12. So unless you are going to permanently deploy some poor bastard, you have to bring him home at some point and that means not flying the MC-12 anymore. They could change it to a remote assignment (year long) versus the current TDY (6 months), but they've chosen not to do that for whatever reason. That paradigm may change in the near future. As aircraft production continues, there is serious talk of finally being able to base MC-12s at a CONUS location, likely Beale if you believe press reports. That will help maintain specific MC-12 experience within that community as they would then have airplanes to fly when they came home. As for "the Air Force is out of skilled pilots and qualified volunteers..." that just ain't so. Not everyone who goes to fly the MC-12 may be a volunteer, but to say the AF doesn't have enough "skilled" or "qualified" pilots to fly it is a gross misstatement/misinterpretation of facts.
I know you wanted to fly, but believe it or not the AF isn't really that short on pilots in cockpits, especially operational ones. Those are mostly reasonably manned. I'm sure someone will come on here with a story about the low manning in their specific squadron and I'm sure there are many exceptions, but I'm talking about the big picture. Where the AF is wicked short is on pilots in non-flying billets that require a pilot (staff jobs, AOCs, etc). That's what makes the overall pilot manning low. It's tough to pull current, qualified pilots out of cockpits to put them on the staff when they could just try to get recall guys to go straight to the staff. Yeah, as in your case, they probably missed out on a few bodies who elected not to return after all when they saw the offer, but in the end they got all of the bodies they could accept anyway. The budget is unfortunately finite, regardless of actual needs.