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"It's a mother beautiful bridge, and it's gon
Interesting editorial in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Tapped-out U.S. military must regroup
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/22/2004
The Bush administration has committed this nation to a strategy that our military cannot implement, not in the long run. We either have to change the strategy or change the military, and most likely we have to change both.
The evidence for that mismatch is overwhelming. When we are putting men such as 68-year-old John Wicks of Decatur, Ala., into a uniform and sending him off to war overseas, when more than 40 percent of our manpower in Iraq are National Guard and Reserve units not designed or trained for such duty, when we are forced to strip 3,600 troops and their accompanying tanks and artillery from a touchy Korean Peninsula for service in Iraq, when we have to scrape up another 5,600 troops from the ranks of those who had already left the military, and when -- despite all that -- we still have insufficient personnel to pacify either Iraq or Afghanistan, something has gone awry.
More ominously, the long-term commitment of roughly 140,000 troops to Iraq has left us little capacity to deal with the rising challenges of Iran, which is clearly seeking a nuclear capability and has real as opposed to imagined ties to al-Qaida, and of North Korea, which apparently has already achieved nuclear status. While a military response to such challenges would be the last of our choices, it would be useful to at least have that option available as a way to nudge those two regimes to negotiate.
Furthermore, the situation we face is not temporary. Army chief of staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker warned Congress this week that the U.S. military faces "a foreseeable future of extended conflict in which we can expect to fight every day," a pace that has already taken a toll on our personnel and their fighting ability. And as we've learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, occupying and trying to rebuild failed states where terrorism festers is always going to be manpower-intensive.
Within the Pentagon, that reality has inspired a rethinking of mission and goals, a process jump-started by an internal memo from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last fall. In that memo, which somehow leaked to the public, Rumsfeld noted that the Department of Defense "has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces" but now faces a different sort of enemy. "Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip and focus to deal with the global war on terror?" he asked his top staff.
Perhaps the most sobering assessment of what lies ahead has come from recently retired Col. Douglas MacGregor, one of the military's leading intellectuals and a harsh critic of the outcome of our invasion of Iraq.
"We must face facts," MacGregor told Congress last week. "Saudi Arabia may be reaching the end of its fragile existence. Iran is in a race to develop and field nuclear warheads for its already impressive arsenal of theater ballistic missiles and cruise missiles in the hope that it will be positioned to pick up the pieces if we just leave. A nuclear-armed Pakistan could lurch openly into the Islamist camp on very short notice. Back off now, Iraq will ulcerate and regional order will eventually disintegrate. The oil may well stop flowing from the Persian Gulf and chaos could infect the whole region, producing a global economic disaster."
If we lack the manpower to handle that challenge, the decision to fight an ill-chosen war in Iraq is only partly to blame. For years, leaders of both parties preferred to invest in expensive, pork-laden weapons systems rather than military personnel. Before Sept. 11, the Bush administration had planned to cut personnel even further, and even now it resists a permanent manpower increase. And unfortunately, our arrogantly unilateral approach has given our allies all the excuse they need to refuse to contribute significant troops of their own, a reality unlikely to change even under a Kerry presidency.
In the heat of a national election, it is impossible to honestly debate the difficult and potentially explosive choices we now face. But the question will not go away, and in fact will insist on being answered.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ä Jay Bookman is deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Thursdays and Mondays.
Tapped-out U.S. military must regroup
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/22/2004
The Bush administration has committed this nation to a strategy that our military cannot implement, not in the long run. We either have to change the strategy or change the military, and most likely we have to change both.
The evidence for that mismatch is overwhelming. When we are putting men such as 68-year-old John Wicks of Decatur, Ala., into a uniform and sending him off to war overseas, when more than 40 percent of our manpower in Iraq are National Guard and Reserve units not designed or trained for such duty, when we are forced to strip 3,600 troops and their accompanying tanks and artillery from a touchy Korean Peninsula for service in Iraq, when we have to scrape up another 5,600 troops from the ranks of those who had already left the military, and when -- despite all that -- we still have insufficient personnel to pacify either Iraq or Afghanistan, something has gone awry.
More ominously, the long-term commitment of roughly 140,000 troops to Iraq has left us little capacity to deal with the rising challenges of Iran, which is clearly seeking a nuclear capability and has real as opposed to imagined ties to al-Qaida, and of North Korea, which apparently has already achieved nuclear status. While a military response to such challenges would be the last of our choices, it would be useful to at least have that option available as a way to nudge those two regimes to negotiate.
Furthermore, the situation we face is not temporary. Army chief of staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker warned Congress this week that the U.S. military faces "a foreseeable future of extended conflict in which we can expect to fight every day," a pace that has already taken a toll on our personnel and their fighting ability. And as we've learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, occupying and trying to rebuild failed states where terrorism festers is always going to be manpower-intensive.
Within the Pentagon, that reality has inspired a rethinking of mission and goals, a process jump-started by an internal memo from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last fall. In that memo, which somehow leaked to the public, Rumsfeld noted that the Department of Defense "has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces" but now faces a different sort of enemy. "Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip and focus to deal with the global war on terror?" he asked his top staff.
Perhaps the most sobering assessment of what lies ahead has come from recently retired Col. Douglas MacGregor, one of the military's leading intellectuals and a harsh critic of the outcome of our invasion of Iraq.
"We must face facts," MacGregor told Congress last week. "Saudi Arabia may be reaching the end of its fragile existence. Iran is in a race to develop and field nuclear warheads for its already impressive arsenal of theater ballistic missiles and cruise missiles in the hope that it will be positioned to pick up the pieces if we just leave. A nuclear-armed Pakistan could lurch openly into the Islamist camp on very short notice. Back off now, Iraq will ulcerate and regional order will eventually disintegrate. The oil may well stop flowing from the Persian Gulf and chaos could infect the whole region, producing a global economic disaster."
If we lack the manpower to handle that challenge, the decision to fight an ill-chosen war in Iraq is only partly to blame. For years, leaders of both parties preferred to invest in expensive, pork-laden weapons systems rather than military personnel. Before Sept. 11, the Bush administration had planned to cut personnel even further, and even now it resists a permanent manpower increase. And unfortunately, our arrogantly unilateral approach has given our allies all the excuse they need to refuse to contribute significant troops of their own, a reality unlikely to change even under a Kerry presidency.
In the heat of a national election, it is impossible to honestly debate the difficult and potentially explosive choices we now face. But the question will not go away, and in fact will insist on being answered.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ä Jay Bookman is deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Thursdays and Mondays.
