Who will protect us if our Army breaks, if our force structure breaks down?
It's not going to be George W. Bush. It sure isn't Dick Cheney, who never misses an opportunity to tell another whopper about Al Qaeda. It's not the Iraq war cheerleaders who want to continue to build up and break down our Army and Marines. Oh, and it's not our National Guard either, because there's yet another deployment in their future, too. At some point the chickenhawk cheerleaders need to face that the constant redeployments are putting our basic protection structure at risk. If another conflict flared could we respond with an Army that is ready? The answer is an unequivocal no. This happened under Bush's watch and during the Republican 109th Congress, but it is continuing in the 110th, but not because of the Democrats who are working all angles to stop this war. Unfortunately, Bush, the Republicans and some Democrats don't understand the toll their lack of courage to stop this war is taking on our soldiers.
The other challenge is for the military soldiers themselves who sign up and our proud to serve their country. But when the mission creep has expanded to a place where no one knows why they're fighting, the stress on the soldiers multiplies exponentially. Let's also remember that soldiers have families. I know that seems like a dumb statement, but these men and women are not automatons, they are human beings. No doubt you've seen the video above many times by now. It's playing out in reverse over and over and over again as the Iraq war build up continues.
At what cost to our Army? These policies will come back to haunt and maybe even hurt us all. What the war is doing to our Army and National Guard is stark when explained through video.
The Army's rush to carry out President George W. Bush's order to send thousands of additional troops more quickly to Iraq is forcing two of the five new brigades bound for the war to skip standard training at Fort Irwin, Calif. These soldiers aren't getting the benefit of participating in war games on the wide Mojave Desert, where gun-jamming sand and faux insurgents closely resemble conditions in Iraq. "Given the new policy of having troops among the Iraqis," says Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon personnel chief, "they should be giving our young soldiers more training, not less." Zeimer's mother was unaware of the gap in her son's training until TIME told her about it on April 2. Two days later the Army disclosed that Zeimer may have been killed by friendly fire. "They're shipping more and more young kids over there who don't know what they're getting into," Janet Seymour said quietly after learning what her son had missed. "They've never seen war other than on the TV."
The truncated training--the rush to get underprepared troops to the war zone--"is absolutely unacceptable," says Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and opponent of the war who chairs the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. A decorated Marine veteran of Vietnam, Murtha is experiencing a sense of déjà vu. "The readiness of the Army's ground forces is as bad as it was right after Vietnam," Murtha tells TIME. Even Colin Powell--a retired Army general, onetime Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Bush's first Secretary of State--acknowledges that after spending nearly six years fighting a small war in Afghanistan and four years waging a medium-size war in Iraq, the service whose uniform he wore for 35 years is on the ropes. "The active Army," Powell said in December, "is about broken."
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Today half the Army's 43 combat brigades are deployed overseas, with the remainder recovering from their latest deployment or preparing for the next one. For the first time in decades, the Army's "ready brigade"--a unit of the famed 82nd Airborne Division primed to parachute into a hot spot anywhere in the world within 72 hours--is a luxury the U.S. Army cannot afford. All its forces are already dedicated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Repeated combat tours have "a huge impact on families," General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told Congress in February. Those deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan more than once--170,000 so far--have a 50% increase in acute combat stress over those who have been deployed only once. And that stress is what contributes to post-traumatic stress disorder, according to an Army study. "Their wives are saying, I know you're proud of what you're doing, but we've got to get out of here," says Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general.
Bob Geiger has the new developments on the Feingold - Reid fight. Keep pushing. Our national security and the health of our Army and Marines depend on us.
Today on MSNBC they couldn't find a Republican to debate the war issue with the Democrat (in the 11:00 hour). Republicans can run to their Easter or holiday break, but they cannot hide from their dereliction of duty, which is to not only send our soldiers into harm's way, but to also bring them home with the mission was long ago done.