Replies to post #259737 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[StephanieVanbryce]

sounding like genocide ........

[niteowl]

Is the Army headed for collapse?

http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20070329-084334-9363r.htm

TODAY'S COLUMNIST
By Robert H. Scales
March 30, 2007


"If you haven't heard the news, I'm afraid your Army is broken, a victim of too many missions for too few soldiers for too long. Today we have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan all of our fighting brigades, both active and reserve. Every brigade save one in Korea has spent time in combat.

Twenty have two tours there, nine have three and two have four. Some of these brigades' one-year deployments were extended by several months. To demonstrate the gravity of the problem, let's do the math. After the surge the nation will need to keep 33 brigades, each consisting of about 3,000 soldiers, in the field. Past experience tells us that three brigades are needed to keep one continuously in the fight (one recovering and one training up to support each deployed brigade). The Army could in theory maintain itself in combat indefinitely using such a scheme.

From a human perspective, a three-for-one schedule would allow each soldier two years back for every year in combat. That is tough but sustainable. So, that means we need a total of 99 brigades to support 33 in the fight. Sorry to say, we only have about half that number available to the Army and Marine Corps.

The Army has paid an enormous price for too few brigades chasing too many missions. What the math tells us in practical terms is that today soldiers are getting a year off for every year in Iraq. Soon that period at home will shrink to only nine months home for every year deployed. It's important to understand what these back-to-back deployments mean in human terms.

Take a brigade with only nine months between trips to Iraq. Upon return, it will lose over half its soldiers due to rotations, school dates and soldiers leaving the service. The first three months back will be devoted to block leave so that soldiers can reunite with their families. The next two months are needed to assimilate new arrivals. At least two months are needed on the other end to prepare the brigade's equipment for the return trip to Iraq. That leaves only four months to train at the local level — too little time for a combat unit to bond and coalesce into a first-class fighting outfit.

Past experience tells us that it takes at least a year to build a first-rate small unit. Like a fine wine, making superb small units cannot be rushed. Commanders stay awake at night worrying that their companies and platoons will go to war as a collection of strangers. Nine months between deployments will guarantee this condition.

The time-between-deployment problem ("dwell time") has become so acute that Army planners, borrowing a phrase from Wal-Mart, are talking about "just-in-time deployment," meaning that units are being rushed through training to arrive in Iraq just in time. In the past, attendance at the Army's superb National Training Centers in California, Germany and Louisiana was supposed to be a finishing exercise where brigades topped off their skills in realistic and demanding maneuvers. Today, these centers are used to do the most basic skill training in order to get units in the best shape possible so as to arrive in combat "just in time."

Bean counters in the Pentagon tell us that Army recruitment and retention are in good shape. Problem is, our cumbersome readiness reporting system only informs leaders in Washington of conditions on the ground many months after the force begins to break. Today, anecdotal evidence of collapse is all around. Past history makes some of us sensitive to anecdotes and distrustful of Pentagon statistics. The Army's collapse after Vietnam was presaged by a desertion of mid-grade officers (captains) and non-commissioned officers. Many were killed or wounded. Most left because they and their families were tired and didn't want to serve in units unprepared for war.

If we lose our sergeants and captains, the Army breaks again. It's just that simple. That's why these soldiers are still the canaries in the readiness coal-mine. And, again, if you look closely, you will see that these canaries are fleeing their cages in frightening numbers.

The lesson from this sad story is simple: When you fight a long war with a long-service professional Army, the force you begin with will not get any larger or better over the duration of the conflict. For that reason, today's conditions are pretty much irreversible. There's not much that money, goodwill or professed support for the troops can do. Another strange consequence is that the current political catfight over withdrawal dates is made moot by the above facts. We're running out of soldiers faster than we're running out of warfighting missions. The troops will be coming home soon. There simply are too few to sustain the surge for very much longer."

Retired Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales is a former commander of the Army War College.
Deborah Simmons is away.

[PegnVA]

Thanks. All this and The Decider is now looking for a "war Czar" - 4yrs into HIS war game and he still doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

[teapeebubbles]

"....Even if Bush could find someone for this very bizarre job, what, exactly, would the person do?

As Kevin Drum explained, “We already have Secretaries of State and Defense, we already have a military chain of command, and we already have an NSC that’s supposed to coordinate all this stuff.

Does anyone truly think that a shiny new White House staffer with no budgetary authority, no bureaucratic support, and little in the way of institutional levers of control is going to be able to magically get everyone on the same page sometime in the next few months?...."

(recd via email news)

[niteowl]

'Surge' Architect Rejects 'War Czar' Job

"...It now appears that Bush is even having trouble finding a retired military leader to become “war czar.” Not even the guy who helped invent the “surge” wants the job."


http://www.consortiumnews.com./2007/041107.html


"The widespread doubts within U.S. military and intelligence circles that George W. Bush’s Iraq War “surge” can succeed were underscored when one of the plan’s architects, retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, was one of three generals to rebuff a White House offer of a new job dubbed “war czar.”

In December, Keane and neoconservative scholar Frederick Kagan promoted the idea of a U.S. military escalation in Iraq as an alternative to the growing consensus in favor of a phased withdrawal of Amercan combat forces.

At the time, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group was advocating a troop drawdown combined with a stronger commitment to training Iraqi forces and renewed talks with Iraq’s neighbors. But Bush bristled at the implied criticism of his work as “war president,” declaring: “This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever.”

Bush countered the momentum behind the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations by latching onto the Keane-Kagan “surge” idea. When the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the two commanders then overseeing the Iraq War, Generals John Abizaid and George Casey, resisted the “surge,” Bush ousted Abizaid and Casey and overruled the Pentagon brass.

In January, Bush unveiled the “surge,” which not only would send about 20,000 more U.S. combat troops into Iraq but called for stationing some of them in Iraqi police outposts throughout Baghdad. War critics accused the President of throwing away more American lives out of stubbornness and ego.

With the “surge” now about halfway in place, the U.S. military reports that the number of American soldiers who have died in and around Baghdad over the past seven weeks has nearly doubled. And that was before the renewed opposition from radical Shiites and the latest upswing in street-to-street fighting in Sunni neighborhoods.

When the summer temperatures start exceeding 100 degrees, the scattered American troops living in police stations will face other challenges, avoiding dehydration and staying supplied. One seasoned observer of Iraq told me that the idea of scattering U.S. soldiers to police outposts is madness.

Keane’s refusal to serve as a “war czar” who would coordinate administration policy in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is another sign of the doom and gloom that surrounds Bush’s latest plan.

The Washington Post reported that Keane was one of three retired four-star generals who declined the post. “It was discussed weeks ago,” Keane said in confirming his rejection of the offer.

Retired Marine Gen. John Sheehan was another four-star who rebuffed the White House. “The very fundamental issue is, they don’t know where the hell they’re going,” Sheehan told the Post. “So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, ‘No, thanks.’”

After getting calls about the "war czar" post from national security adviser Stephen Hadley, Sheehan said he checked around to get a sense of the administration's direction.

"There's the residue of the Cheney view -- 'We're going to win, al-Qaeda's there' -- that justifies anything we did," Sheehan said. "And then there's the pragmatist view -- how the hell do we get out of Dodge and survive? Unfortunately, the people with the former view are still in the positions of most influence."

The third general rejecting the job offer was identified as retired Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston. [Washington Post, April 11, 2007]

Three Branches

The rejection of the White House from representatives of three service branches suggests how prevalent the doubts about Bush’s war policies are. But Keane’s refusal to coordinate administration support for his own idea is perhaps most telling.

Many military and intelligence analysts see the “surge” as little more than an escalation of Bush’s “stay the course” approach that has led the United States deeper and deeper into the Iraqi quagmire, with nearly 3,300 American soldiers now dead along with possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

To these critics, the “surge” is less a change in military strategy – as Bush presents it – than a shift in political tactics, dangling a repackaged war plan before the American public to buy time so the President can secure another $100 billion from Congress with no strings attached.

So far, the major U.S. news media mostly has fallen into Bush’s trap by promoting every statement from Iraq that purports to show progress, much as happened during the early phases of the war when the administration’s happy talk went largely unchallenged.

The Washington press corps also hasn’t challenged Bush when he asserts that the “surge” is a case of him following the advice of his field commanders and that the Democrats are interfering with what the generals want.

The American people “don’t want politicians in Washington telling our generals how to fight a war,” Bush said at an April 3 press briefing, scolding congressional Democrats for seeking a gradual withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq.

The polite Washington press corps rarely notes that Bush was the politician in Washington “telling our generals how to fight a war,” that he simply removed senior commanders who disagreed with him.

It now appears that Bush is even having trouble finding a retired military leader to become “war czar.” Not even the guy who helped invent the “surge” wants the job."