Posted on 11/19/2006 12:16:09 AM PST by MinorityRepublican
One welcome dividend of Donald Rumsfeld’s departure from the Pentagon is that the United States will now have a chance to rebuild the Army he spent most of his tenure running down.
Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t like lessons the Army drew from Vietnam — that politicians should not send American troops to fight a war of choice unless they went in with overwhelming force, a clearly defined purpose and strong domestic backing. He didn’t like the Clintonian notion of using the United States military to secure and rebuild broken states.
And when circumstances in Afghanistan and Iraq called for just the things Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t like, he refused to adapt, letting the Army, and American interests, pay the price for his arrogance.
So one of the first challenges for the next defense secretary and the next Congress is to repair, rebuild and reshape the nation’s ground forces. They need to renew the morale and confidence of America’s serving men and women and restore the appeal of career military service for the brightest young officers.
That will require building a force large enough to end more than three years of unsustainably rapid rotations of units back into battle, misuse of the National Guard, overuse of the Reserves and conscription of veterans back into active service.
Congress also needs to work harder at rebuilding the links between the battlefront and the home front that a healthy democracy needs. That does not require reinstating the draft — a bad idea for military as well as political reasons. It requires a Congress willing to resume its proper constitutional role in debating and deciding essential questions of war and peace. If Congress continues to shirk that role, expanding the ground forces would invite some future administration to commit American forces recklessly to dubious wars of choice.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
< and conscription of veterans back into active service.>
Nobody has called me....
One welcome dividend of Donald Rumsfeld’s departure from the Pentagon is that the United States will now have a chance to rebuild the Army he spent most of his tenure running down.
The simple scumbags at the dying New York Times are confused again - - it was, of course, Clinton who "ran down" the military by feminizing it, sending it into battle unarmed (Black Hawk Down), using it to pick up the garbage in Haiti, and turning it into a laboratory for social experiments.
I wish the New York Times would hurry up and die.
You're right about Clinton, of course, but it is noticeable that the military has been reshaped around special forces operations but not actually rebuilt to pre-Clinton levels overall.
They prepping us for a draft?
The NYT lies and spreads enemy propaganda.
The employees of the newspaper make it sound like Clinton had a policy -- but "notion" is probably the right word; to wit, "A fanciful impulse; a whim."
Remember "mission creep?"
Under the pressure of 24/7 CNN coverage of the horrors in Somalia the Bush administration relented and committed our forces to feed and help out.
The Clinton administration decided to "nation build."
Never mind, as one Internet source states, that "Defense Secretary Les Aspin and his deputies rejected sending needed tanks and armored vehicles to Somalia because they feared a political backlash would undermine their pro-United Nations policy, says a Senate Armed Services Committee report."
We know the results -- if we are to believe the reports on what OBL thought of Clinton's decision to cut and run the results include 9/11/01.
Absolutely.
The dems will have to draft, it will be impossible not to draft if they get there way ( and the whitehouse) and send us around the world distributing handouts in a attempt to bribe the hearts and minds of those who would sooner chop of our heads.
Plus and most importantly the left starting in darfur wants to turn africa into their next feel good welfare project. The hollywood types will promote it with gala events....our kids will suffer and die through it.
The "quagmires" have yet to begin.
Clinton is ancient history. We're talking about a current problem. We can only talk about the past for so long before we have to move on and accept responsibility for the current situation. Always pointing backwards in history is counter productive.
You are right about your assessment of the dedication and professionalism of the military, of course, and you're correct about the idiocy of the media's presentation of the battlespace, but there are two things in particular (at the tactical level) that MUST change in order to make this fight work:
1. The OPTEMPO must be changed. It can't be sustained as is. There are a lot of guys in my CO who would gladly redeploy more often to Iraq if it meant shorter periods. Many are getting out as soon as they can b/c they want to have families and live their lives. As it is now, they will miss easily a full third of their kids/wives lives if the OPTEMPO isn't changed. My wife and I want to have kids, too, but as it is now, it's almost impossible to realistically expect a family life. Either drastically lower the manpower requirements and turn more of the AO over to ISF, or lower the amount of time on deployment (i.e. 6 months).
2. We need to get serious with these terrorists/insurgents. This arresting and turning over to the Iraqis is absolute nonsense. Once caught, AIF need to be shot on sight. That will send a clear message that we aren't playing around anymore, and it will make the jihad a lot less fun for these guys. IA over here just caught three guys with weapons and handcuffs at a checkpoint. They admitted to going around fishing for kidnapping victims (who invariably end up dead). Instead of being shot, they're now hanging out in a detention facility getting three meals a day and being questioned (nicely). All AIF know that our ROE is pretty limited and they use our morality against us constantly. It needs to end. They need to be deathly afraid of us.
"I wish the New York Times would hurry up and die."
I have to agree. I gave up on it years ago, when I see my customer's (southern Cal.)unread copies in the trash, I think less of them.
I see they're clearing the way for Rangel's third attempt to push draft legislation through.
"They need to renew the morale and confidence of America’s serving men and women and restore the appeal of career military service for the brightest young officers"
______________________
The morale is fine and the officers are already some of the best and the brightest. What a bunch of BS.
These are the same folks throwing the ROTC off campuses... too much like sacrifice, if you know what I mean.
They should keep it at least for when the next punk with no home training decides he wants to shoot a school up.
It's time to freep the NYTs again.
They're repeating history... that's the point.
F the NYT
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