General Says Army Will Need To Grow

Washington Post ^ | December 15, 2006 | Ann Scott Tyson

[Man of the Right]

Iraq and Afghanistan Are Straining the Force, Chief of Staff Warns

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, issued his most dire assessment yet of the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the nation's main ground force. In particularly blunt testimony, Schoomaker said the Army began the Iraq war "flat-footed" with a $56 billion equipment shortage and 500,000 fewer soldiers than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Echoing the warnings from the post-Vietnam War era, when Gen. Edward C. Meyer, then the Army chief of staff, decried the "hollow Army," Schoomaker said it is critical to make changes now to shore up the force for what he called a long and dangerous war.

[kristinn]

I'm not kidding. It would help get Iraq calmed down a lot faster.

[Terabitten]

And soldiers in the Reserve or Guard have even more options, because they have civilian jobs that they can prioritize above military service. They're set to walk and all they need is some asshole telling them "Love it or leave it!"

I served as an infantry officer on both active duty and in the National Guard. Overseas deployments are a stone bitch for the Guard. A Guardsman is essentially 'deployed' away from home for the entire duration of the trainup (six months, usually) AND the deployment (12-18 months), whereas active duty soldiers are only away from their wives and kids for the duration of the actual deployment. Additionally, the families are scattered all over the place, unlike active duty families.

The Guard was NEVER meant to be employed the way it's being employed today. It was meant to be activated for the duration of a war, then deactivated until the next war - not called up every 24-36 months because there aren't enough active soldiers to do the mission. The Army, in particular, is going to face a serious crisis if it doesn't realign the Guard's mission with reality.

[SJSAMPLE]

I don't see it.

People who kill US soldiers will act friendly one day and dig up their rifles at night. The people that want to help us will only do so if they know that we aren't leaving the job unfinished. They may be relatively uneducated, but they probably know enough about what happened after we pulled out of Vietnam.

[Terabitten]

Schoonamker has only 90,000 Reserves who have not served the statutory maximum 24 months in Iraq or Afghanistan. After that, presumably we call up the Campfire Girls.

Honestly, the best solution IMHO would be the WWII model - activate every swinging rickey in uniform, and call up all the folks who left service in the last, say, 5-10 years to handle all the stateside stuff.

It's a war, dammit. We have to commit to using all necessary force to win decisively.

[SJSAMPLE]

100%

I left AD and became a Reserve Artillery officer (1992-2001). I didn't have any family, so the deployments were a welcome diversion from my daily grind. But they were misery for those guys with wives and kids. I can't imagine how the current crop is making due, but I've seen some real stress among some of them.

[meandog]

Poppycock. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the rationale for providing free defense for our allies has perished. Withdrawing that protection would require them to fend more effectively for themselves, which means more military spending on their part. That doesn't leave room for a trade war with us.

I'm not arguing that the free defense aspect has perished but just how do you propose we shirk our treaty obligations? There are many, many, many German and Korean civilians working for the Defense Department abroad, there are many more towns (Frankfurt, Kaiserslautern, Bremerhaven, Darmstadt, Bad Toelz, Bamberg, Garmish, Heidelberg, Schweinfurt, Stuggart, etc.) dependent on Army economic infrastructure. (You might notice how foreign bases always complain the loudest during BRACs) And, should we break our pledge to Korea, what's from keeping it from breaking its pledge not to flood the world with cheap staples and goods? That's my point!

[Terabitten]

But they were misery for those guys with wives and kids. I can't imagine how the current crop is making due, but I've seen some real stress among some of them.

heh... I left AD for the National Guard in mid-99 and started the trainup to go to Bosnia in early 2000. I got back home 2 weeks after 9/11. My then-wife handed me divorce papers in the car on the way home from the airport.

[meandog]

I agree. The President of the United States told Congress and the American people that Saddam was close to possessing nuclear weapons. I figured he had to have had better intelligence that I did, so naturally I supported the invasion. I remember the Vietnam fiasco. I hoped we learned something from it. I was wrong. Bush cast himself as Johnson, and Rumsfeld as McNamara. In order to win the War on Terrorism, we need more skillful people in office.

Concur, but the consequences of losing Iraq are far more dire than the domino theory of Vietnam.

[Perdogg]

We have

66,418 in Germany
11,841 in Italy
30,983 in Korea
42,600 in Kuwait
10,752 in Great Britan
35,571 in Japan

198,165 total

[PISANO]

Yeah your right it's Bush's fault.

Eight years of the military being decimated at the hands of Clinton/Gore had little to do with it.

The people of this nation and we conservatives scream about the 'deficit' with LITTLE knowledge of what it would cost to rebuild, update existing equipment AND start manufacturing NEW equipment....WHILE trying to expand the ALL VOLUNTEER force and trying to recover economically from a recession and 911 and then prosecute WAR on TWO FRONTS and rebuild and democratize a nation that doesn't have the foggiest idea of what democracy is!!

It is just easier to BLAME BUSH and his SECDEF for NOT doing something while what they are doing is never quite good enough and always WRONG!!

[Sam Cree]

"Now his creativity and room for political manuever is at an end. His successors will have to clean up his mess."

There were valid reasons for going into Iraq, IMO. I always thought the main one was just to create another victory against a radical Islamic state, and thus another victory in the WOT, another demonstration of why you don't mess with America. A demonstration that would go a long ways toward discouraging other terror groups from perpetrating another 9/11 or worse. Much worse is the fear, I believe. Saddam was a clear danger to the civilized world, so taking him out was something of an obvious step. I'm sure Bush hoped for an entirely new face on the Middle East once this was accomplished.

Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, probably politically correct reasons, irregular radical Islamics, some allied with Al Qaeda, have been able to resist our forces, and we are now on the verge of retreat. I hope W can pull a rabbit out of his hat now, because if he can't, this adventrue will have, instead of cowing terrorists, given them a great victory. Instead of being safer from them, we'll be in greater danger. Instead of a more pacified Middle East, we'll have a nuclear one, possibly dominated by our enemies, the Iranian mullahs. We'll be looking forward to WMD's being set off in our cities, with all the ramifications that come with that, wrecked economy, possible martial law, end of our way of life, etc.

W's the president, so he'll have to bear most of the blame, or get most of the credit, for whatever consequences ensue.

[Man of the Right]

U.S. forces would be more effective as a force-in-being in Kurdistan, Kuwait and elsewhere than tied down trying to maintain their Main Supply Routes to Baghdad International Airport and to Kuwait.

If pulling U.S. combat units out of Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle is in the U.S. intereest, we should do it. If not, we should stay. That's the litmus test.

We lost the Vietnam War but won the Cold War when Ronald Reagan developed a strategy for winning it. He didn't invade Eastern Europe and the Soviet Uninon: He exploited the failure of Communism to bring about its demise. Today, Vietnam is America's fastest-growing export market excluding China.

There is a useful lesson in Iraq.

[Irisshlass]

But we already spent the Peace Dividend.

I thought it was suppose to go back to the American people?

[Man of the Right]

Warfare has changed since World War II. Unless we want World War II-level casualties we will want to rely on trained troops to fight our years. It takes years to produce trained infantry and at least a decade to train officers and cadre. Most important, there is no political support to reinstitute conscription. The War on Terrorism will be won by communicating an attractive vision for Muslims, not by employing Christian and Jeewish Americans to invade Muslim countries. Clearly, we are in a very early stage of this war, with the Iraq campaign as a serious misstep for Republicans.

[Steel Wolf]

I'm not arguing that the free defense aspect has perished but just how do you propose we shirk our treaty obligations?

To do what, exactly? We can meet our NATO obligations from here. If an ally is attacked, we can come to their aid. South Korea won't fall to the North, and our planes and Navy are never far. Our obligations to protect others if they are attacked doesn't mean we NEED troops anywhere; we negotiate that with the host government on a case by case basis. Japan is the only real exception, and even they are slowly outgrowing the need for us.

We'll come to any of our allies aid, but to propose that we're being blackmailed into either guarding them personally or else face economic retaliation isn't reasonable.

[Irisshlass]

Marines I have spoke to disagree with that. I was told with a 100,000 more men they could of swept that country and been done with it. And those in Washington were more interested in fighting the war using technology than men and firepower.

[Terabitten]

Warfare has changed since World War II. Unless we want World War II-level casualties we will want to rely on trained troops to fight our years. It takes years to produce trained infantry and at least a decade to train officers and cadre. Most important, there is no political support to reinstitute conscription.

I didn't make myself clear. I did not intend for any reinstatement of conscription, quite to the contrary. The military doesn't want, or need, conscripts. However, we do need to make the absolute BEST use of the soldiers we have.

[colorado tanker]

We need additional combat brigades

Agreed. IMHO, Rumsfeld's handling of the Army is one thing he got wrong. We've also wasted (so far) billions on the future combat system while suffering equipment shortages.

I agree with those who favor fighting the GWOT primarily as a special forces war using local assets to the maximum extent we can. But when we decided to eliminate the Iraqi army, we took on the primary role of defeating any insurgency, because it takes years to recruit, train and bloody an army from scratch.

[Steel Wolf]

The Guard was NEVER meant to be employed the way it's being employed today. It was meant to be activated for the duration of a war, then deactivated until the next war - not called up every 24-36 months because there aren't enough active soldiers to do the mission. The Army, in particular, is going to face a serious crisis if it doesn't realign the Guard's mission with reality.

That's exactly why General Schoomaker's warning is so dire. He's basically stating that in order to keep the Active component up and running, we're going to have to stick it to the Reserve components. If you have to sacrifice one or the other, ruining them is the lesser of two evils. That's the bottom line. Reservists and Guardsmen already have one foot out the door, by virtue of their jobs, and you can only break so many promises before the other foot joins them.

Destroying our reserve capability may be a short term necessity, but it's going to cause us some real long term problems.

[Man of the Right]

I agree.