General Says Army Will Need To Grow

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

[Man of the Right]

Thanks for the assessment. I think his tetimony was useful.

[Mr Rogers]

Both true and false. The military needs to get larger since this is a long term (10+years) commitment to make things work.

However, there are a lot of Army guys who have never deployed, and even more in the USAF. The USAF could cough up 20-30,000 a rotation indefinitely, IF we eliminated unneeded staffs and accepted some periodic degradation in operational unit C status (for lack of training).

My gripe with Rumsfeld and Bush both has been that they haven't been serious about winning. It has always required a significant commitment of manpower, money and mission priority. The USAF, for the most part, barely realizes we are at war. A handful of communities bear the brunt, while others do nothing.

As an example, I was recently told by an O-6 that the USAF didn't have the resources to conduct Humvee training for deploying troops. That is ridiculous - we have the resources, but we don't use them because it isn't important to the USAF mission - which seems to have become "We train, while others fight!"

[Mr Rogers]

Bush and Rumsfeld made a conscious decision NOT to expand the military. The USAF is looking to cut 40-60,000, and the Army has only recently been allowed to ask for more men.

GWB & Rumsfeld are responsible for the state of our affairs. 2006 is too late for blaming clintoon.

[Man of the Right]

Thanks for your insights which are consistent with common sense. The force structure represents a melange from the Cold War (and even WW II) past to the future. I suspect thousands of ground-pounders could be found among the ranks of the under-employed.

I've long been a fan of James F. Dunnigan. He taught me if you don't win promptly, the result is attrition. If you don't win a war of attritioin within a politcally acceptable time period, the result is defeat. Unlike 41 in Desert Storm, Dunya didn't control the media battlefield because of Al Jazeera. For 4 years we've been treated to the Car Bomb D'Jour. Voters long ago tired of it.

Colin Powell knew his Sun-Tsu: Never try to win on the cheap. Go in with a ridiculous excess of force and get it over toute de suite. Thanks to the so-called peace dividend, the Army and Marines lacked the infantry to do the job. Plans to add 20K troops is laughable. One additional light infantryman in March, 2003 would have been worth 100 now.