Replies

What's the incentive to stay in the Reserves especially if your a small business owner or have to take a pay cut during deployments.

Part of me says they need to suck it up and deal with it - they knew the risks when they signed on. The other part me says that's very disrespectful of the service and sacrifices they have already made.

I think the bigger issue here, and I think many will gloss over it deliberately, is why hasn't the current President Bush, and the Republican Congress we've had up until recently done anything about increasing the size of the active duty military.

We can bitch about what the first President Bush did, and about what Clinton did, and we can pat outselves on the back for pointing out what they did to the size and strength of our military, but the current administration has been in office for many years now, and what I saw was them maintaining the status quo or worse. Hell, the Air Force, and I believe the Navy, even went through a RIF in the past few years, and yet we've had recruiting shortages in the Army (or very near it).

President Bush has had ample opportunity to make the case for increasing the size of the active-duty military, and has had ample opportunity to explain the need for such an increase to the American people.

We knew after 9/11 and our activities that started up in Afghanistan, that we were going to be fighting a war that is going to be manpower intensive. All of our high-tech equipment does us no good against an enemy who doesn't need electricity, who is willing to communicate using means other than radios, who can sleep or hide in a hut or a ditch or a cave - we have to put boots on the ground. Our enemies were not strangers - in many cases we funded them and helped them fight the Soviets in the '80s. We knew full well what kind of war it was going to be.

We then, for better or for worse, went into Iraq without having found Bin Laden, without having finished in Afghanistan. Whether it was a mistake made in analyzing intelligence, or we were out-right lied to by the administration or the administration was lied to by analysts, none of that makes any difference now. We have to play the hand we were dealt.

I do not believe the American people as a whole, have had it explained to them just what kind of war we are in - a war that has raged for centuries, a war that is going to be fought in the Middle East, Africa, and as we've seen with the bombings in Spain and England, and the problems in France, Germany, and Denmark, in Europe, and one that has already seen attacks in the US. This is a war without a forseeable end, and it's one that can't be fought with the push of a button. It's going to require a huge change in the way we think of traditional warfare. It's also going to require a change in the way we think about our border security, which runs contrary to what the GOP and businesses want - i.e. open borders.

This is a war with an enemy that will not stop until they are all dead or we are all dead or converted. They've fought this war for a thousand years, and will do so for another thousand.

The administration knows what kind of war this is, and they've done a piss-poor job of selling it to the American people, whether they think it will hurt them in the polls or whether they think the American people can or cannot handle it, for whatever the reason, it's been a piss-poor job the whole way.

Once upon a time, I used to think that President Bush understood this war, and knew that if we didn't fight it in Afghanistan or Iraq, that we would end up fighting it in the United States. I think maybe he still realizes that, but I also think he's let us down, in not only explaining it to the American public, but making provisions to fight it. I never really cared for Rumsfeld when he served under Ford, and I never really cared for him under Bush - I will give him credit for trying to turn the military around to an extend - he canceled some expensive programs that were just a drain on resources, and he recognized the need for a more mobile military, but he shares a little bit of the blame for some of the arrogance he displayed, both before and after the invasion of Iraq. He seemed flexible in some areas, but in other areas he was not, and what we need is flexibility in that position (and we may have it with Gates).

My apologies for rambling, but my point is, Bush has had ample time to make the case to the American people and to Congress that we need not only a major increase in our active-duty military, but that we need some kind of more formal declaration of war. He had a Republican Congress for many years, and did little to nothing about it.