Breaking the Army . . .

[CaptnKirk]

From the Washington Post

Since the Administration doesn't seem to pay attention to the Military,
and those in a position to remaain arrogant (Rumsfeld) in the face of facts,
this may end up doing more damage to our country from within than any
foriegn power could hope to accomplish through warfare.

And they are considering getting even more involved elsewhere.

 

[burnedout]

<----- Declined promotion and retired after 20 because of the tempo - pre-9/11.

"It would be the supreme irony, and a national tragedy, if after winning two wars in two years, the U.S. Army were broken and defeated while trying to keep the peace. Unfortunately, the risk that this will happen is all too real."

A national tragedy indeed. How unfortunate if something like this actually occured again.

What was once a proud, mighty army before the Vietnam conflict was reduced to little more than a hollow shell of itself thereafter. The decline resulted primarly from the Vietnam experience as well as the large commitment to Europe. Experienced NCOs and officers left the service in droves during the early-to-mid 70s. Discipline eroded so much that drug abuse, AWOL, desertion and internal crime became disturbingly commonplace. Morale, or lack thereof I should say, was little more than an abstract definition of basically going through motions.

Finally, sometime during the mid-1980s, was the US Army finally able to discard the bureaucratic and even dangerously ineffectual ghosts of McNamara, Laird, LBJ, Richardson, Schlesinger and the squarely removed Brown. Morale, pay, quality of life and retention rates increased. Once again, we felt good about what we were doing and who we did it for.

DoD and the policy makers in Washington really must do something about the tempo. They should have done something 7 years ago. Because of demographics, recruiting and retaining an All Voluntary Force or AVF becomes more difficult each year.

 

[Moonbeam]

The author's name is Michael O'Hanlon. That name just plain sounds treasonous. He writes for the Brookings Institution. I'll bet you 10 to 1 it's a Communist org.

 

[CaptnKirk]

O'Handlotion - Irish ! It's the IRA and their Terrorist tactics.

And we thought that terrists only wanted to go to Disneyland.

 

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: CaptnKirk
O'Handlotion - Irish ! It's the IRA and their Terrorist tactics.

And we thought that terrists only wanted to go to Disneyland.

There is no such thing as the IRA... thank you..

If there were such a thing we'd not use terror tactics...

 

[charrison]

Originally posted by: CaptnKirk
From the Washington Post

Since the Administration doesn't seem to pay attention to the Military,
and those in a position to remaain arrogant (Rumsfeld) in the face of facts,
this may end up doing more damage to our country from within than any
foriegn power could hope to accomplish through warfare.

And they are considering getting even more involved elsewhere.

The reserves are without a doubt being stressed right now, but it will soon get better.
The air force just recently ended its stop/loss(ie people can retire/leave the service now).
I keep hearing of units making it back home(rotation or just people coming home?)
Rumsfeild wants to have much less than 150k troops in iraq by the end of the year(hears hoping that we can do that)


Rumsfeild is also pushing real hard to make the forces more deployable. Many jobs in the airforce will likely be contracted out so, the everyone in the air force can go back to having a wartime roll. Rumsfeild is also trying to make sweeping changes to how and where our troops are deployed. It will be interesting to see how these plans work in the future.