An article in the NYTimes today comments on events in Iraq bringing back imagery of the Vietnam conflict, what with river boat raids and sweeps through swamp and groves. What startles this Author contained in the Iraqi co-command response to American troops, expressing the same lackidasial attitude and resentment of American once observed in ARVIN forces in Vietnam. No one mentions it, but the day-to-day attrition of both American troops and Iraqi Army and Security personnel most reminds of Vietnam.
Is the Iraq war sapping America's military power?
Cautionary data and perspectives
Carl Conetta, Charles Knight, Melissa Murphy
Project on Defense Alternatives 22 October 2004
Only about 60 percent of American military personnel belong to warfighting units and are considered "expeditionary"; most of the rest constitute infrastructure support. Most of the troops stationed or deployed overseas belong to the expeditionary segment, and this implies that America currently has deployed overseas about 45 percent of its combat personnel.
Turning to the National Guard and Reserves: the proportion of their available strength currently employed overseas is unprecedented since the Korean war. In September 2004 a total of 170,000 reserve component troops were on active duty. More than 75,000 of these were deployed overseas, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan where they constituted approximately 40 percent of all deployed forces. These are not included in the numbers given above for active component forces deployed overseas.
combat assignments for Army troops have been extended from six months to a year or more, and average time between deployments has been cut. Guard and reserve tours have been extended, too.
Recent practice raises the prospect of two types of problems: first, a near-term decline in force cohesion and combat effectiveness while the military is still engaged in current operations; and, second, a long period of force recovery after current operations conclude. During this strategic "reset period" the capacity for large-scale military operations would be lower -perhaps significantly lower - than it was during the pre-war period.
Army Forces for
Homeland Security
Lynn E. Davis, David E. Mosher, Richard R. Brennan,
Michael D. Greenberg, K. Scott McMahon, Charles W. Yost
Prepared for the United States Army
Approved
National Guard is not adequately prepared, because of focus on conventional wars
Improve National Guard’s HLS capabilities by providing DoD Title 32 funding and improved sharing of state assets. Active-duty component (AC) is not available quickly enough or adequately trained to respond to large-scale domestic .emergencies
Dedicate brigade for rapid reaction, rotating between AC and National Guard (3,600 soldiers)
Law enforcement combined with available Army counterterrorism capabilities cannot
meet demands of future terrorist attacks. Create rapidly deployable and dedicated AC combating terrorism force (6,200 soldiers). AC cannot respond adequately to largescale
domestic emergencies, because significant numbers are deployed overseas.
Give National Guard primary responsibility for HLS activities by creating dedicated rapid-response regional civil support battalions (8,900 soldiers). Units critical for HLS in U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) are not available because they are deployed overseas, not ready quickly
enough, and prohibited by statute from conducting all missions.
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting
Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
by Peter G. Peterson http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/peterson0804.pdf
2004 * 242 pp. * New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux * $24.00
Presentation of the book and discussion at the Institute for International Economics,
August 9, 2004
a billion dollars a week for just two divisions in Iraq conducting "stability operations".
Some quick factoids. The CBO, which is after all under Republican control, has
looked at our budget estimates for the next 10 years for defense and said they should be
at least 18 percent higher or a trillion dollars more than the official estimates. And they
remind us that the official budgets have no provisions for any wars. They also have no
provision for additional troops, which 54 out of 61 members of the House Armed
Services Committee have proposed. Were we to meet the criticism of having a tendivision
army to meet our 12 decision priorities, the personnel-related expenses alone
would come to about $40 billion annually.
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Our Military is being fragmented and demoralized by all the Mission Objectives assigned to it, especially the war in Iraq. National Guard and Reserve troops are deployed upon emergency, not turned into Regular Force complement at the whim of Politicians. Such troops lose life-long chosen occupations from the continual deployments, while the Threat level and resultant Stress injures family life.
It all costs too much, but refusing to expand the regular complements to assure adequate rotation stands as the height of irresponsibility. Civilians cannot be expected to perform indefinitely as regular troops, nor can they be expected to perform domestic and foreign deployment roles at the same time. We need to establish Priorities, and the highest Priority must be exit from Iraq. lgl
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