IRAQ: National Guard and Reserves in Play
13 December 2006 6:00 am by Taylor Marsh
IRAQ: National Guard in Play
UPDATE (11:50 a.m.): It\’s ESCALATION. Yessireee, ESCALATION. The Pentagon wants more troops for Iraq.
I\’ve talked about this for a very long time. The reality is finally here.
With the announcement that Mr.
Bush will not unveil his plan to move forward in Iraq until after the holidays,
it\’s clear what is about to happen.
The elections changed the Congress\’s complexion. Now the Congress, which comes
in January 2007, needs to change the course, because Mr. Bush will not do it
on his own.
But now it also looks likes the military is going to ask him for something
that will leave the U.S. further out on a national security limb. It doesn\’t
get more serious than this. Our current course in Iraq dictates this strategy,
unless of course someone in the new Congress stands up and pushes back hard.
The Army and Marine Corps are planning to ask incoming Defense Secretary
Robert M. Gates and Congress to approve permanent increases in personnel,
as senior officials in both services assert that the nation\’s global military
strategy has outstripped their resources.In addition, the Army will press hard for \”full access\”
to the 346,000-strong Army National Guard and the 196,000-strong Army Reserves
by asking Gates to take the politically sensitive step of easing the Pentagon
restrictions on the frequency and duration of involuntary call-ups for reservists,
according to two senior Army officials.The push for more ground troops comes as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
have sharply decreased the readiness of Army and Marine Corps units rotating
back to the United States, compromising the ability of U.S. ground forces
to respond to other potential conflicts around the world. …(snip)
According to Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle
East, the Army and Marine Corps today cannot sustain even a modest increase
of 20,000 troops in Iraq. U.S. commanders for Afghanistan have asked for more
troops but have not received them, noted the Iraq Study Group report, which
called it \”critical\” for the United States to provide more military
support for Afghanistan.\”We are facing more operational risk
than we have for many, many years,\” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member
of the Armed Services Committee. He called it \”shocking and scandalous\”
that two-thirds of Army units are rated \”non-deployable.\” He said
the country has not faced such a readiness crisis since the aftermath of the
Vietnam War. …
Technically, this is not a draft. But it\’s definitely drafting Army
National Guard and Army Reserve units into combat in which they likely had no
intention of ever serving. Combat fine print matters. The other issue is that
if we stay in Iraq this must be done. We can\’t sustain our presence without it.
Woven into this reality is our lack of readiness to combat a flare up in any
particular region of the world. No doubt this is something our enemies know
all too well. We\’re not ready to handle anything outside of Iraq. Just look
at Afghanistan, which has been slipping out of our control for a very long time.
Iraq has not made us safer.
Iraq has made us more vulnerable.
Iraq has also stretched our military beyond what it can handle.
So now Iraq is causing us to tap into our last line of homeland defense, our
Army National Guard and Army Reserves.
Folks, we\’re in trouble.
Then there is the
Saudis, who are adamant against an American pull-out.
Where is Mr. Bush? Waiting in the wings until January 2007 to make a decision
on what to do. Our president is paralyzed. Meanwhile, our troops are caught in the middle of a sectarian civil war, because he can\’t make up his mind on what to do.
Republican Senator Gordon Smith is correct about Iraq. Mr. Bush\’s negligence
has become criminal.
