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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (55711)	7/22/2004 12:55:31 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793624

How lucky can we get? Lucky enough to elect a President who has the will to do something about it, I hope.

To: unclewest who wrote (55711)	7/22/2004 2:14:27 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793624

The percentages deployed are interesting. Fix the military, but do it right. Posted by McQ I've been troubled by all of this "we need more troops in Iraq but we don't have enough to send more" talk. For whatever reason, it just didn't sound right to me. So when I read this today, I did a little digging: "The Army is stretched dangerously thin," Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, in a hearing on Wednesday. "We are growing the Army as fast as we can," General Schoomaker said later in the hearing. Well OK, that's great General Schoomaker. But here's my problem. At the height of Vietnam, 1968, we had 550,000 troops there. True we also had an active force of 3,550,000. But the percentage committed to Vietnam was 15% of the total force. Right. So fast forward to Iraq. We have 130,000 to 160,000 there out of a total force that is significantly smaller (1,423,348 as of Dec, 2003). But when you look at the percentage of the force committed, its only 9 - 11%. The question then becomes "why was 15% sustainable in 1968 and 10% isn't in 2004?" A couple of reasons. Back in 1968, we had much more ground combat power than we do now. That was because of the Cold War and Vietnam. We had to maintain our Cold War forces in Europe while we also fought a hot war in Vietnam. So more of the total force was made up of ground forces than other forces. Secondly, since the end of the Cold War, we've expanded our military's presence through out the globe. And while some of these missions are only comprised of 3 or 4 personnel, we have military representation in 149 countries including the US and its territories. Now that will spread your forces thin when your end strength is 1,423,348 for the entire military. Lastly, we played "peace dividend" with our military at the end of the Cold War and essentially gutted them thinking there weren't any foes left worthy of that size military (hello, China?!). That was a mistake. We also came to believe, mistakenly in my estimation, that our technology could be used in lieu of ground combat power. Much the same thought process was adopted by intelligence agencies. Both were wrong. So what's the solution? Obviously, grow the military as Gen. Schoomaker has said they're doing. But do so in a way that addresses the ground combat power deficit. In other words, as anacronistic as the infantryman may seem in today's laser-guided war era, he's still the only part of the military which can take and hold ground. Secondly, put some of the sustainment capability (combat service and service support) back in the active military. It doesn't all (nor did it ever) belong among the reserve components. Not if we're going to fight a War on Terror which will require long deployments. But when this is done, keep the teeth-to-tail ratio lean. More teeth and just enough tail to sustain and support them. Third, give up some of the high tech weaponry ... at least for the time being. While its important to keep the technological edge, it may not be as important to have 10 squadrons of F-22 Raptors than it is to have 10 divisions of infantry light fighters. Maybe instead we go with 5 squadrons to fund the 10 divisons. Lastly, cut our troop strength in Europe drastically. Get them out of there. Shift some to the east if we must, but there is absolutely no reason to continue to subsidize Europe's defense when they are quite capable of doing so themselves. Time to make they pay their way. Same with Korea. qando.net