|
Implications of an IRR Recall
Just trying to make folks do some deep thinking |
The Love of My Life!
| Implications of an IRR Recall |
| 06.30.04 (2:18 pm) [edit] |
|
Today the Pentagon announced that it is going to call up retirees and inactive ready reservist from selected military occupational specialties in the Army. The word out is that those recalled can expect to be in Iraq and Afghanistan by December. This is a clear signal that the current military of the USA is woefully under strength to adequately serve the nation’s strategic needs. Military strength was greatly reduced in the early to mid 1990’s to bare bone levels. The rationalization for this was that the military was too expensive, the USSR had fallen - there are no real threats left, and the world is more at peace now than it has been in a century. In terms of military expense I defer to the Constitution of the USA; Atricle I, Section 8 (this is where the powers and responsibility of congress’ is defined) - It has eighteen articles of which six directly relate to issues of maintaining an appropriate military response and one additional article defines congresses responsibility concerning the rules of war. Why would over one third of these sections in the Constitution be directly related to military operations if it wasn’t a primary federal concern? I submit that military need is a foremost priority of the federal government and that it comes before other niceties this nation spends money on, but which have no reference as a constitutional requirement, such as free drugs, free lunches, social security and all the rest. Yes the USSR has fallen, but its remnants are still formidable and then there is China, North Korea and a plethora of other nations that have formidable military weaponry and less than cordial intentions. In terms of peace around the world, the fall of the Soviet Union was but an illusion; an evil empire or not, USSR influence stabilized a lot of general hostility - last time I checked there are roughly 138 wars and insurrections now taking place across the globe. The US is involved in a lot of NATO and UN peace keeping missions; perhaps we are just dumb enough to provide the core strength in these operations or smart enough not to trivialize the potential volatility of these situations and allow them to spread. A lot of the USA’s own citizenry seems to regard their country as war monger and bully because of its extensive involvement in so many fronts - in this regard I ask you to ponder this thought, perhaps many of the so called peaceful nations maintain a limited military and invest extensively in social expenditure programs because repeatedly throughout history the USA has demonstrated its goal is the assurance of world freedom and not imperialism; they know we will ensure the job is done. Perhaps it is better to be a premier military superpower fully capable of defending the collective peaceful needs of the world than it is to be a supper power (or less) among a world of nations which collectively or individually have the capacity to destroy the relatively peaceful existence North America has enjoyed for so many years. I’m not too bothered by the recall in itself, especially now that military service is voluntary and not compulsory; each person involved should have understood their commitment when they enlisted. However, I am bothered with the intent to put these folks on the frontline by December. This simply is not the way things are supposed to work in accordance with military doctrine; these folks should be replacing garrison troops who at the point of a recall of the inactive ready reserves should be National Guard members. The problem here is that there are no fresh combatant troops left. The active core of combatant and public affairs troops is so small that many of them are already starting their third combat tour since 9-11. Many of them left a combat zone only to be redeployed in such lovely settings as Bosnia, South Korea and other hostile places that have fallen out of the media’s limelight and hence they have become largely forgotten by the public. However, these deployments do require a large portion of US forces, almost equivalent to the total number of troops committed in Iraq alone. These troops are overused, under rested, and under trained because of repeat deployments and a lack of fresh replacements. So many times I have heard Donald Rumsfeld state that the nation is prepared to make as big of a commitment to Iraq as is needed, but the commanders tell him things are just about right. This is a political euphemism that equates to “There are no more troops left to augment with.” Because of inadequate numbers of servicemen, there is a distinct likelihood that the core of our current military will simply leave the service when the opportunity comes. No matter what these troops belief, passion or motivation was when they initially joined the military to serve their nations’ need, there does exist a limit of endurance in human spirit. Will the returned ones perhaps embraced the cause, but feel defeated all the same by the lack of their resourcing (timely replacements)? Will the un-anointed youth still join in sufficient numbers to fulfill the nation’s commitment when they sense the frustration of their returning older relatives and friends? It really is too late in this situation too fix it; be prepared for the draft to return next. The only real hope here is to get the troops collectively replaced in a relatively short period of time where our peace keeping efforts take place; I do not see this happening, because primarily Russia and China are the nations having the force necessary to accomplish this task; even if this was within their desires, this reality might be like having the fox guarding the henhouse. I would explain the problems of a rapidly expanding military force here as well; this task was a two hour block of instruction when I was a Noncommissioned Officers Course instructor - already there are some suggestions that my BLOG posts are too lengthy and verbose; just trust me when I say that rapid buildup of military force is not without consequence to its effectiveness. This effort needs to be accomplished at a relatively modest pace. I will just conclude my rhetoric by declaring that it is time to refocus on the constitutional priorities of our military, to resource the military realistically in accordance with the nation’s demands, and to insist that the media responsibly report tings in a balance fashion. I submit that there is less violence and death in Iraq now than there was before the coalition’s involvement, that before it was just Iraqi’s killing Iraqi’s so the world really didn’t give a damn as long as it wasn’t their people and the oil revenues kept coming in; but for some reason this wasn’t news. I submit to you a failure to stop Islamic radicalism will result in carnage in North America, Europe and many other places (take the Sudan as a prime example of my case here) to a degree incomprehensible to the average person. I for one will not be forced to face the east and pray five times a day. |
This free script provided by
JavaScript
Kit
Look Around You
