I was reading the twenty-fourth paragraph of a war story in the Washington Post Sunday when the sentence jumped out at me: “If the Pentagon does deploy into Iraq all the troops currently scheduled to go, almost half the combat power of the Army and the Marine Corps will be in Iraq.”
That’s an uncomfortable thought, for four reasons:
Reason number one – it seems likely to happen. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says troops are flowing and will continue to flow into Iraq. Tired troops at the front need relief, long supply lines need security, more food, more fuel, more ammunition need to be moved from rear to front, Iraqi civilians in areas under U.S. control need humanitarian aid.
All those tasks require troops, as will the long post-war period, because – reason number two – the U.S. military appears more vulnerable than it did two weeks ago. Our civilian leaders shot off their mouths about “shock and awe” and Saddam’s regime collapsing like “a house of cards.” With those imprudent and boastful words, Don Rumsfeld and Richard Perle handed Saddam Hussein a bigger psychological victory than the Republican Guards ever will. Now, as the number of Iraqi civilian deaths rise, another kind of “shock and awe” sets in. Each civilian death will make Iraq more difficult to manage in the post-war period. Average Iraqis have plenty of cause to hate Saddam, but that doesn’t mean they want the U.S. to take over. Many Iraqis, particularly those in the Shi’ite south, have bitter memories of being abandoned by Americans after they rebelled against Saddam in 1991.
Reason number three – if half of America’s ground troops are committed to war or occupation in Iraq, what does that mean for other global hotspots?
The U.S. Army is already on the ground in Afghanistan. Those forces, and the government of President Hamid Karzai, have come under attack since the beginning of the Iraq invasion. Most of the country is under the control of warlords and renegade attacks, from what might be a resurgent Taliban or Al Qaeda, are on the rise.
Further to the east, Pakistan and India both tested nuclear-capable missiles in the past few weeks. There have been raids across the line of control in Jammu and Kashmir and bombs on trains in Bombay.
The Palestinians versus the Israelis, China versus Taiwan, nuclear-armed North Korea versus the rest of the Pacific Rim. I don’t need to repeat the whole grim list, it’s all too familiar to us by now.
Late last year, when the North Korean rumblings were just beginning, Don Rumsfeld said the U.S. is capable of fighting two wars at once, by which he meant Iraq and North Korea. We now know Mr. Rumsfeld woefully underestimated the number of troops needed to topple the Iraqi regime; it’s reasonable to assume his reckoning on the Army’s capacity to fight two wars at once is similarly flawed.
What does that mean for us at home? It means more soldiers leaving home, more reservists called up to cover duty on the home front. Employers are required to hold jobs open for reservists on active duty, but as weeks turn into months and months to years, that becomes a burden for employers, especially if the jobs held open require special skills.
The other alternative is the draft – and that’s reason number four. Congressman Charles Rangel floated the idea of reviving the draft a few months ago and Mr. Rumsfeld shot it down, first putting bullet through his own foot. Some people in the military are saying the Iraq war may drag on until summer. If it does, expect to hear more talk about a draft.
Just like the bombs that fall on Baghdad, the shock waves from this war are pushing out in every direction – across the Muslim world, through international politics and onto the American home front.
Shock Waves
I was reading the twenty-fourth paragraph of a war story in the Washington Post Sunday when the sentence jumped out at me: “If the Pentagon does deploy into Iraq all the troops currently scheduled to go, almost half the combat power of the Army and the Marine Corps will be in Iraq.”
That’s an uncomfortable thought, for four reasons:
Reason number one – it seems likely to happen. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says troops are flowing and will continue to flow into Iraq. Tired troops at the front need relief, long supply lines need security, more food, more fuel, more ammunition need to be moved from rear to front, Iraqi civilians in areas under U.S. control need humanitarian aid.
All those tasks require troops, as will the long post-war period, because – reason number two – the U.S. military appears more vulnerable than it did two weeks ago. Our civilian leaders shot off their mouths about “shock and awe” and Saddam’s regime collapsing like “a house of cards.” With those imprudent and boastful words, Don Rumsfeld and Richard Perle handed Saddam Hussein a bigger psychological victory than the Republican Guards ever will. Now, as the number of Iraqi civilian deaths rise, another kind of “shock and awe” sets in. Each civilian death will make Iraq more difficult to manage in the post-war period. Average Iraqis have plenty of cause to hate Saddam, but that doesn’t mean they want the U.S. to take over. Many Iraqis, particularly those in the Shi’ite south, have bitter memories of being abandoned by Americans after they rebelled against Saddam in 1991.
Reason number three – if half of America’s ground troops are committed to war or occupation in Iraq, what does that mean for other global hotspots?
The U.S. Army is already on the ground in Afghanistan. Those forces, and the government of President Hamid Karzai, have come under attack since the beginning of the Iraq invasion. Most of the country is under the control of warlords and renegade attacks, from what might be a resurgent Taliban or Al Qaeda, are on the rise.
Further to the east, Pakistan and India both tested nuclear-capable missiles in the past few weeks. There have been raids across the line of control in Jammu and Kashmir and bombs on trains in Bombay.
The Palestinians versus the Israelis, China versus Taiwan, nuclear-armed North Korea versus the rest of the Pacific Rim. I don’t need to repeat the whole grim list, it’s all too familiar to us by now.
Late last year, when the North Korean rumblings were just beginning, Don Rumsfeld said the U.S. is capable of fighting two wars at once, by which he meant Iraq and North Korea. We now know Mr. Rumsfeld woefully underestimated the number of troops needed to topple the Iraqi regime; it’s reasonable to assume his reckoning on the Army’s capacity to fight two wars at once is similarly flawed.
What does that mean for us at home? It means more soldiers leaving home, more reservists called up to cover duty on the home front. Employers are required to hold jobs open for reservists on active duty, but as weeks turn into months and months to years, that becomes a burden for employers, especially if the jobs held open require special skills.
The other alternative is the draft – and that’s reason number four. Congressman Charles Rangel floated the idea of reviving the draft a few months ago and Mr. Rumsfeld shot it down, first putting bullet through his own foot. Some people in the military are saying the Iraq war may drag on until summer. If it does, expect to hear more talk about a draft.
Just like the bombs that fall on Baghdad, the shock waves from this war are pushing out in every direction – across the Muslim world, through international politics and onto the American home front.
Hold on, it’s coming your way.