I'm guessing it was a gaggle of idiot editors who decided this Washington Post article needed to get bogged down at the outset in an irrelevant semantic gotcha about whether Bush has ever said we're winning or losing in Iraq. They so much want him to say we're losing. Because that's what it's all about. Getting him to say that.
The actual news here is that President Bush wants to build the military over the next few years by as many as 70,000 troops. Too little, too late, but better late than never. This should have been done five years ago, when they could have doubled the size of the Army without Congress batting an eye, when they would have had eager recruits lining up around the corner.
It's been noted that more troops alone won't solve our problems in a multi-front, long-term unconventional war. However, we still need them. This was the lesson of the Rumsfeld years. If you want to go to war, you'd better have an army. We have needed more troops in Iraq. We have needed more troops in Afghanistan. We are headed for military confrontation with Iran and possibly Syria. Then there's North Korea, and don't forget China over the horizon. There is a lot that can be done with technology and Special Forces, but there is no effective replacement for the infantry and armor when it comes to (a) occupying someone else's country and (b) posing a credible threat of follow-on to airstrikes. Our enemies know we are hyper-extended, and they figure they can hide in a hole till the bombing stops. Though frankly, I doubt they think we even have it in us to start bombing at this point. Americans, it has been shown again, can't hang.
Now comes Bush, apparently in the process of developing a strategy to demonstrate that this is not true.
We are in a long war and the sooner everyone, most particularly the Democratic-controlled Congress, figures that out, the better off we'll be. This article has Democrats, John Kerry in particular, being all in favor of building the military, with the caveat that they don't want to actually use these troops. This foreshadows the for-it-while-against-it strategy we can expect to see employed against any progress in this war.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Having more troops is fine, and necessary.
However, we need to be able to deliver them where needed in a timely manner. This is something I've been grousing about for years. Our airlift capacity is marginal. It takes too damn long to put a substantial self contained intervention force on the ground somewhere.
If the target is relatively close to a coast, and the Marines got something like the Tarawa in the vicinity, they can hit pretty hard, pretty quick.
It its well inland out of chopper range, we're kinda limited to inserting a rather lightly armed group if it has to be FAST.
I'm thinking we need the airlift capability to plunk an armored brigade anywhere on the planet on 48 hours notice.
Its not like that gaggle of heavy lifters we'd need would be sitting idle either. They could be doing worldwide relief work, hauling UPS/Fedex excess freight, etc with the condition that when the balloon goes up that's the last run for a while.
If we're really in for a long-term war, shouldn't we first revisit the privitization of combat support services?
The plan was to save money during peacetime...it has turned into huge expense during wartime.
More people might take this war seriously if Bush stopped sending billions of dollars a month to his Texas cronies so they can supply our troops in Iraq with pizza at $100 a slice.
shouldn't we first revisit the privitization of combat support services?
How much are those govt pensions going to cost in the long run?
Privatization isn't always about near term cost. Its about elasticity. But moonbats wouldn't understand that...
Post a Comment