Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by Tim F| 29 Comments
This post is in: War, General Stupidity
You learn something new every day:
Army Secretary Pete Geren on Thursday ruled out extending troop deployments beyond the current 15 months, saying that longer tours in Iraq put stress on soldiers and their families, and have contributed to an increase in suicides.
Someone proposed extending tours beyond 15 months? Cripes. We might as well give the troops Iraqi citizenship and call them a faction.
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[…] The most important election in years — and I’ll have no impact on it August 23rd, 2007 — Ned Raggett Part of me wants to get some long lingering thoughts on Iraq out of my head today, but after yesterday’s speech and all the attendant and generally expected reactions I feel ever more frustrated and annoyed. As it is, the admittedly all-too-obvious headline I was going to use in part has already been done via Tim F. at Balloon Juice today so probably that’s a good thing. […]
myiq2xu
Good thing they didn’t enlist “for the duration” or they’d never be coming home.
srv
All these folks who believe W’s crap that God said everyone deserves a Jeffersonian Democracy. If you’re a Xtian who believes that, then get off yer ass and get ‘er done. I’m sure we’ll all be happy to take up a collection for you and your families airfare to Baghdad.
Tayi
I’ve come to the conclusion that the current administration doesn’t think soldiers are actually people. They think of soldiers as equipment, and don’t understand why soldiers need a break from constant alertness in order to be in top shape when Humvees and machine guns don’t need to sleep.
It’s going to be an awful shock to Bush when historians start writing about how he single-handedly destroyed the military power of one of the greatest nations on earth.
Nikki
Dubya doesn’t care what the historians say ‘coz he’ll be dead.
MBunge
Of course someone proposed tours longer than 15 months. Read my lines. George W. Bush plans on keeping well over 100,000 American troops in Iraq until he leaves office. MAYBE, he’ll let the number drop down to pre-Surge levels but that’s it. If you’re committed to keeping that level of troops in Iraq, you’ve got to find some way to pull it off.
Mike
Punchy
You better believe that “exception” was to become the norm.
Jake
Sure, and you can bet they folks who went against the idea will want credit for being so nice.
That would explain why Bush continues to use them as props during his speeches.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the Admin. thinks soldiers are stupid. After all, the leaders of this Admin. are two arrogant shits who got out of the draft during ‘Nam. Imagine how they view the poor SOBs who signed up.
Heh.
Either that or Bush thinks the war is a really neato video game and all he has to do is hit the Reset button.
Dreggas
180000 lives bitches!!!
Pb
Sen. Dick Durbin sent out a statement about his recent trip to Iraq that included this anecdote:
Somehow the “family values” “support our troops” Republicans forgot to run that particular advertisement…
r€nato
This surprises you?
r€nato
hey, they were stupid enough to enlist, they knew what they were doing, so quit whining.
/wingnut
HyperIon
i saw Scott Horton on CSPAN recently (yesterday on Washington Journal?). he was very good. measured in his responses. full of facts.
during a discussion of “where do the troops come from after march 2008”, some wacko repub called in to say that it would be a no-brainer to sustain the surge. simply recall anyone who had served in Gulf War I but was not currently on active duty. i IMMEDIATELY thought of one John Cole. this fellow seemed so pleased with himself. jeez.
Tax Analyst
The clowns who blithely added three months to what was already an arduous, dirty and dangerous 12-month tour are the same ones who claim folks who oppose the war are harming the morale of the troops. I can only imagine how demoralizing it was for the soldiers to find out about the extension to 15-months. I wonder how many troops will lose their lives in months 13 through 15 of their tour. I don’t think one can be placed in that type of stress situation for that length of time and not have some form of negative affect on your senses and state of mind.
Bush has NEVER given one shit about the soldiers except as stage props for his precious posturing as “Commander-in-Chief” in photo op’s. They are just toys to use up in his silly little ego game.
Mike
Can’t the War Czar just issue a new regulation that says that extending troop deployments do not put stress on soldiers and their families?
rachel
He never cared what historians said. If he had, he would have had an inkling it would be better not to go into Iraq in the first place.
jake
Shorter fuck head: Anyone but me! [change pants]
Did flipnut sound anything like Bush?
Just wonderin’.
JWW
There was a time,
Since you all seem to be a cast lot of asses, before Vietnam, you went to war and stayed. The longer a soldier stayed on the field of battle, the better he became. You, walk, crawl and run. You don’t become wise by seeing a glimpse, you become wise by living.
I don’t see WWII or Korean war vets, and many fought in both wars, having the “social disabilities” we see today. They are our parents and grandparents. Do you see that they are mentally disturbed. They remember every day, they seldom talk about it, they did what the nation asked them to do. Then, when it was over they came home, found a job and raised you.
Lupin
@ JWW
Someone with better google skills than I might want to do the research, but I’m pretty sure the average tour of duty during the Korean War was under a year — same for WWII?
I could be wrong, but I think you’re wholly mistaken in your assumptions.
merlallen
Korean War, one year. My dad was there.
Tulkinghorn
Man did my parents’ generation drink a lot. I have seen a fair bit of mental illness from those guys, a lot of sustained depressions and delayed trauma. The fact they shut up and never talked about it is a sign, to you, that they were OK?
jake
Stop talking about our asses, perv!
Zifnab
So you were in a war that occured before Vietnam, and you’re speaking from personal experience? Did you serve in Korea? WW2? The Civil War? The Battle of Bunker Hill?
Yeah, you’re right. Those were the good old days. When men charged in on horseback, and generals weren’t afraid to use a little thing called mustard gas. Armored Humvees? Back then a soldier was lucky if he had a helmet and warm pants. That was the sort of warfare that built character.
And what ever happened to the time-honored tradition of military impressment? Why, when JWW was a boy, they’d just round up all the bums and layabouts off the street, put the boys in uniform, and send’m off to fight the Hun, or the Yankees, or the Redcoats. The army was your welfare service. Military pensions were your social security. Army doctors provided all the medicare and medicaid you could ask for.
Those were the good old days.
Punchy
Here’s the thing–I wouldn’t want to spend an extra 3 months in HAWAII, away from my family and friends, if I was a solider.
Now consider that not only is this hotter, drier, and with much less surfing and tanning than Hawaii, but they must thank God each nite that they’re simply alive and not made into 523 pieces of flesh.
I cannot imagine those at the 11.9 month mark told to buck up for another 90 days. And really, not knowing if that would be extended as well.
fester
JWW said at 11:20 the following and revealed his historical ignorance:
If he actually did any research, he would note that the typical US Army Infantry division in WWII spent less than 300 total days in a combat theatre, and even then the typical division saw significantly less combat time and contact with the enemy than that. For instance in the ETO, the 82nd Airborne Division was in contact during the Normandy campaign, and then withdrawn for rest and reconstitution until Op. Market Garden. Eisenhower had a policy of pulling divisions offline and bringing them to Paris for rest and reconstitution on a regular basis, so soldiers and units could actually de-stress and reform.
Now let’s move onto the Army’s experience in Vietnam between 1965 and 1968 when the Army was still primarily a volunteer force that was motivated to fight. The US experience was that individuals soldiers were dangers to themselves and their platoon due to their tactical ignorance in the first month of deployment, a danger to themselves in the second and third months of deployment. Between the third and ninth month, soldiers were skilled and learned enough to be very effective, and then saw a massive drop-off in effectiveness as their year tour came closer to an end. And this was in an environment where units could and would be pulled off the line on a regular basis into relatively secure base camps and green zones.
So you have a combat efficiency curve … steep learning curve initially, followed by a gradual decrease in rate of more effectiveness, a plateau or a peak for a while, and then a drop-down due to exhaustion. The US Army has seen that a year of contact and constant patrolling is on the downslope due to exhaustion side of the curve, so the fifteen months should also be on the same side of the curve.
Geoduck
Technically, Humvees and machine guns do need to “sleep”, or at least rolled in for maintenence. Or they break. It’s not as horrible as grinding the soldiers down, but BushCo is wearing out all the army’s equipment as well
jake
Unless the soldier is in vehicle when it craps out or using the gun when it jams, then it amounts to the same thing.
I know what you’re trying to say, but this Administration seems to think that the soldiers can patrol on foot, armed with sticks.
If WWII had been conducted this way the place would be the Greater Shared Territory of Germany & Japan
ES
There have been rumors for at least four months of the deployments being extended from 15 to 18 months, and the shocker is that the units who just got bumped up to 15 months were probably to get another 90 days of ‘fun and sun’. GEN Casey has been one of the more vocal military leaders discussing this – at least he has been honest and open about what the military has been facing.
On the flip side, now that deployments are going to be capped, how will men and women be rotated into the Sandbox to meet the troop level? Shorter time at home between deployments. Geren says it in the article that he wishes Congress would keep out of relegating how much time soldiers are to spend at home.
Speaking of the bend-but-don’t-break policy, here is an article by uber-pundit Dan Riehl –
http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2007/08/so-much-for-gen.html
Quote – “What a bunch of cowards are, apparently, the Joint Chiefs. I don’t mean cowardly in the sense of wanting to avoid a battle in Iraq by suggesting a draw down to protect the over all health of the military. But because if the only way to protect your military is to not use it when needed, then the problem lies somewhere else. And none of our politicians, nor it would seem, our top Generals, have the courage to fight that battle. “
Phoenician in a time of Romans
I know what you’re trying to say, but this Administration seems to think that the soldiers can patrol on foot, armed with sticks.
It’s been known to happen, and work successfully.
Of course, those were peacekeepers, operating in places where they were invited in, where everybody wanted an outside broker to keep things honest, and where the option of picking up the things that go bang was always present as a backup.
It doesn’t apply to armies that invade, torture and occupy. Either ‘fess up, put on the black shirts and shiny leather jackboots and paint swastikas on your tanks, or go home already.