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<A recent poll of US servicemen currently serving in Iraq conducted by the Department of Defense-funded Stars and Stripes newspaper revealed that forty-nine percent of those questioned described their units’ morale as low and responded that they are “very unlikely” or not likely to re-enlist when their current service obligations are completed. An equal percentage of soldiers responded that their training was insufficient whereas forty percent responded that the jobs that they were doing had little or nothing to do with their training. One-third of the soldiers polled responded that the war was of “little value” or “not worthwhile at all” and that their mission in Iraq was unclear. The newspaper also revealed that during the surveys its reporters were told that some soldiers who had complained of morale problems had faced disciplinary actions.
Many US servicemen do not understand, let alone agree with the US policy which mandates their role as a soon-to be UN-mandated occupation and peacemaking force whose purpose is to be the chief implementing instrument for a liberal internationalist exercise in nation-building in Iraq. The Administration’s nation-building policy in Iraq pursued in furtherance of the establishment of a new American Empire centered in the Middle East at the cost of up to a trillion dollars over the next decade and the lives of thousands of its servicemen has nothing to do with defending the United States from hostile attack and does nothing to advance her national security interests.
Contrary to the rosy picture painted by the Bush Administration of high troop morale, indicators are that troop morale, which has already reached a new low, is continuing to fall. If this situation continues, the Army and the reserves in particular will witness an unprecedented exodus of servicemen during the next few years which will make achieving current recruiting goals extremely problematic to say the least. Noted military sociologist Charles Moskos of Northwestern University has predicted “severe” recruitment problems for the active-duty force in 2004. This troop exodus will make it much easier for Rumsfeld to slash and gut the Army force structure by another 20-40% as he had previously planned, but will make it impossible for the Army to meet its current commitments, let alone fight and win another major war. Due to the fact that this survey was conducted in August when post-war US troop casualties were roughly half of what they are today, it is likely that low troop morale and plans to leave the service are even more widespread than the survey indicates. If the Iraq occupation continues for several years to a decade, we may well see a return to the “hollow force” Army of the 1970s.
General Barry McCaffrey, former head of the U.S. Southern Command and a division commander during Operation Desert Storm, warns, “The Army is accelerating downhill at the moment, and if the course isn’t changed, we could damage it significantly or even break it in the next five years…We as a nation have done it before at the peak of our power. We broke the Army after World War II, and paid for it in Korea. We broke the Army after Vietnam, and paid for it with the ‘hollow force’ of the 1970s. We are doing it again, with an Army that is overcommitted and underfunded. And if we end up in an unprovoked war with North Korea, then the United States could pay a very heavy price as a result.” The war in Iraq is not only wearing out personnel, it is also wearing down the Army’s weapons and equipment at an unprecedented rate. Army Materiel Command recently reported that it has a months-long backlog of orders for replacement tracks for its Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and Paladin self-propelled howitzers, because of unexpectedly high wear and tear in Iraq. Worn down personnel and equipment mean that the Army’s overall combat readiness is falling at a rapid rate and will continue to do so as long as the Army maintains a large force in Iraq. It also means that the operation and maintenance budget needed to repair and replace run-down parts will be much higher than expected which will take money away from more important priorities like increased personnel, not to mention modernization and procurement of new weapons systems. If the root causes of these problems are left unaddressed, it could take several years at minimum to repair the damage being done to the Army by the Administration’s Iraq policy, not to mention the Rumsfeld efforts to gut the Army’s force structure and eliminate its most prized weapon systems including the entire Abrams tank fleet.
Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the rest of the neocon cabal successfully persuaded President Bush on the need to pursue their dreams of establishing a new American Empire centered in the Middle East and largely abandon the extremely pressing war on Islamic terrorists by invading Iraq. This despite the fact that Secretary Powell stated two years ago that Iraq posed no threat to the United States, not to mention the fact that it had never committed any aggression against us. This was done in complete disregard for US national security interests of reducing, not increasing the terrorist threat in the Middle East as has been the case with the recent US invasion. According to the 2003-2004 edition of the Military Balance published by the authoritative and widely-respected International Institute of Strategic Studies this week, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has actually served to empower Al Qaeda by “swelling its ranks and galvanizing its will.” It also surmised that the US invasion of Iraq “has probably inflamed radical passions among Muslims and thus increased al Qaeda’s recruiting power and morale and, at least marginally, its operating capability.” It concluded that the Iraq war “almost certainly further alienated Islam from the West.” By their ill-considered invasion of Iraq, neocons in the Bush Administration have placed the interests of the United States, her citizens and especially her badly overextended Army servicemen and women, who have been doing the brunt of the dying in America’s latest no-win war/quagmire and for whom the neocons appear to care not a wit, dead last. Like former Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara, it may take Rumsfeld and the other neocons thirty years to admit they were wrong about the no-win war they helped lead us into and hollowing out the US Army in the process.
Related article:
Iraq War is Stretching US Army to Breaking Point
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”