Thursday, June 03, 2004

A disturbing story in today’s NY Times about the growing lack of soldier power in the military. A key quote:

“The Army is just running out of creative ideas for coping with the level of commitment that Iraq requires," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. "It's clear there was a fundamental miscalculation about how protracted and how intense the ground commitment in Iraq would be."

A fundamental miscalculation? Quite the understatement. And it’s not as if facts weren’t already out there predicting the likely failure of this decision (see my May 11th post citing a Summer 2003 RAND study). This increasingly dire problem provides just one more reason for Rumsfeld to resign (it was his decision to go lean and mean).

In addition, the military is apparently forcing soldiers who have fulfilled their duty and left to come back. Isn’t this the first sign before the draft is reinstituted (likely after the November election)?

A former Army captain described this forced-back-into-duty action as "a gross breach of contract." Meanwhile, last night’s 60 Minutes II profiled a soldier who was AWOL in part due to this policy, as he protested the fact that after 8 years of properly serving out his contractual time, “the Army did what it’s done to thousands of soldiers and ordered him to serve more time because of the war.” Is this even legal? If this policy continues, I think we can expect to see more and more AWOL soldiers, which will fast become a PR nightmare for the military.

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