The Military Is Broken

The Shrubbery has hinted that more troops will be going to Iraq after the elections. We don’t have any more troops, and 4,000 of the people in Iraq today are on extended tours, so the message is that people are not going to be rotated out when their replacements arrive.

They have been calling up every warm body they could locate in the Reserve and just about used up all of the deployment time available for the National Guard without changing a number of laws, so the regular forces are going to be extended, and they know it.

The people who are near to the ends of their enlistments know they are going to be retained by “stop-loss” orders because many of the new enlistees can’t be trusted with a broom, much less a weapon.

The Reptilicons brought this on themselves by drawing active duty military personnel into partisan political activities. They have broken down a very high and long-standing wall between the military and anything political, and now they are reaping what they sowed.

The Guardian, among many others, is reporting on the activities of active duty US military members who have established the Appeal for Redress web site.

“Appeal for redress” is taken from the First Amendment right to “to petition the government for a redress of grievances”, which is what these people are doing, appealing directly to Congress to change the US policy regarding Iraq. Things have gotten so bad that these people feel they have no other choice.

There has been unprecedented criticism of this administration by newly retired general officers. There were a lot of general officers who didn’t like Bill Clinton, but they didn’t give interviews to the media about it.

This isn’t just the war; the military trains you to deal with war. This is about the politics that has entered the military, where your political and religious beliefs are more important in decisions on promotion than your competence. Lt. Commander Charles Swift USN JAG is just the best-known example of a superior, competent officer not being promoted, while less talented people are. Most people don’t know that officers’ promotions have to be approved by the Senate, and the Senate can hold up the entire list if there are names on it they don’t like.

The final facet in the discontent deals with “working conditions.” Rumsfeld has been “transforming the military,” a process that is looking a great deal like corporate downsizing. He has been systematically working to eliminate many of the benefits that made military family life possible, while transferring more of the costs to the individual members.

As noted on many blogs, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America has rated the Congress based on the votes of members on 324 issues over the last five years.

Over at Kos they have the ratings for Senators and for the Congressional leaders. The Republicans are in charge and they are voting against the military and veterans. They spend money on new hardware in a second, but the troops can pound sand. That $5 magnetic ribbon from China on their cars is all the troops get from Republicans in Congress.

If you go to the IAVA site you can find you own Congresscritters and see how they rank, and you can see how the Disabled American Veterans ranked them for this year.

The military needs intensive care, sooner rather than later. It will take a long time to rebuild it and sweep the manure out of the stables known as the Pentagon.