Escalation, Not Surge
CNN on the brief announcement: Gates: Army tours extended by three months.
Gates has extended all war zone deployments to 15 months, but says troops will be “guaranteed” 12 months at their home base between deployments. The troops know they will get the 15 months, but the “guarantees” about home time have been consistently violated.
This really sucks for the lives of the troops. You try to make plans, but they keep moving the goal posts. This is going to be a real hardship on the families, and many won’t survive the changes.
The prudent thing would have been to call for enlistments and expanded the military in September of 2001. No one was certain what was going to happen, but it only makes sense to prepare for a worse case scenario until you know what you face.
Think about what they did – this was supposedly the “greatest challenge the nation ever faced,” but there’s no need for more troops, no reason not to cut taxes, and you should go shopping. Does that make sense to anyone?
2 comments
Pretty soon the extension will be a full Friedman unit…
The worst of it is that Bush probably sleeps well at night; true believers and megalomaniacs both seem to do that. Am I permitted to wish him the worst possible nightmares in his sleep, as he inflicts waking nightmares on literally millions of people in the world? Does that make me a bad person? OK, it does… so what. May Bush dream the dreams of the damned.
If you don’t have a conscience, feel no responsibility for your actions, and don’t recognize the value of other human beings, of course you sleep undisturbed by the realities of your crimes.