In todays LA Times retired General Barry McCaffrey makes his plea for continuing support of the War in Iraq. His choice of words contain all the standard White House talking points. His claim is that we have " No Choice". We know that is not the case no matter how many times we hear it said.
Towards the end of his OpEd is this paragraph that contradicts his words, or at least should make us stop and think. We will break this down after the break.
The American people have walked away from support of this war. The Army is beginning to show signs of great strain. Many units are now on their third combat tour, and the tours are being routinely extended. Recruiting standards are being lowered. Our equipment is shot. By the beginning of the coming year, we will be forced to downsize our deployment to Iraq or the Army will begin to unravel.
McCaffreys OpEd starts off with this statement, which will be the last quote I cut and paste because of the shortness of the piece.
IRAQ IS BEING ripped apart by a low-grade civil war compounded by a dysfunctional, Shiite-dominated government. As many as 3,000 Iraqis are being killed or kidnapped a month, and American forces have suffered more than 27,000 killed and wounded. But we have little choice as Americans except to give our new military commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and our new ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, the political and military support they need during the next 12 months.
OpEd
At the risk of repeating what thousands of pundits and bloggers have said in the past, we did not go to Iraq to help fight a Civil War, Low Grade, or High Class. After more than a year has been given to the Shiite government to get their act together, along with basicly unlimited funding. Our continued support can only fuel the deaths of more Iraqis, and the deaths and wounding of our own Troops.
No Choice ? He may be right that we have only ONE choice, that is withdraw. Let's go back to that final paragraph. "The American people have walked away from support of this war." We live by Majority rule, and we longer want to send more money down into the hole that has become Iraq, that bottomless pit. Time to cut money off, period.
"The Army is beginning to show signs of great strain. Many units are now on their third combat tour, and the tours are being routinely extended". Beginning to show signs ? Who the fuck is he kidding. Every top Officer has said we are on the brink of disaster. We are sending troops not yet healed from their wounds to serve. We are sending Troops to serve that have not even trained with the right equipment, and are having to buy their own uniforms and other protective gear. Even worse, we are sending Troops back to Iraq without the downtime that has been granted to every other Soldier in our History. This alone has to cause much more PTSD and other problems on a scale that has never been seen before. "Beginning ", give me a break.
"Recruiting standards are being lowered. Our equipment is shot.", I could stretch this a bit and say that if the Troops are our most important "equip", then we are quilty of sending below standard equip. to Iraq, thereby endangering both the Troops that signed up when standards were higher, and those that can't/don't live up to former standards. By thinking a little bit more, we know that even a normal soldier with the best equipment, is superior to the rebels. Sending undertrained Soldiers with inferior or broken equip. should be criminal, since it is already immoral. Just the other day Gates was told at a Congressional Hearing, about the soldiers being forced to buy fireproof gloves before deployment, at a cost of 30 to 40 dollars a pair, and that they wear out quickly. Gates was also informed that every soldier is forced to have 5 sets of Cammies before deployment, but they are only issued 2 sets, and at a cost of over $100 per set, it's another out of pocket exp. the soldiers are force to bear. Just this alone is like having the company store. A Company store is set up to charge workers for the room and board they need to work, and taking it out of their pay, in essence, making them pay for the war out of pocket.
Now, on to the last sentence, the one that contradicts the entire theory. "By the beginning of the coming year, we will be forced to downsize our deployment to Iraq or the Army will begin to unravel." If this is true, and we know it is, If we need to start downsizing in less than a year anyway, we should not be sending more money. What we should be doing is stopping that "unraveling". The way to do that is bring our over-tired troops and wornout equip. home. To stop sending undertrained, under-equiped, and under-paid troops into harms way. All Gen. McCaffrey is doing is postponing the end and probably making it harder for us to bring our Armed Services back up to a the state of readiness both we and they need them to be in.
If McCaffrey, a Fox hanger-on and contributor, wants to share this kind of crap, I wish he would do it only on Fox. That is the place for this kind of nonsensical propaganda, not the OpEd pages of a major newspaper. At least we can be grateful he is retired, and no longer has the lives of our boys and girls in his hands anymore.
I will be sending my opinion to the Editors of the LATimes, and I encourage you all to do the same thing. We have our own duty to fight this propaganda in anyway we can.