What do you do when you've stretched the Army to the breaking point, don't have enough troops to do the imnpossible job you asked them to do and you refuse to change a failed and misguided policy?
That question is answered in a recent article posted on the Army Timeswebsite. I had to read it twice to make sure I understood it correctly. And as an Air Force veteran, I had to read it again to believe what I was seeing.
The Pentagon is taking US Air Force personnel out of their Air Force jobs, sending them through the 5 week Army convoy training at Camp Burris, Texas, and shipping them out to Iraq and Afghanistan to run military supply convoys through combat areas.
These are Air Force personnel! They have not had the extensive Army combat training necessary to protect themselves and others in these situations. I have no doubt that they will do the best job possible and that each of them will serve with honor, but let's be reasonable here. No one joins the Air Force with the expectation of joining a ground war. These airmen had no idea that they would be running truck convoys from Kuwait to Badghdad when they joined. If that's what they signed up to do, they would've joined the Army.
The Air Force doesn't have any problems meeting it's enlistment quotas, even with the war in Iraq. In fact, they have the luxury of being selective and only taking the best. But this bone-headed policy could have serious implications on Air Force enlistment if it became public and it could impact re-enlistment rates as well.
There are vast differences between the way the Army and Air Force operate.
Most Air Force enlisted personnel haven’t had ground combat training, and the Army has its own sets of weaponry, terminology and command chains — all of which have to be taught to the airmen.
The Army Times reports this practice in a fairly straigh forward manner, while at the same time acknowledging in their own way that the Army is struggling to meet Bush's unreasonable demands.
What we’ve seen is the Department of Defense continues to find ways to meet the requirements imposed by the commander in chief," said retired Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan, a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center in the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
This irresponsible policy is another example of the Bush Administration's disrespect for our men and women in uniform. What's next? Civil Air Patrol cadets? Wonder how long it will take the MSM to pick up on this story?