The Army has set 2012 as its target date for a force expansion to 547,000 troops, but Gen. George Casey said Saturday that he has told his staff to have the soldiers ready earlier.
source: Army chief wants to speed up troop hike
In February of 2013, President Gingrich had many reasons to be satisfied. He had easily defeated the Clinton/Obama ticket and was swept to power by a resurgent wave of nationalism, reinforced by a public angry over the combined blows of recession and gasoline rationing. The path was now clear for Gingrich to fulfill his destiny: to make America the undisputed master of an unruly and threatening world. Within a week of his inauguration he summoned his war council and began planning the war of 2013. Here is a future history of that war:
When the peak oil panic hit the Clinton/Obama administration in 2010, it ruined their efforts to turn America away from militarism. The bitter medicine of gasoline rationing and sharp cutbacks in energy consumption, combined with the economic hardships of a major recession shattered the hopes of the Clinton team for effecting heath care reforms and balancing the budget. The small cuts in military spending they enacted enraged Republicans, as did the modest tax increases they were able to impose on the wealthy. Inflationary pressures prevented the Federal Reserve from rapidly counteracting the recession, and the country entered a prolonged economic slump.
Republican politicians were quick to depict the Clinton administration as weak and irresolute. Comparisons to the "malaise" of the Carter administration were widespread, and an angry public turned to the man who had offered a vigorous challenge to the Clinton policy: Newt Gingrich. Gingrich offered Republicans the ideological zeal of Reagan and Bush combined with the promised competence of an articulate and pragmatic leader. He also offered an intoxicating willingness to take military action to address America's problems. For a troubled nation desperate to reclaim its former glory, the appeal of Gingrich was irresistible. He was elected in a landslide in 2012, and the Republicans regained control of the Congress.
Gingrich was determined not to repeat the errors of Bush. He stated his plans for war bluntly: America needs energy, and the Arab states are unwilling to provide it to us. Taking control of this oil is essential to the survival of the American way of life. Just as America's pioneers fought to take their land from hostile natives, he proposed that America would fight to take its needed energy supplies from the hostile peoples of the Mideast.
Gingrich knew that Mideast oil production was declining because of the exhaustion of the oil fields, but the public was assured by Republican propagandists that the Arab states were concealing vast reserves sufficient to provide America with energy indefinitely. Americans were told that the Arabs were doing this to extract exhorbitant profits, and because they hated us for our freedoms. Independent oil experts attempted to counter the flood of "secret reserves" propaganda, but their voices were drowned out by the war fever.
For Gingrich, the war was an easy decision. The martial law powers that Congress would grant him, the resumption of the draft, and the militarization of US society would allow him to maintain order during a deepening energy crisis. By the time the public realized that energy supplies had resumed an inexorable decline, America would be an authoritarian state in which a patriotic elite took harsh measures to ensure the preservation of the nation. The Constitutional amendment to repeal Presidential term limits would keep him in power for the duration of the "national emergency."
Unlike Bush, whose attacks on the oil-rich Mideast nations were half-hearted and ineffectual, Gingrich intended to stike with maximum force. He would not become bogged down in guerrilla warfare because he intended to fight a war of extermination. Neutron bomb technology developed decades ago was rushed into production to equip American forces with the ability to "sterilize" large swathes of Mideastern territory. Fortunately, nature had concentrated the richest oil deposits in relatively small regions of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran, These areas would be "cleansed" of terrorists, occupied by US forces, and secured by large buffer zones.
Gingrich expected the Europeans, Russian, and Chinese to protest loudly, but he knew that they lacked the resolve to challenge an America willing to use nuclear weapons to secure its energy lifelines. Any intervention by outside powers in US seizure of Mideast oil fields would be met with a massive reply, including tactical nuclear weapons, if necessary. This decision was quietly communicated through diplomatic channels. Bit players like Venezuela and Mexico would be dealt with by whatever military interventions were necessary.
The first few weeks of the war were remarkable for the calm that prevailed in the nation. The emergency legislation governing press censorship ensured that there would be no reports of casualties resulting from the attacks to secure the oil fields. The suspension of all "political" internet site activity, and the careful screening of message posting and emails by the NSA and FBI kept citizen chatter about mass casualties to a minimum. The official story was that Arab citizens had been evacuated from "protected zones" in a humane manner, and the press was given media materials showing smiling Arabs resettled in attractive camps.
The reality of the first stage of the war was a very different matter. Millions were killed outright in the zones struck by enhanced radiation weapons. Targeting errors resulted in the destruction of a number of holy sites, and the failure to neutralize all of Pakistan's nuclear weapons caused significant casualties among US naval forces. Censorship delayed reporting of these effects. As the war continued, the vast refugee exodus from the "sterilized" zones of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran created enormous suffering. The UN was forbidden to intervene, and millions perished of thirst, starvation, and disease. Historians still debate the final tally of deaths inflicted by the 2013 war, but the consensus is 22 million Arabs and Persians and 30,000 US military.
To reward the public for its unflinching support, the Gingrich administration released oil from the national petroleum reserve and suspended gasoline rationing. Gas prices immediately plunged from $15 to $2 a gallon, and a mood of celebration swept the nation. By 2016, prices had crept back up to $10, but the public was still intoxicated by victory, and the promise of the certain exploitation of the "secret" Arab oil reserves preserved a sense of optimism.
This optimism ended on September 11, 2016, when a five-kiloton nuclear weapon was detonated in Houston Texas. 100,000 Houstonians died, either in the immediate blast or soon thereafter. One of the bombs in the Pakistani arsenal had evaded destruction by US invasion forces and was brought to Houston in a freight container by a terrorist group. The nation turned to President Gingrich, who rallied the people by ordering a retaliatory nuclear strike on Karachi, a city with 10 million inhabitants. The nation was told that Gingrich would put fear into the hearts of its enemies, and it once again came to believe that its future was secure.