If families weren’t being torn apart and people weren’t being killed, this galactic level of incompetence on the part of the Bush administration would be slightly funny. As it stands, however, this is pretty serious. Anne Flaherty of the AP reported this afternoon that,
The Army is considering whether it will have to extend the combat tours of troops in Iraq if President Bush opts to maintain the recent buildup of forces through spring 2008.
Nice. Of course, this would be an extension to the already excessive 15-month deployments the Army is already being forced to endure. Acting Army Secretary Pete Geren told the Senate today that he was continuing, "to look into our options."
If Secretary Geren, with the tacit approval of the President, extends soldiers past 15 months later this year, I expect Army generals to resign en masse in protest. If they do not, they are cowards.
If this comes to pass, allowing themselves to be further pushed around by a destructively incompetent Commander-in-Chief would not be "honorable." It would not be a sign of "leadership" or "good discipline." It would be a sign of weakness—a sign that they care more about "not making waves" and "retiring quietly" than they do about the soldiers to whom they’ve been entrusted. If the Congress isn’t going to step up, someone needs to. And these generals have an obligation to the men and women under their commands to speak out. If that means retiring a couple of years early, so be it. Like high-ranking officers explained to me about leadership when I was only in training, "If it was easy, everybody’d be doing it."
When a young Army officer takes his first command, one of the first things he is taught is that he is responsible for everything his platoon does or fails to do. The implication is that leadership doesn’t absolve you of responsibility just because you ignore something that’s happening around you. You’re just as guilty if you fail to prevent an act from happening, as if you’d proactively done something recklessly. And not only does every general know this, but every soldier, including the generals, also knows how ridiculous a further extension in Iraq would be.
To give you a good example of what soldiers think of being extended to 15 or 18 months, this is what an Active Duty Army officer told me in an email concerning the last extension:
This is an utter outrage. SECDEF is considering making all tours 15 months now. This is an abomination, this is disgusting. How much more are they going to ask of our troops? . . . .this is simply unconscionable.
He went on to say
How can units continue to function in that manner? It's simply not possible.
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To boot, one of those other "options" mentioned today by Geren is to rely
more heavily on Army reservists or Navy and Air Force personnel, so as not to put more pressure on a stretched active-duty force.
This is where the Defense Department gives sailors and airmen something along the lines of a five-week ground combat course and then sends them to Iraq to act as convoy security "soldiers." I’ve detailed how utterly irresponsible and dangerous that is here.
This has gotten out of hand, and the Army is already allowing itself to be humiliated by belligerent little men who know nothing of combat or war. It’s time other generals spoke out and started backing up two Iraq War veterans who’ve shown what it truly means to lead by example: Generals John Batiste and Paul Eaton.