Signs of a broken Army
Wed Apr 11, 2007 at 04:24:01 AM PDT
One of my normal morning tasks is to glance at my morning email from the Boston Globe. That has consequences. Thus even though I awoke this morning expecting to check my email and at best glance at dailykos without posting a diary, I again find myself impelled to write this. I want people to be aware of two things in today's Globe that are signs of how broken the Army already is. One is a news story entitled West Point grads exit service at high rate. The other is an op ed by Lawrence Korb, a former Assistant SecDef in the Reagan administration entitled A troop readiness crisis.
Think for just a moment of the impact of those two titles - not able to retain the future leadership, and the troops they should be leading not being ready for combat. This is what Bush and company have wrought. You can read the two pieces to understand and skip the rest of this diary. Or you can follow below the jump as I explore them and and offer some observations of my own.
Let's start with the Korb piece. We have all heard the stories about the short cycle on which troops are being returned to the Iraqi theater. The Democrats have attempted in the legislation now pending to slow down this rapid cycling by requiring that units be home for one year before being returned to theater. Bush has object to this, calling it a micromanagement of the war. But both Bush and the proposal are a violation of current Army doctrine. As Korb notes
Bush needs to address the issue of why Army doctrine mandates that units spend two years at home between deployments -- one year of recuperation followed by one year of training -- and why Congress is insisting that units spend at least one year at home. The answer is that it takes two years for a unit to attain a readiness level of C-1, or ready for the full wartime mission, and at least one year to become C-3 or even marginally combat ready. Of the 20 Army combat brigades in or on their way to Iraq or Afghanistan, none has been home for two years and four have not been home for a year. One unit, the 4th Infantry Division Headquarters from Fort Hood, Texas, will return to Iraq after about seven months at home. None of the units was rated fully or even substantially combat ready (C-2) when deployed.
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We have already seen some consequences to the recent rapid cycling. Korb notes of the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, on its 3d deployment after about 1 year home
because of its compressed time between deployments, some 150 soldiers joined the unit right out of basic training, too late to participate in the training necessary to prepare units to function effectively in Iraq. Unfortunately one of the 18-year-old soldiers who joined the unit on Dec. 18, 2006 has already been killed.
The 4th Brigade of the 1st ID was sent over about 1 year after being reactivated
More than half of the brigade's soldiers in the E-4 and below rank are right out of basic training and the bulk of its midlevel non commissioned officers in the ranks of E-5 and E-6 have no combat experience.
. And the 1st brigade of the 3rd ID, sent to Iraq on it 3rd deployment after less than 11 months home?
To keep its numbers up it has had to send some 75 soldiers with medical problems into the war zone.
And the news story? It begins with a slap across the face:
Recent graduates of the US Military Academy at West Point are choosing to leave active duty at the highest rate in more than three decades, a sign to many military specialists that repeated tours in Iraq are prematurely driving out some of the Army's top young officers.
It gives the details: 903 commissioned in 2001 of whom 46% left the service last year, and more then 54% of of the 935 commissioned in 2000 gone by January,
The figures mark the lowest retention rate of graduates after the completion of their mandatory duty since at least 1977, with the exception of members of three classes in the late 1980s who were encouraged to leave as the military downsized following the end of the Cold War.
How does this compare? In most years of the last three decades the attrition rate at the 5 year point has been between 10 and 30%. The article acknowledges multiple factors, including the appeal of the private sector (which I presume might include higher pay working for companies like Blackwater, although the article does not specifically address that,
But interviews with former West Point superintendents, graduates, and retired officers pointed to another reason: the wear and tear on officers and their families from multiple deployments.
To have a higher retention rate, the Army is offering graduates perqs like choice of a home base, graduate school in return for extending one's commitment to 8 years instead of the normal 5.
There are quotes from Jack Reed, himself an alum, and Wes Clark, among others. They acknowledge that during the 1990's the Army was downsizing, screening officers and encouraging some to get out. And it is not clear what percentage of the classes might have transferred to Guard or Reserves. A spokesman said that only 4 from the two classes whose statistics the article examined have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan (and no figures were given for those wounded, even those forced out by their injuries). We should note
Reed likened the departure of recently minted West Point graduates to the situation during the waning days of the Vietnam era, when "at the five-year mark you were losing a lot of officers because of the wear and tear."
Indeed, the percentages of recent graduates wanting to leave active duty may even be higher. The numbers do not reflect those who may have been forced to stay longer than five years under the wartime authority known as "stop-loss," in which the president can order troops with critical skills to remain on active duty.
And the article closes with a dire warning from Clark that
"There is a lot of development that goes into" molding these unique military leaders, he said in an interview. "There is no way to get them back."
My own military service was as an enlisted man more than 4 decades in the past. I do not claim expertise on matters such as this. I would think the implications are very clear. What is interesting is that I see parallels to what is happening in the Army in other sectors of our governments. Think of the politicization of the Justice department, with career civil servants being forced out or deciding to step down from leadership - one implication is the lack of competent leadership and what that does to the impact of governmental action, even beyond the political implications. Or in my own field of teaching: the equivalent to the two issues I describe are that experienced teachers are leaving at increasing rates, and the students being advanced through the system are decreasingly prepared for the higher demancs of upper grades, resulting in a loss of preparation for further studies and life opportunities. This damage may not be as immediately damaging to them as the tragic consequences to our service men and women of the loss of leadership and lack of preparation, although it has a large impact of its own.
The president now wishes to argue that the Democrats are causing the overrotation and extended tours because of a bill that he says he won't sign - he wants no restrictions on how he uses troops. I was unaware that enlisting was the equivalent of indentured servitude or worse, and I also believe that our government owes a great responsibility to those it places in harm's way. Even for those who do not get killed or visibly physically damaged, the impact of our military policy is increasingly devastating, in stress, in the breakups of marriages, in the economic losses suffered by activated Guard and reserve forces.
Michael Dukakis was criticized for the part of his nomination acceptance speech where he contrasted himself with the then incumbent, father of the current president, when he said it was not a question of ideology but of competence. Would that were the case today. It is a question of both. This administration has proven itself dangerously incompetent, precisely becausen of its ideology. It will take decades to undue the damage it has done in so many areas. And the damage to the enlisted men and women still serving, who unlike the newer graduates from West Point are not being given a choice of duty station or offered graduate school in return for extended service, have a Hobson's choice of taking a reenlistment bonus or being extended involuntarily even without a bonus (as they are "reminded"), that damage may be permanent, irreparable.
During the Civil War Abraham Lincoln took actions he believed to be right, fully expecting that he would lose the election of 1864. It is time for those political leaders of both parties who know the futility of what we are doing to take the actions necessary to end the carnage. Even beyond the damage we are doing to the Middle East, and the hatred we are engendering, we are doing irreparable damage to America. It is time that it stopped. NOW.
