News analysis for 3/20/08 from Veterans For America.
The morning after the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the evidence of the war's destructive toll on the nation continues to mount -- despite a presidential announcement that U.S. troop levels will stay the same in Iraq.
The pain on the Guard and Reserves looks to entangle another generation of citizen-warriors with no end in sight; women in uniform, relatively new to the field of combat, are now having to fight off sexual harassment and trauma when not fighting the enemy; and divisions within the Pentagon over the deployment of troops boils to the surface revealing deep divisions over the sustainability of the Iraq war strategy.
Stars and Stripes gives us the words of Gen. Charles Campbell, commander of U.S. Army Forces Command, who said the Guard and Reserve soldiers are fated to active-duty-level deployments "for another generation." In some of the bluntest words so far, Campbell said the demands on the military are testing what it can sustain. ``The demand for land force capacity [still] exceeds the sustainable supply,'' Campbell was quoted as saying.
We met Keri Christensen, a Denver-area housewife and mother of two -- who also happens to be one of the first women in the country to be a combat veteran. Home for more than two years, CNN.com reported, the war continues to haunt her and her family. She didn't just brave bombs and bullets, but also sexually harassed by a superior in the war zone. "I just know it took a big toll on me because I was trying to deal with it myself,'' she said. "Just trying to be a soldier."
The Los Angeles Times reveals a Pentagon shaken by turmoil over the war, with top brass divided over strategy and troop deployments. ``Tension has risen along with concern over the strain of unending cycles of deployments,'' the paper reported. The sustainability of the mission is in jeopardy even as President George W. Bush used the 5th year anniversary of the Iraq invasion to announce he would make no troop drawdowns in the near future.
Veterans For America is uniting a new generation of veterans with those from past wars to address the causes, conduct, and consequences of war.