A classified Pentagon assessment concludes that long battlefield tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with persistent terrorist activity and other threats, have prevented the U.S. military from improving its ability to respond to any new crisis, The Associated Press has learned.
The chiefs are doing their job. They have to view the big picture.
But the press is likely to fail to understand the report. I mean, really, fighting a war will obviously reduce the ability of the units fighting the war and recovering from the war to respond to a new crisis. Duh. If you know anybody that tells you this is a "gotcha" moment, give them your best "are you stupid?" stare.
The purpose of a military is to be able to fight and win our wars. Once we are at war, it is clearly difficult to respond to another war. That has always been the case. In what world does it make sense to cripple the units actually fighting in order to preserve units and capabilities for a contingency that may never occur? Or may not be as important?
And if your standard is to be able to fight two wars at once, how much more are you willing to spend to achieve a military capable of doing that without straining it? I seem to recall very little protest from those eager to collect the peace dividend in the 1990s when our military was reduced to the ability to respond to two regional wars "nearly simultaneously." That was just a fancy way of saying we couldn't fight two wars at once.
And are you going to protest if we have to respond to an attack that becomes our second war? Or will you say that we can't possibly fight since we would be unable to fight a third contingency?
Ultimately, the logic of this position is to never fight with our current military lest we find ourselves unable to fight a second conflict.
Win the war we are in and in time our military will be restored to its pristine condition. And with its combat experience it will be better than if was in 2001. As for now, our military must make do with what we have and our allies in case another crisis erupts.
Can we get a halfway decent plastic turkey issue here? This subject bores me already.
