Is the Cupboard Bare?
MSNBC is reporting that the army is stretched dangerously thin.
Four years after the invasion of Iraq, the high and growing demand for U.S. troops there and in Afghanistan has left ground forces in the United States short of the training, personnel and equipment that would be vital to fight a major ground conflict elsewhere, senior U.S. military and government officials acknowledge.
More troubling, the officials say, is that it will take years for the Army and Marine Corps to recover from what some officials privately have called a “death spiral,” in which the ever more rapid pace of war-zone rotations has consumed 40 percent of their total gear, wearied troops and left no time to train to fight anything other than the insurgencies now at hand.
Lets face a few facts. The Iraq and Afghanistan fronts in the Global War on Terror have been relatively modest efforts with minor casualties. I’m measuring this war against 20th Century wars such as Vietnam, Korea and the World Wars.
This story that our armed forces are broken is political spin to hurt the war effort. But hypothetically speaking If this effort has put our armed forces into a death spiral then that’s proof that our military is seriously understaffed and underfunded. If that’s the case the blame should go to the Democrats for not supporting the military and the war effort.
General Pace has requested more troops because it looks like we are going to be fighting for a long time against those that want our way of life to end. That doesn’t mean that we are misusing our military but rather that we need it more than ever.
