1970, Anyone?
Posted by Phoenix Woman on September 14, 2007
I’m not sure if this is truly the ‘real’ reason Bush is withdrawing some troops — that would require him to actually care about people who aren’t in his immediate family or people who he knows are in a position to hurt him — but Alex Koppelman makes a compelling case:
… No matter what the president or Gen. David Petraeus, the military point man of the surge, may now say about next spring’s drawdown, it is not predicated on success. Bringing troops home is not a choice, but a fait accompli. It has been preordained since the beginning of the surge. In fact, the surge was always destined to end next spring because after that there will be no more troops with which to continue it, according to statements from Adm. Michael Mullen, the man Bush recently appointed as chairman of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, not to mention statements from Gen. Petraeus himself.
Many troops now in Iraq have already had their tours of duty extended to 15 months in order to participate in the surge. To continue the surge past next spring, the Pentagon would have to extend those tours even further. To do so would “break” the U.S. military, many experts have warned – including Adm. Mullen. The administration has repeatedly indicated that those tours would not be extended.
Fred Kaplan, a reporter for Slate who once served as a foreign and defense policy advisor to former Rep. Les Aspin and has written extensively on the shortage of troops available for Iraq, said in an interview that the drawdown was destined to happen regardless of events on the ground in Iraq.
“The 15-month tours will be up,” said Kaplan. “The Army was adamantly opposed to extending the tour beyond that [and] there has not been any further mobilization of the Reserves … So, you know, there’s no choice. They’ve got to come home without any replacement.
“If Bush and all decision-makers had suddenly gone comatose and things were just allowed to run their natural course, this is exactly what would have happened.”
The late Steve Gilliard wrote extensively about how in 1970, American forces in Vietnam were falling apart: Rock-bottom morale, zero unit cohesion, commanders being fragged in the field. From the reports coming out of Iraq, we’re not far from seeing scenes like that reprised nearly four decades later.
11 Responses to “1970, Anyone?”
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whig said
Sorry, hadn’t been born for a year yet.
Phoenix Woman said
Heh! You infant, you. (whacks at you with cane)
whig said
Ow. Abuse!
abgdinstr said
Im a veteran of that era and Vietnam. The main reason for loss of unit cohesion in the 70s was the rotation of individuals. The main difference between then and now is that units rotate out together, that maintains discipline and cohesion. That they are stretched to breaking is without question.
mark
carlisle iowa
proudtobeaburdenonsociety
Charles said
While there’s much to what you say, Mark, morale was pretty good in World War II despite the constant change up in unit composition.
It had to do with service being of defined length and, especially, the war being just.
abgdinstr said
I would agree Charles, not to mention that it was understood that the mission was the defeat of the Axis Powers. For every mile up the boot of Italy or through the hedgerows of France, the GI’s knew they were that much closer to the end. It would appear that the GIs in Iraq are doing much like my generation in Vietnam, continually going over the same ground without a real measure of success regardless of causalities on either side. I’ve been through this nightmare before, I just wish I would wake up and it would all be gone.
mark
carlisle iowa
proudtobeaburdenonsociety
Terry Karney said
The morale issue is complicated. I don’t expect to see fragging (not on a large scale, I know of a couple of officers who were lucky to be moved to staff positions, because the way they ran things was going to get them killed, but those were issues of self-preservation; the officers were so clueless about things that no-one was going to be willing to take the risks they were going to be handing out. Which is not the same as passing along orders from higher).
But this level of pointless risk, because, as a whole none of us see the thing as having a purpose, and gettig out alive is the goal, makes the level of risk; day in, day out, sprit sapping and mind numbing. The fear never leaves, which is true of all combat zones, but this has no rear. No place the steam can be released.
And it has no end. If you make it through one tour, you can count on another. Troops in a combat zone pick up a fatalism; because we know it can happen to us. Stay long enough and you become convinced it will happen to you.
Which is tolerable, as said above, if there is a goal. There is no goal. The closest we’ve come to one is merely fighting (there instead of here).
MEC said
“There is no goal. The closest we’ve come to one is merely fighting.”
That is a frightening thought: that the goal is to be at war.
And we know from various Bush biographers that Bush wanted to be a “popular WAR president”.
Charles said
Terry and Mark, thanks for your comments.
Six years ago, almost to the day, I wrote for American Politics that how we went about confronting terrorism would determine success or failure. We needed lots of help from the Arab/Muslim world, to keep the terrorists ostracized, fearful of showing their faces anywhere. And to get that help, we had to act to end injustices in that world, especially places like Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, where we have influence.
Lots of goals have been stated for Iraq. But we can see through them. Our government is unable to state the real goals openly, because those goals are unjust: to destroy Iraqi society and replace it with a client state. To use the cover of war to turn the US into a one-party authoritarian state. To prevent any other nation from ever challenging the United States.
The nightmare will end, Mark. Evil carries the seeds of its own destruction precisely because it does not offer hope. The cost will be the end of US dominance in the world.
Buck Naked Politics said
Koppelman may be correct. What bothers me is the way they sold the surge [from WaPo , page 2 of 4]:
abgdinstr said
Terry
I know what your saying about the fatalism. That mental checkoff that your a deadman walking, just so you can function and not let your buddies down. The bitch, and it is a bitch, is when you get home and out and your still alive. Trying to flip those switches back on to allow yourself to feel will make you think your going nuts, or you will leave them off. Please make sure you get the professional help your going to need to deal with this. You and your buddies will need each other and new buddies who have been there and are on the way to coming all the way home. For over 30 years I still feel a piece of me patrols outside the base I was stationed at, doomed to never come home. Don’t do that to yourself, allow your soul to DEROS. (Date Expected Return, Overseas)
mark
carlisle iowa
proudtobeaburdenonsociety