A question about our military.

[skypilot]

I'm especially interested in hearing from DUers who are or have been in the military.

The question is this: With our troops stuck in Iraq for God knows how long and with recruitment and re-enlistment down, what condition do you think our military will be in, say, five years from now?

[jedicord]

1. This probably won't answer your question, but...

my husband is a Desert Storm Marine (once a M, always a M). We went to see F911, and he was so quiet afterwards. Turned out it was because he was too angry about the treatment of the military by this administration to talk. If other military feels the same way he does, the only way to keep personnel in will be a draft.

Yes, people join the military for the "benefits", but they do go in with the knowledge that they could sacrifice their lives. What gets them over that hump is their heart filled desire to protect our country. That desire will be gone if we continue to send them into unnecessary wars for corporate/world power gain.

[REVOLT823]

2. Horrible

I was in the Marines and I think the most harm is going to come from the lack of reenlistment. The military is going to lose a lot of the Non-Commissioned Officers and Officers, the people it takes longest to train and whose experience is most critical in training the new recruits. I think a lot of them are feeling very disillusioned right now about what they are being used for. Even during Gulf War I, most understood that this was over oil, but at least we had the pretense of liberating Kuwait to go to war, but it was understood that oil was the ultimate motive. Now they have none of this and I think it will deeply affect these guys in justifying why they are in the military. Also, I can't really blame anyone for not joining up now, I wouldn't!

5 years from now - I think you are going to see an amry closer to Russia's than what we previously had. Russia's big problem is that they can't retain anyone in the military (would help if they paid them). Because of this there is no NCO base to lead the new guys and you have a gap in leadership and experience. I think we are potentially looking at something like this instead of the very strong ranks we have had. Experience is everything in the military, the military tries very hard to replicate combat in training, to best prepare the troops, but it is never fully possible and the experience of those who have been in combat helps to fill that void.

[tabasco]

3. Army man agrees.

- Bush has treated the military like serfs. The republicans have always backstabbed the military, but the Bush cabal has really acted like the military were loyal slaves.
- Army planners will be better at counter-insurgency operations. There will be some learning in the military from the Iraq war, but the negative effects will outweigh the good.
- Troops are leaving in droves (when they can). Like Revolt823 said, the loss of experience will HURT. Planning at the upper echelons will be better, but the people to carry out the plans will be rookies.
- Recruiting is poor. The military will have to start accepting lower quality recruits. This will be a real leadership challenge for the junior officers and NCOs. I personally favor universal service, implemented during peacetime (similar to many European nations).
- I believe the morale and motivation going into Afghanistan was high. I for one believe the invasion (not necessarily the techniques we used) were justified. But Iraq was unjustified and it is no secret to the troops. The torture scandal (caused by a criminal command climate from the very top)has hurt and embarrassed the mostly honorable troops, and killed morale.

[AlabamaYankee]

5. This is a Seismic Shift

When Army and Marine agree with each other someone's in serious trouble. We can only hope it won't be too late to recover from the damage.

[Bandit]

6. Boy ain't that the truth..LOL Army and Marines agreeing.. who'd ever a

thunk it. That Bush* really is a uniter.

[REVOLT823]

10. LOL LMAO

Bush can kiss my ass, but I think he will unite all military people against him. I am more than happy to throw my hat in for Kerry and he was in the Navy, and a Marine giving props to a Navy guy is more of a seismic shift than the Army and Marines agreeing.

[REVOLT823]

9. More excellent points gsh999

glad to see a fellow military person on DU.

I especially think what you said about Iraq and the torture scandal are very true. These are things that both the Marines and Army are going to have to carry with them for quite a while.

[wadestock]

4. Bush's WAR was a lottery for death

The fact that this admin viewed the war as "doable" and possibly even a "slam dunk"....made the assumption that the US would accept limited casualties and go along with the whole thing.

I view the war specifically in those terms....once the plan was approved by Bush, those people were sent to their deaths....they were considered "expendable".

We also must not forget this Iraq army had NO capability to fight back.
Probably a hundred or two hundred were killed by friendly fire...and we won't know that for years to come....just like it took forever to find out those truths in Desert Storm....this time could be worse.

We had ALL the time in the world to go in after the oil fields were secured. He had no command control and no air force...it was academic.

ANY strategic offensive move on Iraq's part would have been suicide for them because they would have been outgunned 2 to 1 in range or picked off by helos with hellfires.

The ALL OUT BLITZKRIEG was not necessary.
Moore's movie captures quite a bit of the insanity of that.

Give it a year or two and the grizzly details will begin to come out....and you'll find a whole different take on joining the "military of the future"....especially if it's under Bush.

The other problem if Bush gets another 4 years is the immediate offensive that will take place against Iran. The Bush admin would never sit along as Iran develops a REAL deployable nuke capability.
You will see strategic bombing against IRAN early next year to take out their nuke capability if Bush gets in.

By that time, they will probably HAVE to have a draft because of the uncertainty of a huge offensive operation in the middle east.

[jmowreader]

7. It depends on who wins the November election

and what he does after the election.

Let's assume Bush returns to the White House. We will have either the "hollow Army" the Repugs used against Jimmy Carter, or we'll have a conscript army.

We'll probably be looking at--minimum--two more fronts opening in this war. The first will be in Iran, naturally. Syria will probably also feel the wrath of Bush, and if Jack Van Impe really gets hold of him, he may attempt to attack North Korea.

At some point, the European Community is going to say "fuck it" and invade the US to stop Bush.

(A thought occurs to me: I think everyone here's seen Total Recall. Remember the scene in the old cement factory, after Quade had shoved the tracking device into a Snickers and thrown it over in the corner for all the rats to drag around? Remember how Richter attempted to kill Quade by pointing at where the tracking device was and firing full clips of ammo at it? "Over there! There! There!" Does this activity in any way resemble how Bush is prosecuting the war on terra?)

If Kerry gets in, assuming that he can get the UN to help us out there, we can taper off our presence in Iraq. If we can get down to one division in Iraq--a division that's not getting the shit shot out of it on a daily basis because it's capturing goat farmers and screwing them in the ass because the goat farmers don't know where Osama bin Laden is--we can rebuild the rest of the army to be a good fighting force for the 21st Century.

[Tim4319]

8. The military will be in worse shape.

Hopefully, President Kerry will help build morale and enlistment!

[Ilsa]

11. Interesting comment I heard on the news tonight:

A reservist was explaining how screwed up the bureaucratic pay system is for the Reserves. When this woman got called up, she didn't get paid for three months. She missed alot of bills, went into debt, had to pay late fees, etc. She said she wouldn't want to re-up for the reserves becaused it messed up her private financial life so badly, and that it wasn't fair to her daughter.