Haiti is why the US Army needs another division--a humanitarian one.

[jmowreader]

In 10th Mountain we used to make jokes about being the 10th Humanitarian Division because most of our deployments were for disaster relief--we did Hurricane Andrew then followed it up with a trip to Somalia to hand out food. Well, we really NEED a humanitarian division. Here's how it will be structured:

one infantry brigade (three infantry battalions) for security,
two engineer brigades (one excavation brigade to remove downed buildings and find survivors, one construction brigade to help build new structures),
one transport brigade (one linehaul battalion with tractor-trailers, one straight-truck battalion with five-ton trucks, one aviation battalion with Blackhawks and Chinooks),
a Military Police brigade (three battalions, one with language-qualified MPs),
two civil affairs battalions,
a medical battalion,
two signal battalions,
a military intelligence battalion
and a supply battalion.

You won't need an artillery brigade, an armor brigade, a lot of infantry or an air defense artillery brigade.

This will give two benefits: it will ensure a civil relief division is always on standby, and it will keep combat soldiers from having to do things they're not really trained for.

The 1st Humanitarian Division will wear a unique uniform--BDUs with blue jackets and gray pants--and its patch will be a dove atop the world: the dove is the symbol of peace, the world is the division's operating area. SWAT teams already buy BDUs in blue and gray and custom patches are easy to get, so there won't be any problem getting these. Their equipment will be painted blue, not camouflage. They will obviously not be combat troops--the idea here is to let the refugees know our Humanitarian Division is there to help, not to conquer.

[HopeHoops]

1. Excellent idea!

[zipplewrath]

2. And an Academy

This idea gets kicked around every so often. I think the basic concept is great. I'd make it a separate service, and give it its own Academy where people can get an education in the basic fields you mention without having to in effect join a fighting force. Yeah, they can play football too if they want. We need a national Academy where people can get an education in exchange for public service.

[PVnRT]

9. That was sort of Jefferson's intent with West Point

He wanted to provide a school to train Army engineers, basically.

[zipplewrath]

12. Yup

Actually, he was less concerned about the "army" part (or really the engineer part). He just wanted a "national" university. He saw the support for the concept in the military.

It turned out to be one heck of a stroke of genius. He educated a few generations of engineers to build roads, bridges, railroads, and canals just as the industrial revolution was getting ready to explode.

[arcadian]

3. Public Affairs does that.

But they do it in a combined effort to make US foreign policy(wars) look good.

[Mari333]

4. bring all the troops home from both occupations

then the military wont be stretched.

[jmowreader]

10. That the military is stretched is only part of the problem

The military is designed to be a warfighting force.

Let's say it takes six months to stabilize Haiti and we have to send two Army divisions to do it. Since all we have is combat divisions, those guys are going to lose their keen edge by the time Haiti is stable enough for them to leave. They're also configured wrong for disaster relief operations--a humanitarian division wouldn't need things like Apaches, howitzers, antiaircraft guns...

[niyad]

5. a most interesting idea

[upi402]

6. Kucinich's Dept. of Peace

Oh but that's loony...
We were left to choose between 3 corporatists: Clinton, Obama, Or McCain.

[jmowreader]

17. That IS loony

The Department of Peace would be screwed out of funding, screwed out of recruits, given all the old worn-out shitty equipment and generally set up to fail by the fucking Republicans.

[Robb]

7. This is brilliant.

OT, thanks for serving. 10th Mountain has a proud history, and my utmost respect.

[jmowreader]

8. It really has TWO proud histories

The only link between the 10th Mountain that fought in the Apennines and took the Po Valley, and the 10th Mountain Division that was the most-deployed Army unit of the 1990s, is the name.

[hunter]

11. We could have hospital rescue ships as big as aircraft carriers.

Besides the hospitals they'd be loaded with heavy rescue equipment, food, water desalinization and power plants, and plenty of construction materials for rapid repairs and restructuring of damaged infrastructure.

[ddeclue]

14. The hospital ships we have ARE huge ships closer to CV's than DD's.

[ddeclue]

13. That's called the National Guard...

and NO we don't need another division we need to stop using them in Iraq.

[jmowreader]

15. Well...no, not really...

The National Guard is a state-level operation. They can only serve in another state or overseas if the governor allows them to be federalized. In some cases that's the correct move--if Governor Blanco would have allowed her National Guard troops to be federalized Bush would probably have sent them to Mississippi.

Also consider: the National Guard isn't all that well funded compared to the active force, and equipment tends to be spread around. Say each state National Guard has one Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Unit. If you need twenty of them for the Haiti relief operation, you've got to convince twenty governors to let you federalize their ROWPU platoons.

And let's throw in the deployability thing. Calling up a National Guard outfit takes a while--a day or two to get everyone there and preparing for an operation. An active outfit can be ready to go in just a few hours, and in the case of something like Haiti this would save a lot of lives.

[ddeclue]

16. Actually the guard can be Federalized anytime the President says so.

and it doesn't take as long as you claim to call them up.

[sofa king]

18. Hail Mary!

That is a wonderful plan.

If the division were force-independent, sort of like SOCOM, much of the equipment could be stored on delegated ships and the division could be deployed much like a Marine Expeditionary Unit. If it had a spare assault carrier, the unit could be headed out to sea while airlifting in its own personnel and medical supplies.

[DailyGrind51]

19. Just pull the troops from Afghanistan and reassign them to Haiti!

[readmoreoften]

20. This is a bad idea. US troops aren't trained in "humanitarianism". They're trained to kill enemy

combatants. This "humanitarian military" rhetoric is already being used in Iraq and Afghanistan. Go to any military recruitment spiel at any airshow in the US and all you'll hear about is "how the US Army exists for humanitarianism and peace."

I do work with soldiers at Ft. Hood. The current troops--at least Army troops-- are deeply psychologically damaged and ill prepared for "humanitarian realief." For chrissakes, the troops in the Army and the Marines are openly trained to dehumanize Iraqis and Afghans by calling them "hadji" and many formerly deployed troops actually seek help from pacifists to STOP calling arabs, persians, etc. "hadji".

If you want to use military materials to, say, train a NEW type of peace corps operation, that's one thing. But you can't bring back troops from a warzone and put them into a disaster zone. Or call the US military a "peacekeeping force" thereby purely confusing disaster relief with invasion and interference with foreign regimes.

[jmowreader]

22. Uhh...yes, I understand this

I was proposing creating a special division that does nothing but humanitarian operations. They'll be dressed different, equipped different and trained different from combat soldiers. A troop who winds up in the Humanitarian Division won't be assigned away from it--the Army already does that sort of manning with the 82nd Airborne, so there's a precedent.

During the 2000 election George Bush claimed the 10th Mountain would have to report it was "Not ready for duty, sir." (Unfortunately it was true--the 10th Mountain got run ragged during the Clinton Administration, mostly doing humanitarian work, and never got a chance to truly retrain and reequip for war.) One of the biggest benefits of the humanitarian division is the ability to have a division you WON'T fuck up by taking it away from training for war for a year.

Side benefit: it won't HAVE to wait until a disaster happens to go into action. Every so often you'll see an article on DU about doctors who take time away from their practices to go to remote parts of the US to provide free medical care. The Humanitarian Division will have two medical battalions; what would prevent us sending one of them to Appalachia to care for Americans?

[2 Much Tribulation]

21. Only concern is that, by exclusion, humanitarianism is NOT the mission of the rest of military?