Posted on 08/03/2007 4:03:18 AM PDT by Allegra
VICENZA, Italy — The senior enlisted adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday that U.S. citizens shouldn’t be overly concerned about the fighting spirit of the troops.
Army Sgt. Maj. William J. Gainey — fresh from a visit downrange — said troops expressed two main concerns: They’re away from their home too long, and they would like a clearer picture on how many times they’ll be facing similar deployments in the years ahead.
Both are legitimate concerns, he said during a stop in Vicenza on Thursday.
“I’m not going to tell you morale is the best I’ve ever seen it. It’s not,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you it’s the worst I’ve ever seen it. It’s not. They’re getting by with what they have.
“They do get homesick,” Gainey said. “But every one I talked to … their morale is high.
“Except one guy, because you always get one guy who says it sucks.”
(Excerpt) Read more at stripes.com ...
And that's the one the MSM always uses to represent the situation on the ground. ;-)
Ping!
Waste of manpower.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
I truly don’t understand this mindset that war fighters should be at home with their families. I think R&R is carried to ridiculous extremes and rotation is surely very expensive and inefficient. Try finding any other job where there is more time off than on. That does not, by the way, mean that I do not sympathize with the hardships.
HA HA HA!! Your response we EXACTLY my first thought!
Would you put them in Iraq and Afghanistan “for the duration?”
BTW, my son returned to Schofield Barracks from Afghanistan in April 05. His unit deployed to Iraq 16 months later. During their time back in Hawaii they got very little time off.
I don’t know the snswer, and I am a lot more curious than hypercritical. I do know that my dad went to Europe for WWII and stayed til it was over. I have seen admissions that thesae rotations mean discontinuity of effort and presence in the theatre. It is hard for me to understand how 150,000 stretches a force that is 10 times that big. Suppose this were a life or death existential fight for survival. Would we do it this way, or is the rotation a way to make the job more pallatable to volunteers?
Part of the problem is that the military is still a bloated bureaucracy. We have more generals of all ranks now than we did in WWII. Those generals have commands and they have staffs. We have a senior enlisted adviser, as I just learned, for the JCofS. In the 60s we created senior enlisted positions for each service. They have staffs. About ten years ago the SMA sexually harassed a member of his staff - another SGM. If I were King for a day, I’d do a lot of cutting.
That said, it was the administration's decision to rotate units rather than mobilize the country. We could have built a military like we did in WWII. We didn’t.
During Vietnam, once all the units were in place we sent individual replacements. The tour was a year. Lack of cohesion became a factor. I went over with a unit of the 4th ID for my first tour. My second tour was as an individual replacement to be assigned by USARV once in country.
Sure, we could have assigned all of our combat troops to Afghanistan and Iraq back in 02 and 03 and, unless you were killed or wounded, you stayed there. Just typing those last two sentences makes my blood boil. If you or anyone else thinks the Army is stretched too thin right now, I don’t think you could even imagine the repercussions had we done a “for the duration” policy.
Some of my thinking comes from watching and trying to understand what the special forces are trying to accomplish. I have seen coverage of a commander in Anbar with a diagram he made of the local tribes that covered his wall. Whatever headway and understanding he made was mostly lost when another crew rotated in. Changing personnel often does not enhance efforts to form relationships. Of course to those who want carpet bombing to make parking lots, it wouldn't matter.
As for your blood boiling, it reminds me of a ret Master Sargent I used to employ in my company. He liked to complain about his retirement benefits, but I told him he was talking to the wrong person. Although I acknowledge that the armed services must keep their word, such does not communicate well to those of us in the real world who may also serve our country without any such perks.
I sense some hostility towards those who have served.
I’ll ask you again, if you were king (or queen), what would you have done differently than what the administration did as for the deployment of troops/units?
Your dad served when there was a draft. Would you have pushed for conscription after 9-11?
I do not have enough info to answer your question. I would like to see a cost benefit analysis of the rotation policy. Asking about the draft is like teachers always asking for money. Why would anyone want to throw more people at a problem that is not clearly defined? I have always thought that the miitary didn't want a bunch of unskilled draftees.
The only defense you have offered for this rotation is unit cohesion. I am sure that is not the only reason. It also seems to involve readiness and troop job satisfaction. I get the impression that it affects reinlistment rates. However, one can still ask if rotation is the best way to achieve cohesion. What did armies do before air transport?
I would be very leary of your 180day ave for WWII. My dad was drafted late as he was in his 30's and had two children. He was gone over 2 years in Europe. He wouldn't have wished that on anyone else. They shipped over and that took weeks. Rotating was not an option. If someone kept the casualties in the stats that would make their ave deployments seem shorter.
I'm not defending anything. Blame the President and his administration for the situation we find ourselves in.
When this is over the miitary is sure to get a rectal exam, because they seem to be doing things to lose.
That's a crock. The military has done everything they have been ordered to do.
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