Don Walton: Hagel says rebuild military (RINO alert)

Journalstar.com ^ | 7-28-08 | Don walton

[stan_sipple]

So, how do you rebuild an overstressed — and perhaps broken — Army, whose soldiers endure the longest deployments? “You start by reorienting and prioritizing placement of forces,” Hagel says. That means phased withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq and insertion of more troops into Afghanistan, where they are needed. Match priorities, objectives and policies with resources,” he says. Coordinate with a reoriented foreign policy that seeks and values allies, builds relationships, forms coalitions of common interest, he says. Use all the instruments of power, including diplomacy, trade, foreign aid. That’s soft power. And that’s big picture. It will take a long time to repair the U.S. military, Hagel says. But it’s time to begin. Hagel is viewed as a leading prospect to be considered for the post of secretary of defense if Obama is elected.

[fortcollins]

Our military was over-stressed in 1945. Tours of duty were for the duration

[Wuli]

Iraq is not Afganistan -

geographically (the terrain - Iraq has few mountains and its valleys are related to broad river plains, while most of the Afghan terrain is very mountainous and most of the population lives in the mountainous regions with vilage settlements among hundreds of peaks and valleys);

demographically (ethnicity, and population size as well as population density) - Iraqis more often than Afghans live in cities, while most Afghans are rural farmers);

culturally and socially (Afghan’s are very much more religiously conservative and less secular than Iraqis);

militarily (Iraqi “military” experience - of Iraqis WITH military experience - is predominately from Iraq’s large standing armies (past and present) and fresh urban counter-insurgency experience with the current U.S. coalition, while Afghan experience - of Afghan’s on “our side” with military experience - is predominately in rural insurgency (past) and rural counter-insurgency - present.

Therefore, the military requirements and combat priorities of the two theaters are not the same nor equal. The Soviets learned, too late, that simply placing large concentrations of tens of thousands of troops into the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan made those troops simply much bigger targets without those troops achieving an equal or better level of “flushing out” the enemy. The training and experience of a brigade that has been rotated in and out of, and back into, Iraq over the last five years does not provide the knowledge and experience to be deployed, combat ready, from Iraq to Afghanistan. It is not that simple.

The units sent home from Iraq will most likely not be the
units needed in Afghanistan; and just because we might be able to send home, 10,000 or 30, 0000 or 100,000 or more troops from Iraq does not mean that sending an equal number to Afghanistan will produce a result that mere math could suggest. Whatever number of additional troops that might actually help in Afghanistan is what it is and it bears no relationship to what comes home from Iraq.

I think that the facts are that until Pakistan is willing to actually take-on the militancy and Taliban-aid climate in its northwest provinces, or that Pakistan proves either unwilling or unable to do so - and we must intercede there, pouring more U.S. troops into Afghanistan is by itself not a beneficial policy, but, in fact, will be no more helpful than it was to the Soviets; because, the financial and military resources of the Afghan insurgency is now in, and very safely in, Pakistan. Unless the battle is engaged there, one way or another, the problem in Afghanistan will continue, regardless of how many troops we send there.

[stan_sipple]

we won the war in the Pacific because we could keep out ships out a sea indefinitely.