Almost as bad are the huge quantities of military equipment and stores that we are expending in Iraq. For example, we had to buy billions of rounds of small arms ammunition from Israel starting in 2004, because American companies were no longer capable of manufacturing the vast quantities required by the military.
Many of the Army and National Guard units are returning from Iraq with equipment shortages (no National Guard brigade in the United States is currently “combat-ready,” with its full complement of men and equipment) that will take years to make good. The National Guard units are also discovering they are unable to properly provide disaster relief at home, because a large percentage of their trucks, ambulances, helicopters, and Hummers have been destroyed, or written off as unserviceable, when they returned from Iraq. This is on top of the fact that many of the units, both Regular and Reserve, are being deployed without the requisite equipment, four years after we invaded Iraq.
The highly paid mercenaries and privatized support units are the Bush Administration's attempt to do the war in Iraq on the cheap, at least as far as military manpower is concerned. It would have required 300,000+ soldiers and marines to provide all of the combat units, plus the support services, that are being provided by the 126,000 contractors in Iraq. Three hundred thousand troops are more than half of the combined regular Army and Marine strength, and such a commitment would have prevented our military from responding if ground forces were needed elsewhere.
The mercenaries and other contractors represent a two-pronged assault on the quality of our Armed Forces. First, is the jealousy they engender when a contractor is making $80,000.00 (or more) providing food at a soldier's mess hall, while most of the soldiers are making less than one-quarter of that amount.
Secondly, is the draining of many of our best officers and NCO's—especially in our Special Op's units—who are quitting to join “private security firms,” i.e., become mercenaries. In our “everything has a price” society, they ask themselves why should they risk their lives for a pittance, when they can make three or four times as much selling their guns.
The Nazis attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, in order to seize and exploit that nation's vast resources. While the Wehrmacht killed or captured millions of troops, they did not break the Soviet will, in spite of the fact that Stalin had crippled his military's leadership with his purges in 1937.
The Nazis permitted private corporations and Reich minister controlled consortia (and I include the SS's murderous Einsatzgruppen among them), following on the Wehrmacht's heels, to exploit those resources for the German economy, with no consideration being given to the Soviet people. The Soviets used the weather, the sheer size of their nation, and attrition tactics to keep the Germans at bay.
When American Lend Lease equipment began arriving in 1942 (including, ultimately, 10,000+ Studebaker trucks each month), the Soviets soon had the means to overwhelm the Nazis (as Stalin once said quantity has a quality all its own). Even superior German training and experience could not overcome the deluge Marshal Zhukov had prepared in November 1942. The Soviets waited until the Wehrmacht had bled itself dry at Stalingrad, overextended itself in the Caucasus, and then attacked. Had Hitler not sent his ablest commander, Field Marshal von Manstein, to save the situation, the Soviets would have completely broken the German Army in early 1943. Five months later, with the Nazi's abortive attack at Kursk (over von Manstein's protests to Hitler), the Red Army finished breaking the Wehrmacht.
The occupation of Iraq is breaking the American military in a very different, but equally certain way. Our all volunteer military is losing troops not simply in combat, but in our failure to meet recruitment, retention, and quality standards for our military. It took the U.S. Army more than ten years, and tens of billions of dollars, to overcome the damage done to it by Vietnam and its aftermath. With the ever rising costs of training, equipping, and recruiting quality individuals into the military, the United States cannot afford to lose the leavening of experienced officers and sergeants that makes a quality military possible.
The only three reasons I can see for attacking Iraq are that defense contractors wanted more money, Bush and Cheney's friends in the oil business wanted control of eleven percent of the world's petroleum reserves, and George W. Bush's monstrous ego. It has destroyed American credibility and prestige around the world, and has made George W. Bush the butt of psychotic American leader jokes from Montreal to Madrid.
We must leave Iraq before George Bush's tunnel vision and inability to admit a mistake, breaks our military once again.
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