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A Decade of War Coming Home to Roost

This should come as no surprise – that nearly a decade of war has left our ranks stretched so thin, that the Army would have few available reserves if a major crisis occurred on another front. Via Spencer Ackerman at The Washington Independent today: If President Obama orders an additional 30,000 to 40,000 troops to […]

This should come as no surprise – that nearly a decade of war has left our ranks stretched so thin, that the Army would have few available reserves if a major crisis occurred on another front.

Via Spencer Ackerman at The Washington Independent today:

If President Obama orders an additional 30,000 to 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, he will be deploying practically every available U.S. Army brigade to war, leaving few units in reserve in case of an unforeseen emergency and further stressing a force that has seen repeated combat deployments since 2002.

According to information compiled by the U.S. Army for The Washington Independent about the deployment status of active-duty and National Guard Army brigades, as of December 2009, there will be about 50,600 active-duty soldiers, serving in 14 combat brigades, and as many as 24,000 National Guard soldiers available for deployment. All other soldiers and National Guardsmen will either be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan already or ineligible to deploy while they rest from a previous deployment.

There has been a lot of  speculation about what Obama plans to announce (by the end of the month?) regarding the future military strategy in Afghanistan. A lot of backroom action, an avalanche of informed and not-so-informed blog posts and op-eds, but little in the way of  “meat and potatoes”  on which to base a sound prediction. Funny, 55 percent of those surveyed in the most recent Washington Post poll say they are “confident” Obama will “come up with a strategy that will succeed.” One wonders how they came to that conclusion. Of course the responses for all of the questions fall predictably on party lines. Like the 35 percent of (mostly) Republicans who say Obama isn’t giving the military “a big enough role” in developing the strategy. Give me a break. Short of Obama replacing Jim Jones with Dick Cheney as his National Security Advisor, there is nothing the White House can do right without the military holding the leash, at least in the eyes of these unreflected Republicans.

Interestingly, a full 52 percent of those polled said the war in Afghanistan has not been “worth it,” a data point that has not wavered in some time. Perhaps Obama is thinking twice about escalation. Maybe not. But if Ackerman’s report is to be taken seriously, it seems the question as to whether we can escalate this war effectively, at least without destroying what is left of the U.S Armed Forces, has already been answered.

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