Update [2005-7-6 11:42:41 by susanhu]: From today’s Democracy Now!:
New Pentagon Plan Calls For Greater Domestic Role
The Pentagon has adopted a new homeland security plan that calls for the U.S. military to greatly expand its domestic role. The Washington Post reports the new plan expands the military’s presence not only in the air and sea at home but also on the ground and in other less traditional areas including intelligence sharing with civilian law enforcement. According to the Post, the document does not ask for new legal authority to use military forces on U.S. soil, but it raises the likelihood that U.S. combat troops will take action in the event that civilian and National Guard forces are overwhelmed. The document also calls for military intelligence analysts to be teamed with civilian law enforcement to identify and track suspected terrorists. And it asserts the president’s authority to deploy ground combat forces on U.S. territory to “intercept and defeat threats.” The Post reports that in the area of intelligence, the document speaks of developing “a cadre” of Pentagon terrorism specialists and of deploying a number of them domestically to work with the FBI and local police forces. Gene Healy of the Cato Institute said, “The move toward a domestic intelligence capability by the military is troubling. The last time the military got heavily involved in domestic surveillance, during the Vietnam War era, military intelligence kept thousands of files on Americans guilty of nothing more than opposing the war.” Healy added, “I don’t think we want to go down that road again.”
This sends chills through my spine. We need a strong military. We need a military that’s not so stressed that it can’t respond to an emergency outside of Iraq. But that’s not what we’ve got now.
Julian Borger lays it all out in tomorrow’s edition of The Guardian: “Iraq insurgency forces Pentagon rethink on ability to fight two wars at once — Heavy costs, China and 9/11 influence military review.”
“The Iraq counter-insurgency is forcing the Pentagon to question its military doctrine that requires forces to be able to fight two major wars at the same time, it was claimed yesterday,” Borger reports.
This section of the Reuters report on the Pentagon “rethink” hit my stomach with a sickening thud:
I am not only sick. I am furious. I knew this already, but to say it was “noted” that many of those 1,700 deaths were because they weren’t fucking prepared just kills me.
No wonder there are sites like Adopt A Sniper. We civilians have to outfit our military:
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It is true, that most of the USMC S/S teams are continually purchasing thier own equipment that doesnt exist in the military supply systems, and any help thats available is greatly appreciated.
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Until now it seems we were misunderstood and under utilized. Now we are in demand and are working hard to do our jobs with half the gear. My partner and I have shelled out thousands on gear and we are still in need….
“‘What it reflects is how unprepared the US military was for a protracted insurgency in Iraq,’ said Loren Thompson, a strategic analyst at the Lexington Institute, a Washington thinktank.”
“‘A relatively small group of poorly equipped guerrillas is getting the United States to rethink its military posture … This type of conflict wasn’t supposed to happen with this duration and this intensity’,” Thompson told The Guardian.
But with so many troops pinned down in Iraq, the conflict is draining US forces of the capacity to fight elsewhere.
Below, the first part of The Guardian‘s report:
The length and ferocity of the insurgency has surprised the Pentagon. Two years after “major combat operations” were declared over by George Bush, there are still 138,000 US troops in Iraq, costing $5bn (£2.8bn) a month. Yet under US military doctrine it is not even defined as a war.
A Possible New Approach
“What they’re doing is trying to get beyond the two-war posture,” said Andrew Krepinevich, a former Pentagon official and executive director of the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The new approach is to fight four entirely different kinds of war at the same time: traditional large-scale combat; counter-insurgency; defending the US against attack (involving weapons of mass destruction); and “disruptive” warfare.
The China Syndrome
Yes. China.
“The latter, [said Krepinevich], reflects concern over China, which is reportedly exploring asymmetric strategies, potentially allowing its forces to take on the US. The strategies involve information warfare, targeting US reliance on the internet, anti-satellite weapons and the precise use of ballistic and cruise missiles against large-scale targets such as airbases.”
Here’s what Reuters reports about China and North Korea and Iran:
“If we say that we can only do one and then we get engaged in one that’s not on the horizon now, does that offer North Korea, China or Iran a chance to say ‘Well, they’re going to be engaged for five years, that gives me a leeway with what I want to do because they don’t have the force structure for two major combat operations’,” the official said.
Great. We’ve blown our leverage.
Borger reports that “[t]he change would raise the importance of special forces, but would transform training for infantrymen, to emphasise language skills, military intelligence and familiarity with foreign cultures.”
Full story in The Guardian || Reuters full story (NYT)
Tell me I’m worrying needlessly.
And it looks like there’s a NYT story coming out on this.
To fight major wars on two fronts,
Supply Iraq and Afghanistan grunts,
The Pentagon stressed,
They can’t do it; confessed.
Are Rumsfeld et al smoking blunts?
I wish I could.
You’re going to be super surprised to hear this from me, but yes I think you’re worrying “needlessly”… or about the wrong thing.
Two things.. a peacetime military is always a disaster when it first enters a war. Look at the first year of American operations in WW2 and you’ll see much more horrible miscalculations than anything the U.S. has done in Iraq.
Secondly, undersupplying the troops with gear and giving them rotten equipment and food is a grand old American tradition at least as old as the Mexican War (1820). I agree with you it is terrible but it isn’t new.
The U.S. military isn’t underfunded in the least.. we spend billions of dollars more than even our “enemies” do, it’s just most of it goes to things like planes or studies or base fees or non-combat troops. The guy with an actual gun in his hand is like the tip of a giant iceberg, and the “military” is mostly not that guy.
United States’ “dominance” as a world superpower is only partially built on the actual use of the military. The rest of it is economic and political. If you want to worry about something, worry about that.
It’s hard to measure political capital since it doesn’t come denumerated in dollars or guns. But the U.S. is losing it, bigtime. The U.S. got the biggest political capital gain of its life on 9/11 and the Bush administration has relentlessly squandered it, both at home and abroad. If you want to worry about something, this is what to worry about. The guys on the ground with guns in their hands will eventually figure out how to kill the “enemy” more effectively…
I know a little something about “defending the homeland” and I know a little something about the people tasked to do it. And they’re going about it all wrong. They’re trying to turn the United States into a maximum security prison where a guard clears all visitors. That’s impossible to do – it’s literally impossible.
The reduction of foreigners coming to the US to study and to travel worries me far more than almost anything – because it’s those people who go back to their countries and become “goodwill ambassadors” for our people and our country. And it’s those people who determine how we’re perceived and what we’re like. That survey a few weeks ago where people of the world gave China a more favorable rating, that worries me… because one day those students will start studying in Beijing and Shanghai. And coming back home and saying “China is where it’s going on”…
The U.S. is losing ground badly in Latin America and the Caribbean.. its pushing CAFTA which is deeply unpopular, it opposes democratically elected and popular governments, it is bullying Ecuador, it has a puppet client state in Haiti, it is financing an endless war in three countries (Colombia, Peru and Bolivia) and the people down there are, for the first time, waking up and saying hey we don’t need Uncle Sam in our lives anymore. Even El Salvador, with a government that should be beholden to the U.S. and its best ally, is increasing ties with Taiwan because Asia is the future…
Mugabe is a thug but a lot of Africans look up to him because he’s becoming independent of the old colonial masters. And now countries like Kenya are doing inconceivable things like saying no to the United States even though the U.S. has threatened to cut off aid. Kenya!
And so the “allies” of the U.S. are increasingly hardline dictators who ruthlessly exploit their people, and one day when those dictators are overthrown, the people will remember who supported their occupier. What happens when the disgruntled overthrow the dictators in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan? Why friends we’ll have another “Iran” type situation.
The day the United States ceases to be a “superpower” won’t be a day of guns firing and bombs dropping.. it’ll be through internal collapse. And all the soldiers in the world will be unable to prevent it.
Pax
Thank you, as always, for sharing some of your considerable knowledge.
I do disagree that ‘m worrying too much. There are a lot of reasons. Here are a couple of them:
This is why the pentagon is spending billions of dollars on mersernary types over there to do the military things that the military used to do on its own. I am with you Susan, I am so sick of this! And not only that we have many more wounded. We have no one wanting to join up. We have not one new way of defending ourselves against any big nation who decided to come and get us. This horrible administration has gotten us deep and deeper in the feces of what they can not do or willing not to do. It is mind blowing to see this happen right in front of our eyes. God be with us, is all I can say. We have lost our reputation with the world. We have no one to come to our aid. If there is another terrorist attack on us, no one wil be willing to do anything for us in our time of need. We will have no money to do much of anything..as a matter of fact we do not have much now to defend ourselves. What a mell of a hess.
Susan,
This is not new. My brother fought in the Persian Gulf War and already in that “war” they had started dismatling the whole supply system. We raised money not only for, at that time, a bullet proof vest (now they call them body armor) but I seem to remember sending him money for boots!
And all the care packages? Not only is it necessary for the internal bartering system that exists in the army; but, like when he was in Sarajevo, they were giving away or bartering supplies with civilians. It wouldn’t shock me that toilet paper and other expendables like that are being used in certain parts of Iraq as money.
Republicans support the military.
Persian Gulf War 1990-1. In Bush the First’s reign, after two terms of St. Ronnie.
[Just finished (re)reading Animal Farm and Orwell’s on my mind.]
Although that’s wrong too.
It strikes me that the whole military complex is geared to defeat an enemy by attacking its institutions.
The problem is that we haven’t fought any institutional enemies since Japan. Yes we held off the USSR, but we didn’t actually fight them.
Everywhere we’ve been fighting and are likely to fight, we’re up against enemies that are low in institutions, high in culture, and dominated by bands of individuals.
Although it matters dearly to the troops, I don’t think that the best imaginable level of supply is going to help the military we’ve actually got to succeed.
but, Susan, this just pissed me off so much, I had to share it with you. Your stuff is so incredible compared to most anything else that gets posted ANYwhere, I just hate to see you dissed in any way shape or form.
If this was totally inappropriate, I know you (and/or BooMan, daine101, shirlstars, etc. etc.) will tell me! 😉
At the moment the US military is still designed to fight major land armies as in the cold war days. The military is eqipped with large amounts of heavy armor, strike fighters and stealth bombers. The military is also looking at replacing its current armor, fighters and stealth aircraft with a new generation.
Unfortunately the cold war is long gone and there is not a single land power that is going to challenge the US in this manner as if it did it would be obliterated. Even China which has a large force has totally obsolete weaponry.
The current “defence” needs of the US are in the realms of “counter-insurgency” warfare. Thia requires large amounts of extremely well trained infantry. Witness the employment of cooks, tank crews and mercenaries in Iraq. The US military has go tit wrong. The investment should be in recruitment and training of infantry which probably means a huge salary increase in this area plus an attempt to establish a corps de sprit in the infantry which is traditionally the last place anyone in the US military would want to go. To waste money on hypersonic stealth fighters/bombers or Extra armored Abrams is a complete waste as these weapons systems as well as being very expensive are totally useless in any “counter-insurgency” situation. Soldiers in a tank are half blind and sitting in a coffin waiting to happen and any bomb dropping device just agravates situations by killing civilians.
Until the US military takes a step back and analyses the threats to the US and how to counter them in a rational way nothing will improve too much. Because of the vast amounts of money and corporate profits involved in huge military projects I wouldnt hold my breath too long waiting for a sensible policy review. Infantry may be what is needed but Boeing aint gonna make much money from training and paying soldiers.