Story here.
Fuck. Just fuck.
You couldn’t teach this man a lesson if you pounded it into his head with a hammer.
Think quality, not quantity, BG. Your OP sucks for GD.
Despite Mister Bush, we are stuck in the early years of a long war. I have long said a draft is called for.
Actually, if you’d bother to be a student of recent history, the, “faster, lighter, better,” doctrine was the creation of Bush’s first defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Although many of the military commanders in the spring of 2003 strongly advocated for using upwards of 400,000 troops in Iraq, Mr. Rumsfield dismissed these requests and went ahead with the ~130,000 troops that we actually used. Many people have said that using this small number of troops was the beginning of our failure in Iraq and made it impossible to provide meaningful security for the nation in its delicate window of transition from dictatorship to, hopefully, democracy.
I do not see Bush’s decision to increase the man-power of the military as evidence that he’s intractable to learning lessons, but the fact that this is occurring in December, 2006 shows that it’s simply too little, too late.
I don’t think that it was that he actually originated the idea, but more that he was a big booster of it and had the authority to push such a doctrine over more traditional notions of force projection.
- Tamerlane
By the way, speaking purely as a half-assed armchair general with no more expertise than the next shmoe who’s read a book or two, I don’t find the concept inherently idiotic.
But there’s a difference in seeing merit in a new strategic idea and insisting on shoehorning it into fitting a situation where such clearly isn’t called for. Rumsfeld et al’s great flaw was failing to plan for the follow-up to the campaign, rather than the campaign itself ( although I could argue, again with great half-assedness, that using a lightly armored marine division to spearhead the charge could have proved messy if the RG had actually made any real attempt to counter-attack - he should have at the very least waited until the heavy division balked by Turkey was re-deployed to the south ).
- Tamerlane
Sounds like the generals are telling him that the military must recover its manpower losses caused by his Iraq war, but that that can only be done if he *ends * it. But yes, the troops were needed in 2003 - now, sending them, even if they can be found somewhere, will only get more people killed uselessly.
The debate topic, since one is asked for, could be “How many high-ranking military people will he have to go through until he finds some to tell him what he wants to hear?”
The inherently idiotic concept is that America should be the global military hegemon at all.
No, we’re not, Paul. We are in a war from which we have the option to walk away at any time. It’s a very rare and enviable situation, but W can’t see how to take advantage of it.
But W is thinking in terms of quantity. That’s the whole point.
Well, the word now is that we don’t have 400000 troops available for Iraq in which case we didn’t have them in 2003 either and the chiefs and Rumsfeld knew it. I think it quite possible that the 400000 estimate was a way for the military chiefs to say, “This is a bad idea and is beyond our capability with an army and marine corps of their present size.”
Increasing the authorized strength of the army and marine corps isn’t of any use in Iraq right now and won’t be for several years. The increase is for the “global war on terrorism” and indicates that GW still thinks that military force will defeat terrorism. That’s just plain nuts.
Not Rumsfeld’s creation. The idea was put forth most strongly by (I think) Michael E. O’Hanlon prior to 2000. Bush loved the idea and picked Rumsfeld (with years of service including holding the Secretary of Defense position earlier) to carry out the blue sky plans of the armchair enthusiasts.
Ironically, from June, 2001, through Sptember 10, 2001, there were an increasing number of pundits expressing the belief that Rumsfeld would be gone by Christmas because he had pissed off the military brass, who dug in their heels and dragged their feet over his “reforms,” (otherwise known as “transformation”), so that he was accomplishing next to nothing.
The WTC/Pentagon attacks saved his butt, because with a “war-like” situation, the Joint Chiefs and their minions had to swallow their reservations and just go along with his orders. However, he was following another guy’s blueprints, so it is quite possible that he was carrying them out with less than full comprehension of their ramifications.
[ Moderating ]
(I’m leaving this thread here (for now) because it is turning into a discussion that could become a debate, but the OP was cleary a Pit rant and I’d have simply moved it if I had gotten here sooner. It may yet get moved depending how it develops.)
[ /Moderating ]
Bush must be barking, or that single grey cell that he has left has resigned.
Where is he going to find guys willing to fight a war of attrition ?
I suppose that training a grunt to fit in a body bag is pretty easy, but I can’t see many volunteers - possibly someone has dug out Reagan’s Star Wars and is trying to re-jig it.
There are plenty of trained troops in Iraq, and they speak Arabic with the right accent, possibly someone half smart has suggested to Bush that US domestic resistance to paying for an Iraqi standing army would diminish if the US populace thought :-
a) it would cost less
b) it would not mean attending funerals for relatives and friends
Of course I can think of another option, there are some pretty effective mercenary sources, it would be a laugh to recruit Taliban trained Pakistanis, mix them with Portuguese speaking guys from Pomret - and tack on Chechens for the really dirty work.
Best just to evacuate anyone worth saving and let the bonfire burn itself out.
Where are the volunteers to come from? 
The Baby Boom is over. And our newly arrived wave of illegal immigrants don’t even want to be citizens, much less to fight. Where will we get the surplus young men?
And, if there is a Draft…how can we keep the Nation functioning, if there is a draft? We don’t produce enough young people to do the civvy grunt work now…how do we keep the lights on at home?
By “long war,” I really, really hope you don’t mean a wider war.
Because the idea of expanding the size (and cost) of out military is just throwing good money after bad for purposes of “winning” in Iraq . . . but it’s exactly what you would want to do if you were still fixated on invading Iran.
Your leniency is appreciated. I certainly intended the cited article as debate material but could not restrain myself from adding the (appropriate even for GD, IMO) visceral commentary.
To be fair to Bush, this isn’t much different than the John Kerry 2004 proposal to add 40,000 troops. But back in 2004, the situation was thought to be salvageable. In 2007, this is going to be too little too late.
Thus does the empire begin its long, slow collapse.
Hard to tell, from that, whether you’re arguing for or against the idea of America having an empire.