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The Army's announcement Monday that four Army National Guard brigades--totaling more than 12,000 troops--are headed to Iraq marks the first time that any full brigade combat team has returned to the country for a second tour. The return of Guard units to Iraq is a politically sensitive issue, since states--and their governors--rely on the corps of citizen-soldiers to provide emergency help in the event of natural disasters or threats to homeland security. To that end, National Guard Bureau Chief H. Steven Blum has promised not to deploy more than 50 percent of a state's national guardsmen at any given time.
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Army Reserve falters on recruitment
The Army Reserve, whose troops drive trucks on bomb-riddled roads and help set up local governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, is struggling to recruit soldiers. The Army Reserve missed its recruiting goal by 5% last year and is 9% short of its target this year, records show.
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U.S. Army prosecutions of desertion rise sharply
Army studies and interviews suggest a link between the rising rate of desertions and its expanding use of moral waivers to recruit people with poor academic records and low-level criminal convictions. We're enlisting more dropouts, people with more law violations, lower test scores, more moral issues," said a senior noncommissioned officer involved in U.S. Army personnel and recruiting. We're really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get people to join."
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America's Broken-Down Army
"The readiness of the Army's ground forces is as bad as it was right after Vietnam," Murtha tells TIME. Even Colin Powell—a retired Army general, onetime Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Bush's first Secretary of State—acknowledges that after spending nearly six years fighting a small war in Afghanistan and four years waging a medium-size war in Iraq, the service whose uniform he wore for 35 years is on the ropes. "The active Army," Powell said in December, "is about broken."
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Is US Army bent to the breaking point?
The Pentagon's announcement Monday that it is sending two units back to Iraq early means it will renege on its objective to give soldiers at least 12 months at home between deployments. The fact that the Pentagon felt compelled to make the call-up seems to validate what many retired generals and former Pentagon officials have warned: that repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan are wearing out military personnel and equipment to a worrisome point.
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Broken Army, broken empire
The Army is "about broken," agrees Colin Powell, the former chairman
of the Joint Chiefs. Powell believes we "are losing the war" in Iraq, but
opposes any "surge" of U.S. troops. "There are no additional troops," says Powell. "All we would be doing
is keeping some of the troops who were there, there longer, and escalating or
accelerating the arrival of other troops." Retired Gen. Kevin Ryan agrees: "Today, the 37 combat brigades of the
active Army are almost totally consumed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With all units either deployed, returning from deployment or preparing to
deploy, there is none left to prepare for other contingencies."
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US lawmaker offers bill restoring military draft
A top Democratic lawmaker reintroduced legislation to restore the US military
draft, saying that the all-volunteer army is shorthanded and overwhelmed by
current and future troop deployments in Iraq.
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Pentagon abandons active-duty time limit
The Pentagon has abandoned its limit on the time a citizen-soldier can
be required to serve on active duty, officials said Thursday, a major
change that reflects an Army stretched thin by longer-than-expected
combat in Iraq. The Pentagon also announced it is proposing to Congress that the size
of the Army be increased by 65,000, to 547,000 and that the Marine
Corps, the smallest of the services, grow by 27,000, to 202,000, over
the next five years.
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General Says Army Will Need To Grow
Warning that the active-duty Army "will break" under the strain of
today's war-zone rotations, the nation's top Army general yesterday
called for expanding the force by 7,000 or more soldiers a year and
lifting Pentagon restrictions on involuntary call-ups of Army National
Guard and Army Reserve troops.
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Military considers recruiting foreigners
The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering
expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks -- including disputed proposals
to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster
track to US citizenship if they volunteer -- according to Pentagon officials.
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Leaned on as never before, reservists weigh re-enlistment
Those deciding whether to remain in the Guard and Reserve must take
into account the possibility that they'd have to serve longer and more
frequently on active duty than they do now. Under current mobilization
policies, part-time troops can be called on to serve involuntarily on
active duty for no more than 24 months during a five-year period. Army
officials want the Pentagon to lift those restrictions so that National
Guard and Reserve troops can be pressed into service more often;
specifics remain to be worked out.
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"Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies. From these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
~ James Madison
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