Okay...I have to call bullshit on this one. Big. Time.
"You go to war with the Army you have," Rumsfeld replied, "not the Army you might want or wish to have."
We went to war with Bush 41,Cheney, Powell, Cohen, Gingrich and Clinton's military. I recall that the Joint Chiefs lobbied against the massive drawn down at the time Powell outlined the realignment and SecDef Aspin's more radical plan was defeated. You may also recall that we ran low on Tomahawk missles during the Clinton administration, shortages are not a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but a decade long drawn down on men and material. The Navy doesn't have a full compliment of fighters and support aircraft either. None of this is news, although the MSM seems to have collective amnesia.
It looks as if critics of the win-hold-win scenario were correct in many of their predictions and assumptions. Michael O'Hanlon wote an excellent analysis after the 2000 QDR.
There is a final argument against the two war construct. Just as the capabilities of South Korean forces must not be ignored, one should not overlook the likely role that British forces would play in a conflict in the Persian Gulf. The United Kingdom deployed 30,000 troops during Desert Storm, was prepared to send 50,000 troops to fight against Serbia, and tends to be aligned with the United States on issues of war and peace in Southwest Asia.Without prejudging the prospects for an integrated European military force, or presuming full agreement between Washington and London in matters of defense and foreign policy, one can venture to say that Britain would probably provide a division and several fighter squadrons to any coalition led by the United States in a future conflict in the Persian Gulf. However, pessimistic American war plans do not now assume such contributions.
Some will see the similarity between this proposal and a plan put forth as a trial balloon by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin in 1993. Known as a win-hold-win strategy, it envisioned completing an all-out war in one theater while simply holding the line in another. Once the first war was won, forces would be redeployed for a counteroffensive to meet the other challenge. But the caricature of that approach understated its capabilities and doomed it to rejection. Derided as win-hold-oops because of its alleged risk to war plans, it never stood a chance bureaucratically or politically.
The important point is that a Desert Shield force, with its overwhelming airpower and other long-range strike systems, can do more than hold a defensive line despite the limited capabilities of such a force.
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More dangerously, the military could continue to overuse and wear out its most precious asset its people. That would be a far greater risk than the remote possibility of two nearly simultaneous, all-out conflicts against both Iraq and North Korea.
There are no winners in this dog fight, everyone pretty much got it wrong. Why/how we fumbled the country's defense for a more than a decade is the question and what are we doing to remedy the situation? So far, past and present administrations and Congress are doing little more than a PR circle-jerk.
Posted by feste at December 8, 2004 04:39 PM | TrackBack