Page 1 of
2 An army popping at the
seams By David Isenberg
WASHINGTON - Two events of the past week
illustrated the increasing stresses and strains on
the US military as it tries to sustain both its
"surge" in Iraq and its overall military presence
in Iraq.
On April 9, the Pentagon named
four National Guard brigade combat teams it plans
to send back to Iraq. These four units have all
seen action in the past few years, making this the
kind of
guard redeployment not seen
since World War II.
The brigades will be
deployed for a maximum of one year at any one
time. That is tacit recognition of the delicacy of
the deployments because normally National Guard
deployments are between 18 and 22 months.
Although they are not scheduled to begin
deployment until December, they are receiving
alert orders now to provide them the maximum time
to complete their preparations. These units will
deploy as replacement forces for formations
currently operating in Iraq. There are
approximately 13,000 personnel in these four
brigades.
The final determination of
whether these units will deploy will be made based
on conditions on the ground in Iraq. The units
are: 39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Little
Rock, Arkansas ; 45th Infantry Brigade, Oklahoma
City, Oklahoma; 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team,
Indianapolis ; 37th Infantry Brigade Combat Team,
Columbus, Ohio.
These are essentially all
units that have already been deployed abroad
within the past three years. Two of them, the
brigades from Indiana and Oklahoma, already did
rotations in Afghanistan. And the one from
Arkansas already went to Iraq. And the brigade
from Ohio went to Kosovo.
The fact that
these units have already been deployed in the past
few years illustrates the unprecedented nature of
the decision because under the Pentagon's own
guidelines National Guard Units can only be
deployed once, for up to two years, every five
years.
But according to Chris Preble,
director of foreign policy studies at the Cato
Institute in Washington, DC, "The goal of army
doctrine, keeping troops at home for three years,
has not been the case for some time." He notes,
"What [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates is pushing
for is to increase the size of the military, but
that wouldn't provide troops for 18 months. Gates
is trying to accommodate the number of troops he
has available to the mission of staying in Iraq.
The problem is the policy itself. We are going to
have for some indefinite period of time troops in
Iraq. The true solution is to reduce the size of
the presence."
Previously, top army
leaders have broached the subject of changing
deployment rules to allow for more frequent
callups of National Guard and reserve units to
relieve pressure on the active duty army. But
because the army relied heavily on the guard and
reserve early in the war, many units have hit
their legal deployment limits.
The
deployment orders for these units has become an
element in the battle between the White House and
Congress over funding the war in Iraq. One
provision of the proposed Congressional bill would
prevent the president from sending army units into
Iraq and Afghanistan that have not spent at least
a year at home since returning from the combat
zone.
President George W Bush argues that,
with this provision, Congress is trying to
micromanage the war by telling US generals how to
run a war and vows that he will veto it. But Bush
already has leeway because army doctrine says that
troops should spend at least two years at home
before being sent back to a war zone for another
year. And the provision gives the president the
power to waive the law if he deems it is in the
national interest.
Yet, as Lawrence Korb,
an assistant secretary of defense in the Ronald
Reagan administration, has written, Bush needs to
address the issue of why army doctrine mandates
that units spend two years at home between
deployments - one year of recuperation followed by
one year of training - and why Congress is
insisting that units spend at least one year at
home. The answer is that it takes two years for a
unit to attain a readiness
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