Weakened warriors

How trouble in Sudan underscores the failure in Iraq

2004.07.03 — Government | War | by BB Rodriguez

In the 2000 election, George W Bush made the bold claim that Bill Clinton had gutted the US military and that, if an emergency arose, "two entire divisions of the Army would have to report ..., 'Not ready for duty, sir.'" He made the specious claim based on the fact that two divisions had just returned from keeping the peace in Bosnia (successfully, and without an American combat death). But what answer will Bush get when he brings up the subject of mass murder in Sudan?

Of course, when an emergency did arise just nine months into the Bush 2 administration, Clinton's military was more than equal to the task of hunting the perpetrators. But that's not how the president decided to use them. He sent troops to Afghanistan, all right, where they destroyed the Taliban and broke up al Qaeda. But before they could finish the job, he shifted the emphasis to the far-less-urgent threat of Iraq and sent troops to decaptitate the regime and occupy the nation (as many in his administration had planned for years).

That effort really has weakened the US military to dangerous levels. The military is stretched thin across Iraq and Afghanistan, forced to resort now to drafting (sorry, "reactivating") men and women who may have left the service months or even years ago and thought they were free. And Bush is misusing the National Guard with overseas duty. Lucky for him that LBJ didn't do the same.

Eighteen months after the Iraq invasion, Bush is still pulling troops from bases around the world to subdue the country... including from Afghanistan, where the work still isn't finished. And he is pulling troops from South Korea even while North Korean leader Kim Jung Il is gleefully threatening to restart his nuclear weapons program. Bush's answer: offer the same butter-for-guns deal he derided when Bill Clinton offered it.

Of course, the president has to dig up troops from anywhere he can; he's losing them in Iraq at an alarming rate. Twelve-month tours have come up for thousands, forcing him to stop the bleeding by extending the hardship for another three months or more. Casualties have inched up to around 2.25 per day, totalling nearly 900, with wounded numbering around five times that. Add to that the sick and (non-combat) injured, which triple the killed and wounded, and you'll find that GWB has lost about 20,000 troops (about 18,000 as of mid-March) from unavoidable attrition (if not more).

In some cases, personnel were returned to duty, effectively replacing themselves.

And that doesn't count the allied troops who have been lost or called home, which (harder to pin down) likely number around 3,000. Worse, reports of post-traumatic stress disorder (wasn't it more descriptive when it was called "battle fatigue"?) remind us that we'll eventually have 250,000 traumatized vets. Think of it: a quarter of a million men and women experiencing mental disorders, night terrors, suicidal depression, ulcers, and similar disorders. The VA is already a shamefully incompetent mess. How will they cope with a quarter million new patients?

On top of it all, there is the new trouble in Sudan. This is serious trouble, too, with a virtual genocide in progress, Arabs killing black Africans wholesale. But the United States is not in a position to stop it, or even to exert much pressure on the murderers. After all, how much attention would a criminal pay to a cop who already had his hands full wrestling with two other miscreants?

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