Charles Sheehan-Miles

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Troops getting screwed again

If you don't read Mark Benjamin at Salon.com, you need to start.  Today.  For background, Mark is a former UPI reporter who has spent most of the last decade reporting on issues involving the troops and veterans.  He's been a tireless supporter of the right thing, and originally wrote about the terrible conditions at Walter Reed more than two years before the Washington Post suddenly "broke" the story.

Over the weekend, Mark did it again.  In this story, headlined "The Army is ordering injured troops back to Iraq," he broke the story on a huge problem.  Combat brigades (in this case 3rd brigade, 3rd ID) which have now served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, are sending some injured troops back into combat, even though they aren't eligible for deployment due to physical disabilities.

Couple of major problems here.  First and foremost, it puts other troops at risk.  If you've got someone in your squad or on your tank crew who can't physically do the job, they are at risk and so are you.

Next, it underscores the continuing overstretching of the military.  We're fighting two wars right now, and don't have the manpower to properly prosecute either one.  A lot of the guys and gals in the military have done multiple tours: 3, 4, even more in some cases, in combat zones.  Some national guard units are going back for the second time.  I've got a couple friends who were out of the Army entirely who've been called back up in the individual ready reserve for deployment this summer. 

With my nephew going into the Marine Corps, and knowing that he will almost certainly end up deployed to Iraq (and probably more than once), I can't help but feel this is not an acceptable situation.  When less than half a percent of the American population making repeated sacrifices, where are the rest of us?  Shopping, watching American Idol, and being "consumers."

It's no secret that I opposed going to war in Iraq.  It's also no secret that I've argued for years that to leave precipitously would be both a betrayal of the Iraqi people, and a dangerous move for both regional security in the Middle East and for our own national security.  

But it's not enough to say that we have to stay there "until the mission is finished."

We have to actually commit the resources to do the job.

That means -- according to the top generals -- developing real political and economic solutions in Iraq.  It means putting people to work, even if that means reviving state industries that offend people's ideological positions on socialism or whatever.  And it means putting enough boots on the ground to actually be able to protect Iraqi civilians, so that they can rebuild their country and we can get out of there with a success, not a failure.

The only way to do that is to bring the draft. It's long past time we did it.

Unfortunately, with the debate in Washington, the media and in the public, still wrapped around "hawk vs. dove" and dem vs. repub, we're failing to even seriously discuss or think about how to REALLY successfully bring this war to a close and bring the troops home.  Because that would require more sacrifice than Americans are apparently willing to make. 

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