http://www.sftt.org/dwa/2003/2/5/da.html
February 5, 2003 12:42
Will Colin Powell Stand
Tall?
By David H. Hackworth
While a bellicose North Korea belts
out nuclear material for an assembly line of bombs, and al Qaeda keeps
blowing up people, places and things from Afghanistan to Yemen, tens of
thousands of American fighters and their supporters are pouring into the
Persian Gulf region to take out Saddam.
And from every quarter of Pax
America, our commanders, not unlike their ancient Roman counterparts, say
they need more toys and boys to cinch the accomplishment of their missions
around a war-weary world where more than a million of our best and
brightest are playing Supercop.
For example, our admiral running
the Pacific wisely wants more forces to deal with the paranoids from
Pyongyang in case they put steel and fire behind their words of war, while
our general out in the Persian Gulf - counting the weeks before he
clobbers Iraq - isn't happy that combat units have been cut from his order
of battle. Meanwhile, his counterpart in Afghanistan wants more troops for
peacemaking that gets hotter, messier and bloodier with the passage of
each day. And the skippers responsible for homeland defense are rightfully
complaining that the USA is being left high and dry without the men and
material to handle the job.
A month ago, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld boldly said he could do it all. But it was no big surprise when
Gen. Peter Pace, his Pentagon assistant, quietly refuted this assertion a
few weeks later. Between the reserves and active-duty forces, the Pentagon
can field only about 2.5 million effective fighters and supporters, which
means we just don't have enough troops for all the missions currently on
the Pentagon's military menu.
Despite the heavy activation of
reservists and even the call-up of retired folks, many units today are
badly stretched, and other units - especially reserve outfits - are far
from good-to-go. Morale, the most essential factor in war, is not exactly
over-the-top. Cooked books and ghost soldiers, along with failed social
experiments, have left many units severely undermanned. A staggering
number of soldiers, sailors and airmen have been unable to deploy overseas
for reasons such as disability, discipline and dope problems, pregnancy
and child-care issues.
The exact number is one of the Pentagon's
most-guarded secrets. Perhaps Congress should ask?
We started down
this mine-laden path more than a decade ago when the Pentagon's Paul
Wolfowitz first advocated - to Bush-the-Elder and then-Defense Secretary
Dick Cheney - that the USA become the sole superpower and dominate the
world. You know, steal a few lines from 1930s Germany with a good-guy
"enlightened" democratic spin on the proposed New World Order. But Bush I
turned his back on Wolfowitz's Greater Middle East Marshall-like plans,
the Cold War ended, and our military muscle was ruthlessly whacked in
half.
Then President Clinton delivered the body blow of
political-correctness-run-amok that just about brought down what was left
of a once-magnificent Desert Storm military force.
When Bush II
got in the saddle, he bought into the NWO gospel according to Wolfowitz
and a coterie of like-minded, draft-dodging superhawks - including
Washington insider William Kristol - that containment, the strategy that
brought the Soviets down, should be replaced by the NWO big stick,
beginning with the democratization of Iraq.
But since none of
these warmongers - who were of dying age for Vietnam but chose to
escape-and-evade - has walked the walk, Colin Powell needs to draw on his
been-there wisdom and authority and summon up the grit to tell Mr. Bush to
slow down on Iraq, at least until we rebuild our military into a force
capable of chewing what we've already bitten off. Or for sure the NWO
doctrine will do unto Bush II what Vietnam did unto LBJ as our country
sallies forth to rule the world.
Kristol told The New York Times
that he lies awake at night worrying that something could go wrong with
the war with Iraq. "Chemical weapons could be used against American
troops," he says. "A biological weapon could be set off in America." I'm
sure many of us lie awake at night, too, with the same terrible thoughts -
including Robert McNamara, another unrestrained defense intellectual who
never served in the trenches and whose similar abstract thinking fueled
the Vietnam disaster.
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