How Many Have Gone to War? OVER 1 MILLION!

[chlamor]

How many have gone to war? OVER 1 MILLION !

Mark Benjamin, Axis of Logic

Apr 12, 2005, 07:10

Even experts are surprised at the vast numbers of U.S. soldiers who have been deployed after 9/11. Even if troop levels in Iraq are cut next year, the military may be permanently damaged.

Three and a half years have passed since U.S. bombs started falling in Afghanistan, and ever since then, the U.S. military has been engaged in combat overseas. What most Americans are probably unaware of, however, is just how many American soldiers have been deployed. Well over 1 million U.S. troops have fought in the wars since Sept. 11, 2001, according to Pentagon data released to Salon. As of Jan. 31, 2005, the exact figure was 1,048,884, approximately one-third the number of troops ever stationed in or around Vietnam during 15 years of that conflict.

<snip>

The data sheds new light on how all-consuming the post-9/11 wars have been for the U.S. military, and suggests a particular strain on U.S. ground forces. An increasing number of military experts believe those forces -- the Army and Marines -- are months away from being overtaxed to the point of serious dysfunction. The situation in Iraq must continue to stabilize. If it doesn't, and the Bush administration continues to both reject the idea of a draft and rebuff efforts to permanently increase the size of the Army and Marines, U.S. ground forces will break down to a point not seen since just after Vietnam.

"Unless things start to improve, we will start to see a serious problem in six to nine months," said Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine Corps three-star general and a former Marine Corps deputy chief of staff under Ronald Reagan. "I think they are betting that things are going to get better. But that could be a miscalculation," said Trainor. "This crowd has been pretty good at miscalculating."

Indeed, the revelation that well over 1 million U.S. troops have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan surprises even close military observers. "Those are big numbers ... a lot bigger than I would have thought," said John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense information Web site that tracks the logistics of war. Pike thinks it is too early to tell what the impact will be on the regular Army, but he said the repeated deployments have already broken the reserve forces.

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_16803.shtml

[jhain]

1. thanks for this

I count on DU for good info.

This is a great example. Thank you.

[TahitiNut]

2. The number of living Vietnam Veterans is about 1 million today.

:shrug: