Troop Withdrawal - Plan may be plausible, but it raises concerns

[papau]

http://www.courierpress.com/ecp/editorials/article/0,1626,ECP_768_3117302,00.html

The Troops
The Issue: President Bush announces major withdrawal from Europe and Asia. Our View: Plan may be plausible, but it raises concerns.

August 18, 2004

The timing and location of President Bush's announcement were suspect - during a campaign appearance before an audience of veterans while trying to answer John Kerry's details-free promise that he would bring troops home from Iraq sooner than Bush.

The president unveiled a plan to withdraw 70,000 U.S. troops, plus 100,000 military dependents and civilian employees, from bases in Europe and Asia. Perhaps the president's political handlers hoped the word "withdrawal" would stick in the voters' minds, but the plan has nothing to do with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead, the idea is to save time, money and the strain on military families by basing more flexible, more mobile units in the United States and using 21st-century technology to deploy them.

It sounds plausible, but from what the public has been told so far the plan has some cause for reservations.

We would be giving up 50 years of painstakingly built-up military infrastructure, especially in Germany, which, modern technology notwithstanding, is still a lot closer to the places we've been called on to fight - the Balkans, the Mideast, Afghanistan - than any place in the United States.

And as long as that bellicose little nut is in power in North Korea, we should not be unilaterally cutting our troop presence in South Korea. The savings of a troop recall will likely not be great. Germany, Japan and South Korea help underwrite the costs of U.S. troops stationed there. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the savings at only about $1 billion a year.

Bases here will have to be reconfigured to accept the two heavy armored divisions Bush plans to bring back from Germany. And the plan already has one unanticipated cost: Congress will likely balk at the next round of planned base closings while the lawmakers maneuver to snag returning units for their districts.

The CBO says the redeployment will result in "at best, only small improvements in the United States' ability to respond to far-flung conflicts." And one component - the new Stryker armored vehicle - has hit an obstacle. It is too heavy to be easily transported by C-130s.

Bush says that the redeployment will mean military families will face fewer transfers and separations. But the transfers are due less to where the troops are stationed than to military promotion and personnel polices.<snip>

[rocktivity]

1. If it raises concerns, it's NOT plausible, period!

:headbang:
rocknation

[sandnsea]

2. troop redeployment

It's not troop withdrawal, don't call it that. It's redeployment to other areas. Which means new bases and new contracts for Halliburton. We're going to build a bunch of new bases in Poland or the Czech Republic or something, just to move troops a couple hundred miles from Germany??? This plan is just dumb.

[papau]

3. CBO: Troop shift Costly, unnecessary

CBO: Troop shift Costly, unnecessary


http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5415&sequence=0

http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5415&sequence=1&fr...

ftp://ftp.cbo.gov/54xx/doc5415/05-03-ArmyOBasing.pdf

CBO: Troop shift Costly, unnecessary

CBO's analysis points to several conclusions:

Because the United States has invested heavily over the past 50 years in base infrastructure for its troops stationed overseas, any major shifting of forces--either between overseas locations or to the United States--would require significant spending to provide that infrastructure somewhere else.


There would be limited annual savings to offset the large initial investment needed to restation U.S. forces, unless U.S. presence overseas was greatly reduced. In that case, annual savings could exceed $1 billion, but the net up-front investment would be substantial--on the order of $7 billion.


Restationing Army forces would produce, at best, only small improvements in the United States' ability to respond to far-flung conflicts. The reason is that deploying Army units to many potential trouble spots from the likely locations of new bases would not be significantly faster than deploying them from current bases.


Bringing forces that are permanently stationed in Europe and South Korea back to the continental United States (CONUS) and maintaining a presence in those regions through unit rotations would reduce the need for infrastructure overseas. It would also reduce instability in Army units by lessening the extent to which soldiers come and go, thus potentially enhancing unit cohesion. But maintaining the current level of overseas presence with unit rotations would limit the forces available for other operations--including the occupation of Iraq--and could hurt retention in the Army by increasing family separation.


If large numbers of forces were relocated from overseas, the need for additional basing in CONUS for tens of thousands of personnel could preclude some of the closings that might otherwise occur as part of the 2005 round of base realignments and closures (BRAC).