|
Militarily speaking, where did Bush go wrong in Iraq? Bush did not, as every other American wartime president has done, greatly increase the size of the Army and Marines. He ignored the advice of the Chief of Staff of the Army, who at that time, told him that we needed a lot more troops to do the job in Iraq while maintaining operations in Afghanistan. That general was promptly vilified by Rumsfeld, and retired. Another mistake that Bush made is that he did not promote any general to five star rank and let him run the show like FDR did with Ike (and others) in WW2. Instead, he placed a civilian (remember Paul Bremer?) in charge of everything in Iraq. Perhaps part of the problem is that the generals today are "yes men", who aren't really calling the shots like Ike, MacArthur, and Omar Bradley did in WW2. I don't see us fighting to win. If you read the book "Band of Brothers", you would see how officers (and NCO's) down to company and platoon level had much more authority in combat than officers at that level today have. If there was a German sniper in a church tower taking shots at American troops, that church tower (and most likely the church with it) were taken out by artillery, tanks, bazooka's, or mortar fire. Now, if an Iraqi insurgent is taking shots at American troops from a mosque, that decision would have to be made by a three or four star general, who would have to ask some civilian for approval first.
The U.S. Army is in the process of de-activating several artillery battalions. That's a lot of fire support for ground troops that is going bye-bye during wartime. Bush and the republican Congress have closed many bases that could be (and were meant to be) used as bases to organize, equip, train and deploy forces in the event of war - like against someone that actually attacked us - like Al Qaeda. To me, this is negligence and incompetence, which is leading us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I thought we had learned our lessons from Vietnam. And after all of Bush's tough talk about "Help is on the way" for the military and his infamous "Mission Accomplished" declaration from an Aircraft Carrier while looking ridiculous in a military uniform (how scary was that?) a couple of years ago, one would have thought things would have turned out differently........What a shame.
These are dark days for our country. We have a dangerous moron in the White House, and a pathetic, rubber stamping, evangelical driven, republican-led Congress that is going along with whatever their "Dear Leader" wants to do.
Joey Liberal
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
