Galloway column: Asking too much of too few

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Galloway column: Asking too much of too few
By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Wednesday, October 24, 2007


Although they seem to have faded out of the headlines and been put on the back burner by the politicians in the nation’s capital in recent weeks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on, whether we're paying attention or not.

This week, we had a new estimate that those wars ultimately may cost the American taxpayer a whopping $2.7 trillion, all of it added onto a national debt that already tops $9 trillion. That’s a tidy sum for a foreign adventure whose architects thought would be over in six months and mostly paid for by Iraqi oil revenues.

Also this week, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, hit the road to talk to the Army captains and majors who, along with the lieutenants, sergeants and enlisted soldiers, bear the brunt of repeated combat tours in the mountains of Afghanistan and the sands of Iraq.

The admiral got a real earful during stops at Ft. Leavenworth, Kans., and Ft. Sill, Okla., when he asked those line officers what was on their minds.

He told the officers that our military today has an incredible wealth of combat experience at their level after so many officers have pulled two, three and even four tours of hard duty, and that his job is to keep all that experience on duty in the years to come.

The captains and majors told their boss that a policy of repeated combat deployments for 15 months in the war zone with only 12 months, at best, back home simply isn't good enough. Many said the long absences are a threat to their marriages and family life, and that the divorce rate among junior officers is soaring.


Rest of article at: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/20809.html