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Comment IPS Features |
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President Ronald Reagan raised the American
military to the highest level of the budget in his war against the Evil
Empire. It took our
national deficit to $3-trillion. Since
the Soviet Union couldn’t compete with the dollars spent, they got out
of the arms race. Following Reagan and the contemporary end of the
Cold War, President George H.W. Bush began downsizing the military. After all, when you have smart bombs and IBMS,
why keep a standing army? When
President Bush led the United Nations forces to repel Iraq’s invasion
of Kuwait, it was over in a matter of weeks.
President Bill Clinton continued to downsize the military, in the
interests of the economy. Career soldiers were mustered out and paid a
government dole to learn a civilian trade. President George W. Bush invaded Iraq without
the broad international support his father enjoyed.
But he assumed it would be a simple task to defeat Iraq’s weak
military. It didn’t’
take long to declare “Mission Accomplished.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t accomplished, and
still isn’t. The
resistance to American forces that was not there to support Saddam
Hussein went underground and reappeared as guerrillas to fight American
presence. The weakened American military has had to draw
on peace time solders, men and women who were content to serve their
county with a weekly drill and weekend or summer maneuvers.
They had their own civilian occupations and lives to live—far
from the regular routine of the military. The so called short war has become one of
indefinite nature with no end in sight.
No one has the courage to predict how long America will have to
occupy Iraq. No one can
predict how the manpower problem will be solved, and no politician dares
use the unpopular word draft that hasn’t been said since Vietnam. In the meantime, American soldiers are on the frontline without the care that a government should give them. Despite the boasts, frontline soldiers away from the cities do without hot food. If anyone wants the best and latest equipment, be it a pistol or shoes, they have to shell our their own money. They
are pressured to reenlist. The
Pentagon denies it, but soldiers with only a few months left on their
enlistment are threatened to force them to reenlist.
If they don’t, they may be sent back to Iraq to finish even a
few weeks of duty. They may
be put at the front. This is not the way to run an army.
This is not the way for a caring government to treat those who
protect our freedom, those who have been sent to the other side of the
world to fight and die for another country’s freedom.
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