Update [2005-7-6 11:42:41 by susanhu]: From today’s Democracy Now!:


New Pentagon Plan Calls For Greater Domestic Role


The Pentagon has adopted a new homeland security plan that calls for the U.S. military to greatly expand its domestic role. The Washington Post reports the new plan expands the military’s presence not only in the air and sea at home but also on the ground and in other less traditional areas including intelligence sharing with civilian law enforcement. According to the Post, the document does not ask for new legal authority to use military forces on U.S. soil, but it raises the likelihood that U.S. combat troops will take action in the event that civilian and National Guard forces are overwhelmed. The document also calls for military intelligence analysts to be teamed with civilian law enforcement to identify and track suspected terrorists. And it asserts the president’s authority to deploy ground combat forces on U.S. territory to “intercept and defeat threats.” The Post reports that in the area of intelligence, the document speaks of developing “a cadre” of Pentagon terrorism specialists and of deploying a number of them domestically to work with the FBI and local police forces. Gene Healy of the Cato Institute said, “The move toward a domestic intelligence capability by the military is troubling. The last time the military got heavily involved in domestic surveillance, during the Vietnam War era, military intelligence kept thousands of files on Americans guilty of nothing more than opposing the war.” Healy added, “I don’t think we want to go down that road again.”


This sends chills through my spine. We need a strong military. We need a military that’s not so stressed that it can’t respond to an emergency outside of Iraq. But that’s not what we’ve got now.


Julian Borger lays it all out in tomorrow’s edition of The Guardian: “Iraq insurgency forces Pentagon rethink on ability to fight two wars at once — Heavy costs, China and 9/11 influence military review.”


“The Iraq counter-insurgency is forcing the Pentagon to question its military doctrine that requires forces to be able to fight two major wars at the same time, it was claimed yesterday,” Borger reports.


This section of the Reuters report on the Pentagon “rethink” hit my stomach with a sickening thud:

A senior Army officer noted that many of the more than 1,700 U.S. troops who lost their lives in Iraq died because the military had not anticipated the need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on armor to protect military vehicles against improvised explosive devices.


I am not only sick. I am furious. I knew this already, but to say it was “noted” that many of those 1,700 deaths were because they weren’t fucking prepared just kills me.


No wonder there are sites like Adopt A Sniper. We civilians have to outfit our military:

My name is Sgt. Ben xxxxxx, sniper section leader with xxxxxxx, currently deployed to Iraq …We do have M-24’s, and M-14’s that are not in the best condition but serviceable. Most other mission essential equipment came out of our own pockets. I was wondering if you have any spotting scopes, Bow Flage, spray point, or old BDU’s you could donate to us. I have 3 teams who are all qualified but just don’t have the equipment they need. Any donations would be greatly appreciated sir.

…………
It is true, that most of the USMC S/S teams are continually purchasing thier own equipment that doesnt exist in the military supply systems, and any help thats available is greatly appreciated.
…………
Until now it seems we were misunderstood and under utilized. Now we are in demand and are working hard to do our jobs with half the gear. My partner and I have shelled out thousands on gear and we are still in need….

Adopt A Sniper

“‘What it reflects is how unprepared the US military was for a protracted insurgency in Iraq,’ said Loren Thompson, a strategic analyst at the Lexington Institute, a Washington thinktank.”


“‘A relatively small group of poorly equipped guerrillas is getting the United States to rethink its military posture … This type of conflict wasn’t supposed to happen with this duration and this intensity’,” Thompson told The Guardian.

Since the cold war, and the emergence of the US as the sole superpower, Washington has set a benchmark for its armed forces, requiring them to be strong enough to fight two major wars simultaneously. Funding and troop levels have been set accordingly. […]

But with so many troops pinned down in Iraq, the conflict is draining US forces of the capacity to fight elsewhere.


Below, the first part of The Guardian‘s report:

A four-yearly review of US military power is not due until early next year, but it is already clear that the strategy is under great strain from the Iraq war.


The length and ferocity of the insurgency has surprised the Pentagon. Two years after “major combat operations” were declared over by George Bush, there are still 138,000 US troops in Iraq, costing $5bn (£2.8bn) a month. Yet under US military doctrine it is not even defined as a war.


A Possible New Approach

“We have 1-4-2-1 now, and we are going to look at that,” Ryan Henry, Mr Rumsfeld’s senior policy aide at the Pentagon, told the New York Times. He said if the review did produce a new strategy it might be “something that doesn’t have any numbers at all”.


“What they’re doing is trying to get beyond the two-war posture,” said Andrew Krepinevich, a former Pentagon official and executive director of the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The new approach is to fight four entirely different kinds of war at the same time: traditional large-scale combat; counter-insurgency; defending the US against attack (involving weapons of mass destruction); and “disruptive” warfare.


The China Syndrome


Yes. China.

“The latter, [said Krepinevich], reflects concern over China, which is reportedly exploring asymmetric strategies, potentially allowing its forces to take on the US. The strategies involve information warfare, targeting US reliance on the internet, anti-satellite weapons and the precise use of ballistic and cruise missiles against large-scale targets such as airbases.”


Here’s what Reuters reports about China and North Korea and Iran:

One Navy official told Reuters that, even if the United States can no longer fight two wars at once, publicly backing away from the strategy was risky because it might tempt potential adversaries China, North Korea and Iran.


“If we say that we can only do one and then we get engaged in one that’s not on the horizon now, does that offer North Korea, China or Iran a chance to say ‘Well, they’re going to be engaged for five years, that gives me a leeway with what I want to do because they don’t have the force structure for two major combat operations’,” the official said.


Great. We’ve blown our leverage.

Mr Rumsfeld sought to speed up the process of “military transformation” from cold war forces to more agile troops with advanced technology. The experience has reinforced the importance of mobility, but also taught that electronic gadgetry is of little use against suicide bombers.


Borger reports that “[t]he change would raise the importance of special forces, but would transform training for infantrymen, to emphasise language skills, military intelligence and familiarity with foreign cultures.”

“One of reason we rely so much on reserves now is because those kind of skills had been relegated to the reserves in the cold war,” he said.


Full story in The Guardian || Reuters full story (NYT)

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