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Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 25 April
Reference: ìWith Breadwinners Overseas, Guard Families Face Struggle,î by Andrew Jacobs, New York Times, 25 April, p. A1.
Classic story: guy has a dream of running his own catering business. Signs up for the Guard for a little extra money, expectingóat worstósix months somewhere. Now in his 18th month of deployment, his dreams of small business success are coming apart at seams. His military service is bankrupting his family in more ways than one.
His duty? Heís a military police. Why are they being run ragged in Iraq? The Pentagon has spent a decade and a half denigrating Military Operations Other than War. Didnít buy for it. Didnít train enough people for it. Didnít prioritize it. Hid it as much as possible in the Guard, which remains chock-full of artillery batteries that havenít been used in so many years they are almost museum pieces.
S--- hits the fan in the second half in Iraq, and guess who gets holding the back? Reality is: our great Leviathan warfighting force writes checks our embryonic Sys Admin peacekeeping force cannot possibly cover with its meager resources.
Why is this Sys Admin force so starved for money? The Pentagon prefers to think about, plan for, buy for, and wage war within the context of warónot caring about the back half effort such war invariably generates. When youíre planning for great power war with China in the straits of Taiwan in 2025, youíre not planning for a lot of MPs, or armored Humvees, or any of that crap. No sir, those remain ìlesser includeds,î as in, weíll make do with what we have in stock.
Who pays for this bias? The National Guard does (for one), and so does their families.
A Pentagon still obsessed with near-peer competitors does not feel their pain. And a ìwar presidentî canít be bothered with such details.
But a Pentagon committed to fighting a global war on terrorism would care, and a president who worried about the ìeverything elseî portion of that global war on terrorism would understand that victory lies in the smallest details.
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