Well, good ol' Vlad is up to it again. Actually going a little further than he has before, this time around. Putin is showing his stripes; a product of the bad old days of the Cold War, head of the KGB and all that, too. And Ukraine was always one of the more important of the 'Soviet Socialist Republics', so I for one am not all that surprised that Putin would take such a drastic step, amounting to a forced annexation.
But here, back home here in the U.S. of A., what are we going to do about it? Anything? We'll send a strongly-worded protest through the United Nations, I'm sure. And it's not as if we can do much sabre-rattling, seeing as how we no longer have much of a sabre--more like a dagger, given how much we've cut already. And that big, huge, bloated military budget that the Dems like to harp on? We'll be lucky to have a paring knife left.
Our once much-vaunted, and by our adversaries, much-feared, military is largely a paper tiger nowadays. So much of our budget went to fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it stripped our 'conventional' forces to the bone. And now we want to cut further.
Does anyone remember Desert Storm? I certainly do--I was there, and two of my brothers also served over there (a third one was just a little too young, but did two tours in Iraq when he was older). Does anyone remember how many troops the United States had in-theater? Right around 500,000. And we got the job done. (Well, in my mind, we left the job half-done, but that's only because the politicians didn't want the job done. We did exactly what our political masters wanted us to do--liberate Kuwait and eliminate Iraq's military potential.) AND one must also add in the hundreds of thousands of Allied troops that were there and went in with us, alongside us.
So, in Gulf War II, OIF, or whatever we end up calling the late unpleasantness in Iraq, how many troops did we have? 160,000, with comparatively little Allied support (thanks to W's 'my way or the highway' attitude, and none of his dad's considerable diplomatic acumen). So we had enough to go in and defeat the Iraqi military, but not enough to actually control the country. You know, you can argue all sorts of points about how the occupation of Iraq (call it what it actually was) should have been handled, but regardless it would have been a whole lot better had we had 3 times as many troops as we did in country in 2003--like we did in 1991. But you know what? We couldn't spare 500,000 troops to go into Southwest Asia not just because of operations in Afghanistan, but because doing so would have required removing all the troops from Europe and Korea and just about every stateside post as well.
As it was, we ran our troops to the ragged edge. Anyone with even the most casual, passing familiarity with our troops knows how badly the constant and repeated combat tours strained the troops and their families. Yeah, we lost 4,486 troops in Iraq, and so far we've lost 2,315 in Afghanistan, but you also have to count those we've lost to suicide. And the sacrifices go even deeper, even beyond the wounded and the maimed. There's the divorces, the broken hearts, the wives (and husbands) and the children who have also paid the price. Things would NOT have been so bad had we had enough troops to do the job right, not just in-country, but also back home in the States, so the combat troops coming home would have had the time to recover and recuperate. An extra 340,000 troops would have helped tremendously.
And keep that 500,000 troop strength figure in mind here.
Has anyone seen the actual number of troops that DoD wants to cut the Army to? The plan is to cut the total troop strength of the entire United States Army to around 440,000 troops--total. With a force structure so small, we couldn't even pull off 'Gulf War Lite', a la 2003 OIF.
And let's not forget who those 160,000 American servicemembers had to fight. The Iraqi military, having failed utterly to defend their country in Desert Storm (going, as one wag had it, from being the 4th largest army in the world to the 2nd largest in Iraq), and having 12 years of sanctions imposed upon it, was not exactly the most professional military force in the world. (Not only did they epically fail in Desert Storm, they also singularly failed to prevail against the Iranians for 8 long years . . . ) Militarily, the Iraqi armed forces were a push-over. They had a hodge-podge of equipment (one thing I remember from Desert Storm was the incredible variety of target silhouettes we had to learn--I was a tank crewman, BTW) which makes for a logistical nightmare, both for parts and for ammunition, and for training, too.
[Even the Iraqi equipment we faced in Desert Storm was junk, for the most part--I had an up-close and personal view of several captured Iraqi vehicles, and they were just sad. About the only thing their vehicles were good for was machine-gunning civilians--they certainly couldn't hold up to a full-blown stand-up fight, which is what we gave them . . . but I digress.]
Who knows where or when our servicemembers are going to be called to go into harm's way to protect American national interests? Who they'll have to face, who will be doing their best to kill our young men and women?
If you 'support our troops', have one of those little ribbons on your back bumper or tailgate, now, NOW, is the time to actually SUPPORT OUR TROOPS. Either we maintain an adequate fighting force, of sufficient size, sufficiently equipped, and exquisitely trained, capable of meeting and defeating any potential adversary on any battle field any where in the world, or we need to re-evaluate the United State's role in the world. 'Supporting the troops' means very much more than just waving a flag or thanking a veteran from time to time; SUPPORTING the troops means making sure that they have everything they possibly could need to survive and win anywhere, anytime, and that includes making sure there are more than enough troops to accomplish the jobs that may need to be done.
--------------------------------------------------------
Going back to Ukraine, what can we do? Not a whole lot. You see, as the former head of the KGB, I'm sure Putin's taken everything into account, and he knows how weak we already are, and I'm sure he looked on our proposed FY2015 military budget with a chuckle. You see, it's not just the Army--the Navy is very close to the same number of ships afloat as it had before World War I, at 285, and of those, only 189 are actual warships (during the Reagan era the US Navy peaked at 594 and 362, respectively). The Marine Corps is looking to shrink down to perhaps 150,000 total, from around 202,000 today.
Has anyone else noticed that a number of Third World tin-plate dictators have started talking 'smack' to the United States? They know how small our military has become, and know that they can get away with 'tweaking' us and generally being a pain in our butts. Because we can't do anything about it. Once upon a time the shadow of our 'big stick' was enough to keep these small-fry in line, but they're not scared of it any more.
Weakness in a nation invites problems. While polite society does not allow individuals to act in this manner, nations do all the time. It's a fact of life; it's not what things should be, but it is how things are. And when a formerly strong nation becomes weak, the little previously compliant nations will take cheap shots at the formerly strong, because now they can. And they do.
Moving back to Ukraine once again, there is one thing that comes to mind, though the ties between the United States and Ukraine are not as strong as the ones in the historical precedent. Specifically, I refer to the Berlin Airlift. In 1948, our erstwhile allies, the Soviet Union, in an effort to drive Western powers from Berlin, established a blockade around the city. There was no road, rail, or water access to Berlin, cutting off around 2.25 million West Germans from food, fuel, and medical supplies.
Some military 'hawks' of the day urged the President to send armored columns to break through the blockade, which almost certainly would have led to war. But a few other forward-thinking officers had a different idea.
In a matter of a few weeks, the United States and our British allies established what became known as the Berlin Airlift. Using military transport airplanes, called from all over the world, we managed to supply the needs of the cut-off Germans, only the very basic and very minimum needs at first, but over time, through a masterpiece of planning and organization (and largely still unrecognized to this day), eventually we scaled the operation up to where all of 'free Berlin' had adequate supplies of food, clothing, fuel, medicines--everything a modern city of that size needed. No troops other than those necessary to control the aircraft coming and going were sent; no weapons were supplied.
And in the course of doing so, we, the United States, proved to the satisfaction of the German people that those Americans, who just three years before were doing everything we could to kill them, were now doing everything we could to help them withstand the Communists and remain a free people. (We also had the 'Candy Bombers', started completely on his own by 1st Lt. Gail Halvorsen and for wholly philanthropic reasons of his own, who dropped small bundles of candy attached to parachutes fashioned from handkerchiefs to waiting children in West Berlin, which had the added benefit of further enhancing the image of the Americans to the German people.)
It wasn't bloodless, not by a long shot. A total of 70 Allied airmen lost their lives in crashes and other accidents related to operating in some of the worst weather ever seen in Berlin. But eventually even the Soviets had to admit defeat, and in May 1949, they lifted the blockade. We, the United States and Great Britain, and West Germany, had won the first battle of the Cold War without firing a shot. And so firmly cemented the people of West Germany to the United States and to Great Britain that they became one of our closest allies anywhere in the world.
Which brings us back to the Ukraine.
Could we not undertake something similar today? Ukraine has wanted to join the European Union for years--and in fact the recent turmoil in that country was brought about by a decision by the then-president to reject that membership in favor of closer ties to Russia. Were they to join the EU, they'd be on the far most-distant end of that organization. An effort to bring them more fully into the European sphere of influence would be a good thing, I think, given Russia's more recent aggressiveness. Add to the fact that four of Ukraine's neighboring countries are now members of NATO, an effort by that organization (which, by the way, grew out of the coalition that started the Berlin Airlift) to very visibly and publicly support the Ukrainian efforts to maintain their freedom and independence from Moscow would help those small, and formerly Soviet, countries as well.
50-plus years ago, President Kennedy committed the United States to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty." These were fine words, and they established America's place on the world stage. Do we wish to continue to play that role, to support our friends and oppose our foes, and ensure that freedom's light still shines out upon the world? The choice, as always, is up to us.
But here, back home here in the U.S. of A., what are we going to do about it? Anything? We'll send a strongly-worded protest through the United Nations, I'm sure. And it's not as if we can do much sabre-rattling, seeing as how we no longer have much of a sabre--more like a dagger, given how much we've cut already. And that big, huge, bloated military budget that the Dems like to harp on? We'll be lucky to have a paring knife left.
Our once much-vaunted, and by our adversaries, much-feared, military is largely a paper tiger nowadays. So much of our budget went to fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it stripped our 'conventional' forces to the bone. And now we want to cut further.
Does anyone remember Desert Storm? I certainly do--I was there, and two of my brothers also served over there (a third one was just a little too young, but did two tours in Iraq when he was older). Does anyone remember how many troops the United States had in-theater? Right around 500,000. And we got the job done. (Well, in my mind, we left the job half-done, but that's only because the politicians didn't want the job done. We did exactly what our political masters wanted us to do--liberate Kuwait and eliminate Iraq's military potential.) AND one must also add in the hundreds of thousands of Allied troops that were there and went in with us, alongside us.
So, in Gulf War II, OIF, or whatever we end up calling the late unpleasantness in Iraq, how many troops did we have? 160,000, with comparatively little Allied support (thanks to W's 'my way or the highway' attitude, and none of his dad's considerable diplomatic acumen). So we had enough to go in and defeat the Iraqi military, but not enough to actually control the country. You know, you can argue all sorts of points about how the occupation of Iraq (call it what it actually was) should have been handled, but regardless it would have been a whole lot better had we had 3 times as many troops as we did in country in 2003--like we did in 1991. But you know what? We couldn't spare 500,000 troops to go into Southwest Asia not just because of operations in Afghanistan, but because doing so would have required removing all the troops from Europe and Korea and just about every stateside post as well.
As it was, we ran our troops to the ragged edge. Anyone with even the most casual, passing familiarity with our troops knows how badly the constant and repeated combat tours strained the troops and their families. Yeah, we lost 4,486 troops in Iraq, and so far we've lost 2,315 in Afghanistan, but you also have to count those we've lost to suicide. And the sacrifices go even deeper, even beyond the wounded and the maimed. There's the divorces, the broken hearts, the wives (and husbands) and the children who have also paid the price. Things would NOT have been so bad had we had enough troops to do the job right, not just in-country, but also back home in the States, so the combat troops coming home would have had the time to recover and recuperate. An extra 340,000 troops would have helped tremendously.
And keep that 500,000 troop strength figure in mind here.
Has anyone seen the actual number of troops that DoD wants to cut the Army to? The plan is to cut the total troop strength of the entire United States Army to around 440,000 troops--total. With a force structure so small, we couldn't even pull off 'Gulf War Lite', a la 2003 OIF.
And let's not forget who those 160,000 American servicemembers had to fight. The Iraqi military, having failed utterly to defend their country in Desert Storm (going, as one wag had it, from being the 4th largest army in the world to the 2nd largest in Iraq), and having 12 years of sanctions imposed upon it, was not exactly the most professional military force in the world. (Not only did they epically fail in Desert Storm, they also singularly failed to prevail against the Iranians for 8 long years . . . ) Militarily, the Iraqi armed forces were a push-over. They had a hodge-podge of equipment (one thing I remember from Desert Storm was the incredible variety of target silhouettes we had to learn--I was a tank crewman, BTW) which makes for a logistical nightmare, both for parts and for ammunition, and for training, too.
[Even the Iraqi equipment we faced in Desert Storm was junk, for the most part--I had an up-close and personal view of several captured Iraqi vehicles, and they were just sad. About the only thing their vehicles were good for was machine-gunning civilians--they certainly couldn't hold up to a full-blown stand-up fight, which is what we gave them . . . but I digress.]
Who knows where or when our servicemembers are going to be called to go into harm's way to protect American national interests? Who they'll have to face, who will be doing their best to kill our young men and women?
If you 'support our troops', have one of those little ribbons on your back bumper or tailgate, now, NOW, is the time to actually SUPPORT OUR TROOPS. Either we maintain an adequate fighting force, of sufficient size, sufficiently equipped, and exquisitely trained, capable of meeting and defeating any potential adversary on any battle field any where in the world, or we need to re-evaluate the United State's role in the world. 'Supporting the troops' means very much more than just waving a flag or thanking a veteran from time to time; SUPPORTING the troops means making sure that they have everything they possibly could need to survive and win anywhere, anytime, and that includes making sure there are more than enough troops to accomplish the jobs that may need to be done.
--------------------------------------------------------
Going back to Ukraine, what can we do? Not a whole lot. You see, as the former head of the KGB, I'm sure Putin's taken everything into account, and he knows how weak we already are, and I'm sure he looked on our proposed FY2015 military budget with a chuckle. You see, it's not just the Army--the Navy is very close to the same number of ships afloat as it had before World War I, at 285, and of those, only 189 are actual warships (during the Reagan era the US Navy peaked at 594 and 362, respectively). The Marine Corps is looking to shrink down to perhaps 150,000 total, from around 202,000 today.
Has anyone else noticed that a number of Third World tin-plate dictators have started talking 'smack' to the United States? They know how small our military has become, and know that they can get away with 'tweaking' us and generally being a pain in our butts. Because we can't do anything about it. Once upon a time the shadow of our 'big stick' was enough to keep these small-fry in line, but they're not scared of it any more.
Weakness in a nation invites problems. While polite society does not allow individuals to act in this manner, nations do all the time. It's a fact of life; it's not what things should be, but it is how things are. And when a formerly strong nation becomes weak, the little previously compliant nations will take cheap shots at the formerly strong, because now they can. And they do.
Moving back to Ukraine once again, there is one thing that comes to mind, though the ties between the United States and Ukraine are not as strong as the ones in the historical precedent. Specifically, I refer to the Berlin Airlift. In 1948, our erstwhile allies, the Soviet Union, in an effort to drive Western powers from Berlin, established a blockade around the city. There was no road, rail, or water access to Berlin, cutting off around 2.25 million West Germans from food, fuel, and medical supplies.
Some military 'hawks' of the day urged the President to send armored columns to break through the blockade, which almost certainly would have led to war. But a few other forward-thinking officers had a different idea.
In a matter of a few weeks, the United States and our British allies established what became known as the Berlin Airlift. Using military transport airplanes, called from all over the world, we managed to supply the needs of the cut-off Germans, only the very basic and very minimum needs at first, but over time, through a masterpiece of planning and organization (and largely still unrecognized to this day), eventually we scaled the operation up to where all of 'free Berlin' had adequate supplies of food, clothing, fuel, medicines--everything a modern city of that size needed. No troops other than those necessary to control the aircraft coming and going were sent; no weapons were supplied.
And in the course of doing so, we, the United States, proved to the satisfaction of the German people that those Americans, who just three years before were doing everything we could to kill them, were now doing everything we could to help them withstand the Communists and remain a free people. (We also had the 'Candy Bombers', started completely on his own by 1st Lt. Gail Halvorsen and for wholly philanthropic reasons of his own, who dropped small bundles of candy attached to parachutes fashioned from handkerchiefs to waiting children in West Berlin, which had the added benefit of further enhancing the image of the Americans to the German people.)
It wasn't bloodless, not by a long shot. A total of 70 Allied airmen lost their lives in crashes and other accidents related to operating in some of the worst weather ever seen in Berlin. But eventually even the Soviets had to admit defeat, and in May 1949, they lifted the blockade. We, the United States and Great Britain, and West Germany, had won the first battle of the Cold War without firing a shot. And so firmly cemented the people of West Germany to the United States and to Great Britain that they became one of our closest allies anywhere in the world.
Which brings us back to the Ukraine.
Could we not undertake something similar today? Ukraine has wanted to join the European Union for years--and in fact the recent turmoil in that country was brought about by a decision by the then-president to reject that membership in favor of closer ties to Russia. Were they to join the EU, they'd be on the far most-distant end of that organization. An effort to bring them more fully into the European sphere of influence would be a good thing, I think, given Russia's more recent aggressiveness. Add to the fact that four of Ukraine's neighboring countries are now members of NATO, an effort by that organization (which, by the way, grew out of the coalition that started the Berlin Airlift) to very visibly and publicly support the Ukrainian efforts to maintain their freedom and independence from Moscow would help those small, and formerly Soviet, countries as well.
50-plus years ago, President Kennedy committed the United States to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty." These were fine words, and they established America's place on the world stage. Do we wish to continue to play that role, to support our friends and oppose our foes, and ensure that freedom's light still shines out upon the world? The choice, as always, is up to us.
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