The recent decision by the Pentagon to extend army combat time in Afghanistan and Iraq is an example of how our combat troops are being continually put under increasing stress. According to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, this extended time is necessary to allow troops already stateside to have the needed time to recuperate and retrain otherwise the army would have been forced to deploy troops before they had finished a full year stateside. This would make it appear, to this reviewer at least, that the Bush Administration should have pushed for a permanent troop increase long ago rather than subject our military troops to three months of extended duty. It must be noted, however, that the current Administration did ask Congress earlier this year to increase the number of active duty personnel by 92,000 but even if this request is granted, it will take a minimum of five years to achieve this goal.

As a citizen who supports our troops, if not the war, I can’t help but feel concern regarding the hardships that military families, whose members are already deployed, will be forced to face due to the extended deployment time. Combine this with growing equipment shortages that the stateside units have had to endure, forcing them to request needed supplies from stockpiles in Afghanistan and
Iraq, and it would seem that the severe strain on an overstretched military could not do anything but add more stress to an already intolerable situation.

Given this, I believe that the Congress must move rapidly to expand permanent troops and supply the needed equipment in order to ease the strain on our troops but with the federal debt growing at an astronomical level it would seem that the Administration should consider ending this no-win war or find another means to pay for the needed expansion. Of course, I still go back to my thoughts of months ago that since this is Bush’s personal vendetta he should be the one paying for it not the American citizenry who are seeing no benefit from it but rather are seeing their children’s futures jeopardized by his out of control spending.

Tags: combat readiness, combat stress, equipment shortages, military shortages, bush administration, federal debt, combat deployment, military families, longer deployment, military hardship